Now with More Manganese

[00:00:21] Hello everyone and welcome to Kilowatt, a podcast about electric vehicles, renewable energy, autonomous driving and much, much more. My name is Bodhi and I am your host and on today's episode we've got news, a lot of news actually. I started off this show thinking, oh okay, well, you know, I'll do about this many stories and then I got into one story and it has to do with battery chemistry, LMR batteries. And I wrote so much about it. It's a lot.

[00:00:51] So we're going to cover LMR battery chemistry a little bit later. We're going to start off with our Tesla news. But before we do that, I do need to let you know I was traveling and training this week from my regular job. So if you emailed me and I have not gotten back to you, it's not because I haven't forgotten. It's just I had a very busy last couple of days. I will get back to you today or tomorrow.

[00:01:15] All right, first up, Gene sent along a really nice email, but in that email he let me know that Tesla is looking for autopilot test engineers here in Tempe, Arizona. So according to the job description, and this is this is not written by me, rapid, these engineers will be doing rapid full self driving development, which relies heavily on coordinated on our coordinated ability to test

[00:01:44] test its progress within both the most mundane and extreme scenarios. Vehicle level tests enabled enable the identification of critical safety and performance issues, ultimately opening the door for optimized design iterations and enhanced driver passenger experience.

[00:02:04] All together, this auto test autopilot test engineer will play a role in actualizing this reality with more productionization of robotaxi just around the corner. There has never been a more pivotal time to enjoy to join this team. Boy, that was terrible on my part.

[00:02:26] The person who wrote that did not do as bad of a job as I did reading it. They actually wrote it quite nicely. A little more robotaxi news, just in case you're curious. Robotaxi will eventually launch in Saudi Arabia. Elon was in Saudi Arabia giving an interview in front of a bunch of people. And he made that announcement.

[00:03:15] Elon has appealed each time. There's a new appeal in, I think he filed that in March. And so it's going through the appeals process now. But just in case for a third time, the judge blocks it, they are looking at different ways to be able to compensate Elon. So we'll see where this goes.

[00:03:36] All right, this is our final Tesla story. A recent report, and I got this from Autoblog, but I don't know where it originated. But a recent report claims that nearly 50% of Tesla owners have had their vehicles intentionally damaged. 50% of Tesla owners.

[00:03:52] That didn't say 50% of Tesla owners. It didn't say 50% of Tesla owners in a specific country. It says 50% of Tesla owners. If I had to guess, you were picking up on my skepticism that 50% of or nearly 50% of Tesla owners have had their vehicles intentionally damaged.

[00:04:13] Tesla has sold, and I don't know the exact number, but it's somewhere around 7 million, probably over 7 million cars in the lifetime of the company. So you're telling me that 3.5 million vehicles have been intentionally damaged by people. It seems far-fetched, if I'm being honest. But anyway, it is a fact that some people feel that Tesla or other electric vehicles, they represent something that they don't like.

[00:04:40] And it's easy to say that in the nine years that I've been doing this podcast, people have done things to Teslas. We'll use Tesla specifically instead of electric vehicles. People have done things intentionally to Teslas. Teslas have cameras, so we have proof of this. There was somebody in Sacramento cruising down the road in their Tesla, and somebody stuck their hand out, and they had a gun in their hand.

[00:05:10] People key them. People, you know, slash the tires. I've seen videos of people trying, when the cars are charging and nobody's around, they're trying to remove the charging cable, and they're unable to do that. So now they're kicking the charging cable, and they're still unable to remove it. So I've seen lots of different things. And when it comes to, like, just different ideologies, it doesn't seem to matter where you fall in the political scheme of things.

[00:05:39] Or you is probably not a great way to say that. Where people fall. I've seen extreme left-wing groups out to make a point that building Teslas is bad for the environment, or electric vehicles are bad for the environment. So they light them on fire, which I don't agree with, and that doesn't make any sense in the world to me. Because now all of those minerals that came out of the ground and all that damage that was done is now not usable.

[00:06:07] And on top of that, we've just polluted the earth with a bunch more nasty pollutants and risked other people getting hurt or dying. So we've seen that. And that's not just a recent thing. This has been going on for at least as long as I've been doing this podcast, which is 2016. More recently, we've seen people damaging vehicles because of Elon's work in the government.

[00:06:34] But it doesn't just, you know, it wasn't just left-wing people doing this or people with left-wing ideologies. People with right-wing ideologies also are doing similar things in terms of antagonizing electric vehicle or Tesla owners. So we're going to, again, I don't think this is just 100% Tesla. I think electric vehicles kind of fall into this realm as a group, as a category.

