Battery Swapping, EV Leases, and Scout’s Big Reveal

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[00:01:30] We have all of the news.

[00:01:32] We also have an internet outage in my area.

[00:01:35] So not exactly sure when I'm going to be able to post this,

[00:01:38] but just so you know, podcast delayed for an internet outage.

[00:01:43] When I say all-EV-news, I mean we're going to do all the news that doesn't relate to Tesla.

[00:01:49] And the reason why is just the EV news that we're going to talk about today

[00:01:54] is about five pages and notes.

[00:01:55] And for me, four pages and notes is typically a 20-minute show,

[00:02:00] so this will be a little bit longer.

[00:02:02] All right, let's get into it here.

[00:02:04] GM's delivery and van division bright drop will now fall under the Chevrolet brand.

[00:02:10] This makes a lot of sense.

[00:02:11] Chevy is a company that does a lot of fleets or has a lot of fleet deals.

[00:02:16] So this makes sense.

[00:02:19] Volkswagen Group Scout brand is planning a big unveil on October 24th

[00:02:23] and just kind of an interesting coincidence here.

[00:02:27] Probably not a coincidence, probably planned.

[00:02:30] This will be 44 years to the week after the last Scout model rolled off the production line.

[00:02:37] So 44 years later, they're unveiling, I believe it's going to be from the rumors,

[00:02:44] two new Scout models.

[00:02:46] But Volkswagen hasn't given any specific details,

[00:02:49] not even like a dark picture with headlights or tail lights.

[00:02:53] They want it to be a surprise.

[00:02:56] And I'm really looking forward to being surprised myself.

[00:02:59] I like it when companies do this, keep everything close to your vest

[00:03:02] and then reveal it and make a big splash.

[00:03:07] I mentioned that I would like to invite some of the folks from the kilowatt community

[00:03:12] to come on and chat about an event.

[00:03:14] I kind of tossed out RoboTaxi,

[00:03:16] but I think this Scout event might be a better first time event to do this kind of thing on

[00:03:22] because I've never done it before.

[00:03:24] I don't know how it will go.

[00:03:26] And these type of teaser events tend not to be very long

[00:03:34] and Tesla events can be short or they can be just hours long.

[00:03:39] And I don't know what RoboTaxi is going to be.

[00:03:41] So I think the Scout event will be a better time to do that.

[00:03:48] So if you emailed me and you said, hey, I would like to be on a panel with a bunch of my peers.

[00:03:54] Great.

[00:03:55] We're probably going to do it on October 28th and it's going to be the Scout event, not the RoboTaxi event.

[00:04:03] All right, let's move on to build your dreams.

[00:04:06] BYD is waiting until the presidential election in the US is over.

[00:04:10] Two announced plans for their plant in Mexico.

[00:04:14] We first brought up the BYD plant in Mexico a couple of months ago

[00:04:19] and at that time it looked like the plant would serve Central America and some of South America.

[00:04:25] BYD does have a plant in Brazil and they have an announced plant in Turkey.

[00:04:32] So Bart and I were talking on the last episode about a Chinese brand

[00:04:38] that announced a plant in Turkey.

[00:04:41] It's BYD.

[00:04:41] I don't remember who we thought it was, but it's BYD.

[00:04:45] And having a plant in Mexico for build your dreams for BYD could avoid tariffs

[00:04:51] if they wanted to bring their cars to the US or at least reduce the tariffs.

[00:04:57] I'm not super versed in tariffs.

[00:05:00] And by the way, I have really bad allergies right now.

[00:05:04] So I apologize if my voice sounds like garbage because in my head it sounds like garbage.

[00:05:10] Let's see here the performance version of the Hyundai IONIQ 5 is finally here.

[00:05:16] It's the Hyundai IONIQ 5 in like at Nancy.

[00:05:19] It has 641 horsepower.

[00:05:22] It's all wheel drive 0 to 60 in 3.25 seconds.

[00:05:25] We're looking at a range of 221 miles for a grand total of $67,495.

[00:05:35] This car is designed for fun, not for practicality.

[00:05:39] But as an added bonus, Hyundai is throwing in a free level two charge point charger when you buy the car.

[00:05:47] Installation is not included, but the charger is valued at about $550.

[00:05:50] If you already have a charger in your house, then no worries because they'll give you $450 in credits to use on charge points charging network.

