Battery Electric Vehicle News / Enjoying the Transportation Revolution

JKenH

Interesting analysis of the Tesla battery day presentation

https://seekingalpha.com/article/4376046-tesla-musk-opens-up-challenges-ahead

DiggerUK

Electric Car Fraud Allegation Rocks Green Lobby & Investors 22/09/20 The Daily Telegraph

"It was the kind of truck the Terminator might drive – at least when he needed extra cash. Sleek, silent and faintly sinister, the Skynet-esque lorry, filmed speeding through an American desert in 2018, seemed proof of its maker’s technological prowess. 

“Behold,” boasted the electric vehicle (EV) company Nikola. “The 1,000 HP, zero-emission Nikola One semi-truck in motion.”

The claim was technically true. The lorry was indeed moving. But as the Arizona-based start-up admitted last week, it was moving because "it had been towed up a hill and then left to roll"

“Nikola never stated its truck was driving under its own propulsion in the video,” a spokesman defiantly declared. “As Nikola pivoted to the next generation of trucks, it ultimately decided not to invest additional resources into completing the process to make the Nikola One drive on its own propulsion.”

After the admission forced Nikola’s chairman and founder Trevor Milton to resign, shares in the company plunged on Monday. 

But the implications were much bigger than just one firm. The news – part of a bombshell report by the short-selling investment firm Hindenburg Research, whose conclusions Nikola dismissed as “false and misleading”  – came just days after General Motors agreed to invest $2bn (£1.53bn) into Nikola.

Throw a briefcase full of cash in Silicon Valley today and you will hit an EV company, many racing towards an early public float. There is Rivian, Nio, Fisher, Workhorse, Lordstown Motors, XPeng and of course Tesla, whose breathtaking stock rally this year has dragged many imitators behind it. 

But as the original EV pioneer prepares for its latest “battery day” on Tuesday, when it will hold its annual meeting and show off new ideas, whispers of a bubble are only growing. Tesla’s own history of failed predictions hardly helps matters.

“It looks awful,” says Reilly Brennan of the San Francisco venture capitalist firm Trucks VC, referring to Nikola’s ordeal. “This is the warning shot of how eventually things are going to roll out over the coming decades. And it could very well be that some of these companies are overvalued"

Putting the viability, affordability and feasibility arguments of electric assisted vehicles to one side; it still appears  that the Del Boys cant keep away from a good thing when they see it.

As this is a money saving site, Rogue Traders need to be cautioned against and warned about, so as to prevent the over enthusiastic EVangelicals getting fleeced..._

JKenH

Tesla CEO Elon Musk On Breakthrough Battery - "Please Send Us A Sample Cell"

If you follow the electric vehicle battery market, then you're well aware of all the "breakthrough" battery technology out there; heck we have a whole category devoted to it to for one to peruse ("battery tech") if you have a couple days to kill.

Truth is, most of these breakthroughs exist only on paper, to which Tesla CEO Elon Musk proclaimed during the Q3 conference call:

"My top advice really for anyone who says they've got some breakthrough battery technology is please send us a sample cell, okay.  Don't send us PowerPoint, okay, just send us one cell that works with all appropriate caveats, that would be great. That sorts out the nonsense and the claims that aren't actually true."

That basically sums up our thoughts on battery "breakthroughs" too.  Until it's a working cell, it simply doesn't exist.

https://insideevs.com/news/323786/tesla-ceo-elon-musk-on-breakthrough-battery-please-send-us-a-sample-cell/

JKenH

Where Was the Battery at Tesla’s Battery Day?

Elon Musk made big promises at Tesla’s highly anticipated event. But a prototype never appeared, and it was unclear what the company had actually achieved.

https://www.wired.com/story/where-was-the-battery-at-teslas-battery-day/

joefizz

JKenH said:

That basically sums up our thoughts on battery "breakthroughs" too.  Until it's a working cell, it simply doesn't exist.

Yep. That pretty much sums it up. Working cell now means included in production in at least 2-5 years timeframe.
Everything else is vapourware.