[00:07:03] But it is true that Tesla owners, or it does seem like it's true that Tesla owners do seem like they get a little bit more of this. According to the article, 72% of Tesla owners believe that they're more likely to be targeted. 66% of owners think that the possibility of vandalism led them to avoid certain areas. So instead of going to dinner at this one specific place, they said, you know what?

[00:07:32] We're going to go over here because we might get our car damaged. 44% of Tesla owners reported their vehicles were intentionally damaged. And 21% of those group found surveillance that proved that was the case. 25% claimed that they caught somebody in the act of actually vandalizing vehicles.

[00:07:56] And then 46% of people polled, or I don't even, polled should be the right number here. Not 46% of Tesla owners, 46% of Tesla owners polled. That's how this should read, but it's not. Anyway, 46% were from the South. And I thought, well, that's interesting.

[00:08:19] And I thought I knew what states were considered the South, but I was wrong. I was very wrong. So Alabama, Arkansas, totally, that's totally the South to me. Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Mississippi, still the South. North Carolina, South Carolina. Getting a little less South in my opinion, but still the South. Oklahoma, Tennessee, Texas, still the South.

[00:08:47] Virginia and West Virginia, okay, still the South, I guess. But Delaware, the South goes all the way up to Delaware. I was shocked to see that. And I looked several different places, and Delaware's considered the South. So what is that? 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13. 14 states make up the South.

[00:09:11] And, yeah, 46% of people who said that their Teslas were damaged live in the South. So that would be like 1.7 million, 1.6 million people. Their vehicles were intentionally damaged in the South. The Northeast had 22% of respondents say that they were, that's where they live. 21% lived in the West.

[00:09:38] The Midwest is the safest place to own a Tesla, which is 11%. The average repair bill was $1,900. I think this is an interesting report. But, again, it should state that it's based on those people who were surveyed, not the entire group, not the entire fleet of Teslas that is out there, just the people that they polled. And I don't know how many people they polled. Don't know.

[00:10:08] One of the other things that article mentioned, and I've read some other articles about this as well, is that renewal rates for insurance has gone up. I just renewed my insurance, and it went up by a few dollars. But it's still really expensive. Like, for my wife's van and my car, for full coverage, it's $1,200 for six months. That's just two cars. And we both have excellent credit rating.

[00:10:38] We both do not have any accidents or speeding tickets, and haven't for more than 10 years. And it's still $1,200, so it's a little spendy. We're going to talk about this a little bit more on Friday's show, but I thought this was interesting. I don't like the way it was presented. And I think, in general, I think these are kind of blown out of proportion a little bit.

[00:11:07] My oldest, Sierra, she went to Trader Joe's. She lives in Tucson. She went to Trader Joe's. And somebody handed her a pamphlet that was like, hey, sell your Tesla, and these are the reasons why you might want to sell it. And I think that's fine. But nobody was, like, shaming her. They were very nice about it. I think, actually, they left. They were in the parking lot, but they left it on her car. I don't think she actually interacted with them. But she said she didn't have a negative experience with it, is what I should say.

[00:11:38] So, yeah, I think that the whole thing is interesting. But, like I said, on Friday's show, we're going to have a little deeper conversation with that. But I thought I would just kind of use this as a primer. All right. Before we move into our EV news, I do want to remind everybody that you can support this show by going to patreon.com forward slash kilowatt or support kilowatt.com. If you go to support kilowatt.com, it isn't up there yet.

[00:12:07] But it will have different ways to support the show. And in that, we're going to have links to Supercast, Patreon, that kind of thing. At the moment, I just haven't had time to get that whole thing set up. For everybody who switched over from Acast Plus to Supercast, some of you did switch to Patreon, whichever it was. If you're continuing to support the show, which I think everybody at this point has switched over, thank you so much. I really appreciate that. It means a lot.

[00:12:36] But it's a real vote of confidence on your part because it's an inconvenience. But anyway, soon there will be a link on the website that will show you exactly how to support the show. But for now, Patreon, if you want to support us with Patreon, if you want to support through Supercast, just send me an email and I'll send you the link. Again, I'm very ill prepared. But it was all I could do to get this show together on a Wednesday when it's supposed to go out on a Tuesday. So, priorities are getting the show out.

[00:13:34] All right. So, we're going to talk about GM's efforts.

[00:13:59] So, we're going to talk about GM's efforts. We're going to talk about GM's efforts.