[00:06:01] So not a bad deal.

[00:06:03] In related news, the 2025 Hyundai IONIQ 5 just the regular Bornrain one, not the really cool fast one.

[00:06:12] The IONIQ 5, the 2025 IONIQ 5 will be the first non-Tesla to come equipped with a Naxx port.

[00:06:20] Hyundai is also throwing in a CCS adapter.

[00:06:23] So if you want to charge like at Electrify America, you can still do that.

[00:06:28] You would just use the adapter instead of plugging directly into your car like you would at a supercharger.

[00:06:35] So this is awesome and yet another reason to consider buying a Hyundai IONIQ 5.

[00:06:41] Oh yeah, and the IONIQ 5, the 2025 IONIQ 5 is getting a bigger battery, which means more range.

[00:06:47] And then there's some modifications to the interior and exterior of the vehicle.

[00:06:51] So not quite a...

[00:06:52] And if you're wondering about the charge port on the IONIQ 5 in, like Nancy, it'll be a CCS1 adapter.

[00:07:01] So...

[00:07:02] Wah-wah.

[00:07:03] All right, let's move on to some deals.

[00:07:07] So there are some EV leases out there that will allow you to lease an electric vehicle for under $300.

[00:07:14] Now there's an article in the show notes. If you want more of them, I'm just going to highlight three here.

[00:07:20] The Kia Nero Wind EV.

[00:07:23] There is a 24 month lease, $3,999 due at signing.

[00:07:29] And that would bring your payment down to $169 a month.

[00:07:33] However, if you factor in the money that you paid at signing, which is the effective cost,

[00:07:37] you're looking at $336 a month.

[00:07:41] And then we have the Honda Prologue EV. It's a 36 month lease.

[00:07:46] This is a little bit of better of a deal.

[00:07:49] You're looking at $1,999 due at signing, $269 a month, which brings your effective cost to $325 a month.

[00:08:00] And then finally the Hyundai Aionic 5, 24 a month lease, $3,999 due at signing,

[00:08:08] which brings your payment to $164 a month.

[00:08:11] But your effective cost or effective payment is $330 a month.

[00:08:16] Again, I don't want to go through all of these because they kind of give you a bunch of number salad there.

[00:08:21] But there are good leasing deals out there if you are into leasing.

[00:08:26] If you don't want a lease, here are some 0% financing deals that you might want to look at.

[00:08:32] The Ford Mach-E, you can get a 0% financing for 72 months.

[00:08:37] The Kia EV9, 0% financing for 48 months, which, you know, that's going to be a bigger payment for sure.

[00:08:44] The Subaru Soltera, 72 months, 0% financing.

[00:08:49] And the Volkswagen ID4 also has 0% financing, but they didn't mention how long the term was.

[00:08:55] So do your research. And as always, there's links in the show notes.

[00:09:02] All right, so we've covered a lot of American stuff. Let's move to Great Britain.

[00:09:07] If you want a really cool dashboard showing you the breakdown of where Great Britain is getting its power in real time,

[00:09:15] then you should check out grid.imkate.com.

[00:09:21] There's a link in the show notes.

[00:09:22] Mark passed this along to us. It's really, really cool.

[00:09:27] At the time of this recording, 28.1% of Great Britain's energy was fueled by fossil fuels, 14.9% renewable energy,

[00:09:39] and 37.1% other, which includes nuclear and biomass.

[00:09:45] This was all put together by Kate Morley.

[00:09:48] And honestly, there's a bunch more stuff on there.

[00:09:50] I'm just giving you the highlights. It's really detailed.

[00:09:55] So thank you to Mark for passing this along and thank you to Kate for putting it together.

[00:10:29] All right, let's move back here to the United States.

[00:10:37] I want to talk about how many charging ports have been added during Q3 2024.

[00:10:44] Now we're currently still in the middle of Q3 2024. So these aren't final numbers,

[00:10:50] but 9,000 public charging ports were added.

[00:10:54] And that does include level two and level three DC fast charging ports.

[00:10:59] And as it sits right now, we have about 192,000 public charging ports for us to access.

[00:11:09] I honestly, I know that I do this at least once a quarter.

[00:11:13] I did not, the number always astounded me because we keep hearing about how the charging ports in the US,

[00:11:22] we don't have enough of them.

[00:11:23] And we probably don't have enough of them in the right places.