Martyn1981

Sorry, another Tesla Battery Day post, but this time with thoughts from Sandy Munro who has been incredible reporting on the stripdowns they have done on Tesla's and the comparative tech that Tesla has v's the competition.

The whole video is worth watching, but I tend to find reaction videos from Steven at Solving the Money Problem, are far more insightful than I am, picking up on a lot of issues that I fail to spot just listening as a punter.

These vids may be of interest to anyone, but really for those who have invested in Tesla, as Sandy pretty much explains how the other companies should now be seriously worried. Annoyingly, I'd planned to buy into the dip yesterday, but forgot and when I rushed to buy 40 mins after opening the shares had already bounced ..... drats!!!

All of Sandy's bits (37mins)

Tesla Battery Day with Sandy Munro (and only Sandy Munro) - Autoline Exclusives edit

Steven's short(er) reaction video (15mins)

Tesla Battery Day: Genius Engineering (w/Sandy Munro)

Really exciting stuff, and lastly an article on the incredible scale of the battery ramp up that Tesla is planning:

Tesla “Pilot” Battery Factory = 13th Largest Battery Factory in World

Tesla’s colossal battery production plans
Tesla revealed at its Battery Day this week that it intends to produce 3 terawatt-hours (TWh) of batteries a year by 2030. That’s more than Benchmark Mineral Intelligence (aka Benchmark Minerals) was forecasting for all lithium-ion battery production combined before Battery Day.

Martyn1981

DiggerUK said:

As this is a money saving site, Rogue Traders need to be cautioned against and warned about, so as to prevent the over enthusiastic EVangelicals getting fleeced..._

Yes. Nikola is a company I tried to avoid mentioning as I've had enormous concerns about them for years, but after a few articles were posted on this thread mentioning their share price rise, I then started to air my personal concerns to avoid anyone being sucked in. I'm glad that the mainstream media is now talking about this too, and the truth / full picture is slowly being unveiled.

NigeWick

Martyn1981 said: The analysts are a bit negative, 

Fortunately. The share price dropped a bit so I was able to buy a few.

buglawton

Martyn1981 said:

Amazon Orders 1,800 Mercedes Electric Delivery Vans For EU And UK

On August 28, Amazon announced it has ordered 1,800 battery electric delivery vans from Mercedes Benz. According to a report by Yahoo! News, Jeff Bezos, CEO of Amazon, said the order was part of his company’s “journey to build the most sustainable transportation fleet in the world.” The order is for 1,200 of the large Mercedes e-Sprinter and 600 of the smaller e-Vito vans, with the majority being used to deliver packages in Europe and the rest assigned to delivery chores in the UK.

The corporate goal is for the entire Amazon delivery fleet consisting of hundreds of thousands of vehicles from bicycles to tractor trailers to be carbon neutral by 2040. Mercedes on Friday signed Amazon’s Climate Pledge, which calls on the companies it does business with to commit to being carbon neutral by 2040.

The order for Europe and the UK is just a small part of Amazon’s delivery fleet in those countries, where Germany alone is the company’s second largest market, trailing only the United States. Amazon has placed a far larger order for 100,000 electric delivery vans with Rivian, a company it has made a major investment in. Is it possible that some of those Rivian vans could wind up in countries other than the US?

I've never seen an Amazon liveried van. The ones that deliver around here are often battered old ones belonging to independent zero-hours delivery drivers.

Martyn1981

Ohhhhh it's getting exciting, here comes the disruption, gonna be an incredible decade.

Electric Vehicles Have Arrived Much Faster Than Anticipated

Bill Gates said, “Innovation is moving at a scarily fast pace.” Nowhere is that more true than in the world of electric vehicles. Did you watch the US football games to start the new 2020 season? It seemed as if every automotive manufacturer featured at least one electric vehicle in its commercials. Electric vehicles have arrived much faster than many insiders anticipated as little as 5 or 10 years ago.

Automakers are waking up. And they’re not alone. Technological progress in the electrification of cars, bikes, scooters, buses, and trucks has advanced and the market for them is growing at an exponential rate.