[00:14:14] So, we're going to talk about GM's efforts. Thank you. that it's going to be a specific model is going to be cheap. For instance, if GM puts this battery

[00:14:42] technology in the Cadillac Lyric and they save, let's say, $1,500 on every vehicle they produce, GM's not going to make the Lyric $1,500 cheaper or even $700 cheaper. They're going to continue to charge the price that people are willing to pay for that vehicle. They're going to pocket that money, that extra savings, but they're going to continue to charge what people are willing to pay.

[00:15:08] That's just kind of how it works. But what it does mean is that GM through Chevy, which would be the most likely option of this, can produce a more affordable model. So whether that's the Bolt or whether that's something completely different, like they bring back the Chevy Cruze, which is a very affordable sedan that they had, and make it an EV, they can do that and sell it for

[00:15:34] a lower price and still make money. So just because it will drop battery prices does not mean that in existing models, the price will go down. It could mean that, but I doubt it. Anyway, okay, so we got that out of the way. These batteries are also, this battery chemistry, I should say, is also better for the environment. It uses more manganese and less nickel and cobalt than traditional batteries.

[00:16:02] Manganese is like the fifth most abundant element on earth, and it's more environmentally friendly to extract from the earth. So just kind of as a point of reference here, GM says a typical high nickel battery cell is made up of roughly 85% nickel, 10% manganese, and 5% cobalt, right? And then lithium's

[00:16:27] in there, obviously. But then you have LMR batteries, which are made up of virtually no cobalt. So there is some cobalt in there, but it's very low. 35% nickel and 65% manganese. So that's great. When I say that these batteries are more energy dense, we should look at like more energy dense than

[00:16:56] what, right? So lithium iron phosphate batteries or LFP batteries, they're the more affordable battery type that goes in electric vehicles, but they're less energy dense than nickel, cobalt, manganese batteries, right? Those high nickel batteries, they cost less to produce, but they're not as energy dense. So where the lithium manganese rich batteries would fall into,

[00:17:22] it would, they would be 33% more energy dense than LFP batteries, but not as energy dense as nickel cobalt manganese batteries, for instance, or nickel manganese cobalt batteries, however it is I'm forgetting at the moment. These LMR batteries also allow the battery cell to be larger, which

[00:17:46] further reduces costs. We might see some different size cylindrical cells. Like right now we have the 4680 cells, the 2170s and the 18650s. But GM, and I don't know what Ford's going to do, but GM isn't going to use a cylindrical cell. They're going to use a prismatic cell, which is rectangular in shape. And we talked a little bit about this. When I was in March, when I was on vacation, I had a whole thing

[00:18:13] on different kind of pouch cells versus prismatic versus cylindrical cells. But the rectangular cells should, according to GM, reduce battery module components by 75% and the total battery pack components by 50%, which will make this lighter. And because we're stripping parts out, more affordable to build these battery packs. These prismatic cells also, because they're

[00:18:41] rectangle, they pack very well into the pickup truck or SUV kind of a platform. Oh, and I should say that the LMR battery, the lithium manganese rich, the rich part refers to how much manganese is in the battery. So it's not another component. It just means there's a lot of manganese in this battery.

[00:19:04] All right. GM says that these batteries are expected to be similar to high nickel cells in terms of lifespan, but come at a much lower cost. LMR batteries do have issues. And some of those issues can be, and I'm just going to list off a couple of things here. Voltage attenuation, which means it loses voltage over time. GM and LG Energy will fix this by using like proprietary

[00:19:31] proprietary methods for dopings or doping and coating the cathode. I have no idea how Ford's planning to do this, but I would imagine they're going to do something similar. Tesla has mentioned manganese rich batteries as well, and they're doing something similar. As a matter of fact, they do have a patent that has to do with how they're going to overcome this.

[00:19:55] One of the articles that I was reading linked out to a Science Direct article on LMR batteries. And I went through and I looked for some of the other issues that LMR batteries could have. And one of these issues is that the cells can release oxygen, which could structurally degrade battery components. And the way that they release oxygen, and don't ask me follow-up questions on this because I'm only

[00:20:21] saying words that I barely know at this point, is an irreversible redux process of anions. Okay, don't ask me any follow-ups on that. I will not be answering any follow-ups. Not because of any other reason other than I don't know what that means. But I do know when it's releasing oxygen, or what I have a theory on, is when it releases oxygen, it causes oxidization, which causes rust.