[00:11:26] And obviously level two charging ports versus level three, there's, you know,

[00:11:30] level three is going to be more useful if you don't have a lot of time.

[00:11:34] So you might be thinking to yourself, all right,

[00:11:37] I know that the federal government has money set aside to help pay for these charging ports.

[00:11:44] How many, how many charging ports do we have at this point?

[00:11:48] Like in total that were paid for through Neve funds.

[00:11:52] And the number is at this point in time 69.

[00:11:56] So total of 69 charging ports across 17 stations in 18 states or excuse me, eight states.

[00:12:04] Now you might think, well, that's not a great number and you would be right.

[00:12:09] However, in Q2 there were only 33 Neve funded charging ports across six states.

[00:12:18] So definite improvement.

[00:12:21] And when you have numbers this low, it's easy to double them.

[00:12:25] And I would imagine we'll be doubling them for quite some time going forward.

[00:12:31] What I'm saying is at this pace, it's going to be a while.

[00:12:34] But I do want to point out that installing a charger or a charging station is not necessarily a trivial task.

[00:12:42] You know, it's not super hard to have one installed in your home.

[00:12:46] But when you're looking at a grocery store or some other public location,

[00:12:52] level two charging, you know, you need to trench and there's a whole bunch of other stuff that goes into that.

[00:12:56] And then level three charging is just significantly harder, right?

[00:13:01] So I thought I would go through some of the things that need to be considered when installing a charging station.

[00:13:07] So first you need a site that makes sense is it getting a lot of traffic?

[00:13:12] If it's not, there's it doesn't make sense to be there.

[00:13:15] Then you either need to negotiate a deal with whoever owns or operates the property so that you can buy it

[00:13:22] or you can, you know, lease space in that property and that takes time.

[00:13:26] And we heard from Edwin Jiao when he was on the show and he talked about all of the deals that fell through for a variety of different reasons.

[00:13:35] Right? That's you're just dealing with another layer of complication when we get another entity involved in the deal, right?

[00:13:43] Let's see. You need to bring a lot of power in to supply these chargers.

[00:13:49] That's not cheap. It also is going to require you to do a lot of trenching and, you know,

[00:13:56] and you're going to have to pull permits and get signoffs and approvals and, you know,

[00:14:01] the utility company is going to have to come in and sign off on everything before you can turn it on.

[00:14:07] And then when you apply for Nevi funds and you would probably do this first in this particular scenario before you started building something out.

[00:14:15] But Nevi funds, those are going to operate at the speed of government, which I am a government employee and I can tell you can be quite slow.

[00:14:23] And I don't operate at the federal government level for sure, but there's just another, you know, five, six, seven layers of complication there.

[00:14:32] So what I'm saying here is that it's hard.

[00:14:34] All right. Let's move into our final story here because one, I'm losing my voice and two, it's our final story.

[00:14:42] So we don't have anything to talk about after this.

[00:14:45] But our final EV story in the EV news segment is courtesy of Neil and we share an interest in battery swapping.

[00:14:56] Let's just start off with this battery swapping is big in some Asian countries.

[00:15:02] It's not as big of a deal in Europe, but they do have some battery swapping stations in Europe.

[00:15:07] And in North America, it's basically non-existent.

[00:15:11] And other parts of the world, I don't think that it's too prevalent either.

[00:15:17] It's mostly China to be honest with you.

[00:15:19] Now, that's a little bit of a different story when you're looking at two wheel scooters because companies like Gogoro have these really cool electric scooters

[00:15:27] that you can go up to this big battery kiosk and basically put your information in

[00:15:33] and you can grab a fresh battery that's been charged and put it in your scooter

[00:15:38] and then you put the old battery in the station and that will be charged.

[00:15:42] That might be in other regions of the world.

[00:15:45] Honestly, I'm not sure.

[00:15:47] But in terms of battery swapping for cars, not super prevalent across the globe.

[00:15:53] But what are some of the advantages and maybe we should be looking into this?

[00:15:58] One is it reduces downtime.

[00:16:00] It takes less than 10 minutes for you to drive into a battery swap station

[00:16:04] and for the battery to be removed and a new battery to be installed.

[00:16:09] And honestly, I think Nio's got it down to around five minutes, but I'm going to say less than 10.