[00:20:49] So I'd imagine that's what is happening when this happens. And that's how it's damaging the battery components. I didn't find any data to support that. But if I had to make an educated guess, that would be it. And some of the other problems is the electrolyte will, it can decompose. And some of the ways that they're using to, or some of the ways they're fixing this,

[00:21:14] is they're creating like these surface coatings that apply like protective layers to the cathode. And that could prevent the oxygen release and also prevents manganese dissolution, which also enhances, well, in part by preventing this or limiting it, it will also enhance structural stability.

[00:21:38] I mentioned doping, which is, you know, introducing other elements into the cathode to stabilize it, which will help reduce that voltage fade, that attenuation we talked about. Using advanced electrolytes that are more stable at higher voltages to help prevent decomposition and extend that battery life. And then manganese is a very large particle. And for a while, according to the articles I read,

[00:22:04] people have thought that these, this large particle, you would not be able to, because the particles are so large, you would not be able to create a long life battery that's very energy dense, but they're finding that they can optimize that particle design and engineer a cathode to accommodate those volume changes in the particle size, which will reduce mechanical stress and prevent cracking. Again,

[00:22:30] please do not ask me any follow-up questions. Anyway, GM is planning to start, planning on starting manufacturing these batteries in, uh, 2027. It sounds like they're going to start doing test batches or they're already doing it now, but get more serious about it in 2026. Um, but 2028 is when they're going to start doing this in earnest and Ford is looking to start in 2030 and actually put these

[00:22:58] vehicles into our batteries into vehicles. I do think this is very interesting and I certainly want these to succeed because the more or different battery chemistries that we have, the more options automakers have, and they can make things more affordable for, for us schlubs paying the bill, but also it provides options, uh, for automakers. So if they want to build like the, the top of the line car and money is no object, they can put in the expensive batteries. And, but if they want to

[00:23:27] do something midsize, but still make it a four or mid range and still make it affordable, they can use these LMR batteries. And then on the low end, they can use the LFP batteries or whatever. There's just lots of different options that they can use. Um, so I'm looking forward to seeing this make its way into production. Now, once it makes its way into production, I highly doubt that this is going to go smoothly, um, introducing, or just spinning up a new cell line. Even with the technology that we have

[00:23:56] now, we're seeing companies have lots of problems in the early stages of building these battery cells. And they've been doing this for a while now. So you think some of this would be worked out, but no, every, well, not every, a lot of the batteries, uh, cell production plants that are spun up, it seems like they go through a little bit of growing pains. And then once they reach scale, then everything's good. This is a new battery chemistry. I would imagine that this is going to take some time for them to

[00:24:23] work these problems out. So I would not expect, even though, uh, GM says start, you'll start seeing these batteries in 2028. I would not expect to see them in very many vehicles until probably closer to 2030, even if they make it into the battery, the vehicles at all. All right, that is it for me today. If you want to email me, it's Bodie, B-O-D-I-E at 918digital.com. You can find me on

[00:24:49] X at 918digital. You can go to our website, uh, which is 918digital.com. And at the moment, you know, things are slowing down for me, which I love. Uh, I'm very happy about that, but I spent the last three months working on different projects and ignoring a lot of things that needed to get done. So now I'm, things are slowing down in, in, uh, in terms of work and, and other things that I've

[00:25:17] got going on in my life, but I still need to get all these other things that I've been neglecting done, but I am making positive steps on getting the show back on track and released on a normal schedule. I will be a hundred percent honest with you. When I look at my ad revenue for, um, April, because the schedule was all over the place and we missed the show, it is, uh, significantly lower

[00:25:40] than it was in March and probably will be in, um, May. I mean, uh, significant lower, like it was, it was a surprising number lower. So yeah, the, the, the definitely keeping things released on a regular schedule makes a big difference in terms of that. But, uh, that's not why I do this show. And it's in the end, it's, it's the money's nice, but it's also again, not why I do the show. So

[00:26:09] anyway, send me an email. If you were interested, if, if I owe you an email, I'll, I'll get you today or tomorrow. I want to thank everybody for sticking with us. Uh, again, you're all awesome for, for continuing to listen to the show. I really appreciate it. And, uh, yeah, I have a special show for you on Friday to very cool guests that I am excited. I'm not ready to announce it yet, just in case something happens and we, and we have to push off recording the episode, but yeah,

[00:26:39] if everything goes right, I'm an amazing show for you on Friday and I'm looking forward to sharing it with you. All right, everybody. Thanks so much for listening. And I will talk to you on Friday.