[00:16:14] So this is really useful if you're going on a long car trip

[00:16:18] or if you're using your vehicle for work

[00:16:21] or if you have a fleet of vehicles that need to be on the road

[00:16:25] and you just don't have time to DC fast charge them.

[00:16:30] Another thing is it helps with battery management.

[00:16:34] So battery swap stations are able to take those batteries in

[00:16:38] and not only charge them, but also monitor the battery health.

[00:16:42] The batteries are stored in the swapping station

[00:16:46] so all that information that they can get off those batteries

[00:16:49] in terms of the condition that goes back to the mothership to be analyzed.

[00:16:54] And if a battery is deemed to be in poor condition,

[00:16:59] they can take it, tag it, take it out of service

[00:17:01] and then put a new one in and repair it.

[00:17:05] And it's easy to repair because it's already out of the vehicle.

[00:17:08] And the batteries, of course, can be charged in a way

[00:17:11] that improves the life of the battery.

[00:17:13] So DC fast charging at one point in time

[00:17:17] was said to be really hard on the batteries.

[00:17:19] We found through some research that that may not necessarily be true,

[00:17:24] but these batteries don't need to be hit with DC fast charging like at max peak.

[00:17:31] They can charge it a little bit of a slower pace

[00:17:34] and the charging might be a little bit cheaper

[00:17:37] because you don't always have to charge on peak hours,

[00:17:40] which is more expensive.

[00:17:41] You can charge some of these batteries during off peak hours

[00:17:45] and that is quite a bit cheaper as well.

[00:17:47] And then software updates, you know,

[00:17:50] if the battery pack needs a software update,

[00:17:51] it's already at the battery swapping station.

[00:17:54] It's pretty easy for them to implement that update as well.

[00:17:58] This next one could be a positive or negative depending on how you look at it.

[00:18:04] Most companies that do this have a battery leasing program

[00:18:08] which means that you pay for the vehicle minus the battery

[00:18:14] and then you pay a monthly fee for the battery,

[00:18:18] which could be between $100 and $150 a month just as an example.

[00:18:25] I think the last time I checked the equivalent was like $149 a month.

[00:18:31] So a little bit cheaper to buy the car,

[00:18:33] but when the car is paid off, you still have this cost

[00:18:37] which is the lease of the battery.

[00:18:40] There are a bunch of advantages and disadvantages to this,

[00:18:44] so I don't want you.

[00:18:46] Don't email me. I'm aware.

[00:18:48] We're not going to go into them here,

[00:18:49] but I am aware there are advantages and disadvantages to leasing batteries.

[00:18:53] I don't know if I love this idea,

[00:18:55] but there does need to be some cost associated with this

[00:18:59] because instead of one battery per vehicle that you're building,

[00:19:04] it might be two, three, four or five batteries per vehicle depending

[00:19:08] on how often the company thinks you'll be swapping out batteries,

[00:19:12] but there needs to be some in reserve.

[00:19:14] So this is an added cost. Batteries are not cheap.

[00:19:18] There needs to be something that happens in a financial nature

[00:19:21] to offset those costs.

[00:19:23] I just don't know what the best solution is,

[00:19:25] maybe leasing is, maybe a fee every time you swap your battery.

[00:19:28] Maybe that's a better way to go.

[00:19:30] I genuinely don't know.

[00:19:32] If you have thoughts on a better way of doing it

[00:19:34] that doesn't include leasing, send me an email, Bode,

[00:19:37] B-O-D-I-E at 918digital.com.

[00:19:40] All right, let's get to our next advantage of battery swapping.

[00:19:43] Battery swapping stations have a lower infrastructure cost.

[00:19:47] This one at first surprised me

[00:19:49] because I would have thought that it would have a much higher cost,

[00:19:53] but when you think about it,

[00:19:54] a battery swapping station doesn't really take up a lot of space.

[00:19:57] Everything's contained in the swapping station itself.

[00:20:03] So if you think about a supercharger site

[00:20:06] with 15 different chargers,

[00:20:08] that's going to take up a really big space

[00:20:10] because you have a parking spot for every charger.

[00:20:14] Whereas a battery swapping station,

[00:20:18] it's only going to take up at most four parking spaces.

[00:20:24] And it's going to be a little longer than the size of a vehicle.

[00:20:29] And that's it.

[00:20:31] It's pretty easy and it can quickly accommodate a lot of vehicles.

[00:20:37] So space-wise, it's going to be much smaller

[00:20:40] than a typical charging station.

[00:20:44] And then because there's going to be battery storage,

[00:20:50] you don't need that DC fast charging in the same way

[00:20:53] that you need DC fast charging for your car now.

[00:20:58] You're going to need more power than level two charging for sure,

[00:21:01] but it doesn't need to be as much as a 15 charger charging station.

[00:21:07] You can save a little bit of money by not bringing in quite as much power.

[00:21:13] So when I say a little bit of money,

[00:21:16] that's a significant amount of money.

[00:21:18] And then it's also easier in terms of infrastructure

[00:21:21] and a bunch of other stuff.

[00:21:23] So there's an advantage there.

[00:21:27] Another advantage, man, my voice is going, sorry about that folks.

[00:21:30] Another advantage is when new battery technology is introduced,

[00:21:33] it's possible that that battery technology will be backwards compatible

[00:21:38] and work with your car, which is great

[00:21:41] because you got new battery chemistries and new designs

[00:21:45] and battery densities and sizes.

[00:21:48] So that means maybe you have a lease for a 70 kilowatt hour battery.

[00:21:54] They come out with a new battery that's more energy dense.

[00:21:57] That means you get more range.

[00:21:59] Another advantage is if you're leasing, let's say like a 50 kilowatt hour battery

[00:22:03] because you don't need to drive that far in your daily commutes.

[00:22:07] But you want to go on a long road trip.

[00:22:09] You can go into the battery swap station, choose a much bigger battery.

[00:22:13] I'm sure there's a fee associated with that.

[00:22:14] And you can choose a battery that maybe has a 350 mile range

[00:22:19] and you can go about your merry way and go on your vacation.

[00:22:23] And when you're done, you swap it back out with that smaller battery.

[00:22:27] So there's a lot more flexibility with battery swap stations.

[00:22:31] So that's good as well.

[00:22:33] And our final advantage is battery standardization.

[00:22:38] Now it does seem like right now we're in a world of proprietary

[00:22:45] electric vehicles.

[00:22:47] Ford said this is the way we're going to do it.

[00:22:49] Tesla said this is the way we're going to do it.

[00:22:51] BYD does it a different way.

[00:22:53] We're getting to a point where this technology is maturing enough

[00:22:57] and we know enough about EV manufacturing and battery manufacturing

[00:23:01] where we could start seeing some standardization

[00:23:04] in terms of form factor, in terms of chemistries

[00:23:08] and basically what could happen through standardization

[00:23:11] is that you could own a Ford, drive into the battery swap station

[00:23:16] and get the battery that just came off of a Kia

[00:23:20] because it's the same battery pack.

[00:23:23] There's no difference between the two.

[00:23:26] And honestly this is going to end up saving us money.

[00:23:29] Oh, excuse me.

[00:23:31] Again, voice is just barely hanging on there.

[00:23:35] Basically this is just going to make our lives

[00:23:37] as EV owners and EV enthusiasts easier

[00:23:42] if we can have some basic standardization between parts.

[00:23:49] And again, this is happening.

[00:23:50] Early days of EVs it wasn't possible.

[00:23:53] Now we're talking about multiples of billions of dollars

[00:23:56] in business and companies want some of that money.

[00:24:00] Suppliers want some of that money.

[00:24:03] Alright, I'm going to go because my voice is not doing well.

[00:24:08] I hope you all have a wonderful weekend.

[00:24:12] If you want to email me it's bodibodeie at 918digital.com

[00:24:16] You can find me on Twitter at 918digital

[00:24:19] and yeah, I just released a new episode

[00:24:24] of my music recommendation podcast called Shuffle Playlist

[00:24:30] so I'll put a link in the show notes for that.

[00:24:33] We have a really cool interview with Ashley Losh

[00:24:37] who is a firefighter and also a content creator

[00:24:41] for my podcast about content creators called Be On The Post.

[00:24:44] I'll put a link in the show notes.

[00:24:46] That episode won't be out until Wednesday

[00:24:48] but I'll put a link in the show notes to Be On The Post

[00:24:50] if you're interested in that kind of thing.

[00:24:52] But I hope you all again have a wonderful weekend

[00:24:55] and I will talk to you on Tuesday.

[00:25:18] In my podcast, the first line is about content creators.

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