G. David Felt

The battery race has never slowed down, but the announcement of new battery designs going into production seems to be heating up. The race to remove the need for rare earth elements is heating up and results are bigger better battery cells that can recharge fast, faster power delivery, longer cycle life and safer. Sion Power has announced their 17 Ah Lithium-metal rechargeable pouch cell. These new lithium-metal pouch cells contain twice the energy in the same size and weight batteries that competitors are building in traditional lithium-ion battery packs. Sion Power has multiple third-party validation tests on going with auto and commercial vehicle OEMs. With production ramping up in Tucson Arisona home and headquarters for Sion Power, consumers both private and business will start to see new EV options using Sion Power battery packs soon. Targeting Electric Vehicles with a Large Format 17 Ah, 400 Wh/kg Cell (sionpower.com)

2022 Bolt EUV is a Winner based on auto journalist reviews. Seems the Bolt EUV is the pick by auto journalist if you want a spirited ride with room for passengers and cargo in a sub-compact size. The Bolt EUV is only 2.9 inches longer between the wheels and 6.3 inches longer over all compared to the standard Bolt. Yet this gets you 3.1 inches of additional leg room in the back seat from 36 inches to 39.1 inches giving the Bolt EUV class leading interior room for the sub-compact class and challenging many compacts as well for rear seat room. While some journalist nitpick over thigh support, additional air vents, etc. over all everyone seems to be in agreement that the backseat is the rare seat of comfort for full size adults on long road trips. The Bolt and Bolt EUV use the existing power train which has 200 HP and 266 lb-ft of Torque from a 65 kWh Lithium-ion battery pack of 288 cells in a FWD configuration. Yes almost every one of these reviews wishes that an AWD option was available and some even wonder if it might not come due to the amount of space available between the rear wheels. Bolt EV gets 259 miles of range, Bolt EUV EV gets 250 miles of range. Best thing is for the 9 miles of less range, the interior comfort of the Bolt EUV is well liked by all. 2022 Chevrolet Bolt EUV Review (jdpower.com) 2022 Chevrolet Bolt EUV First Drive Review: Larger, Better, Faster, Stronger | News | Cars.com 2022 Chevrolet Bolt EUV Test Drive And Review: Newer, Bigger, Better? (forbes.com) 2022 Chevrolet Bolt EUV Review - Autotrader 2022 Chevrolet Bolt EUV Is a Better Bolt: Review (roadandtrack.com) 2022 Chevrolet Bolt EUV Review, Pricing, and Specs (caranddriver.com) 2022 Chevy Bolt EUV first drive review: Bigger, smarter and more affordable, too - Roadshow (cnet.com) First drive review: 2022 Chevrolet Bolt EUV is a better Bolt (greencarreports.com)

New Flyer public electrical buses have logged over 4.5 million miles to date on Generation 1 and 2 buses. New Flyer announced Generation 3 that are lighter, more efficient and longer range electric buses over previous generations. The key updates are as follows: New Generation battery packs extend range 13% Electric drive system is capable of 90% energy recovery New 90% fewer parts compared to previous generation on battery packaging Generation 3 powertrain is 69% less weight than previous gen 1 & 2 Charged EVs | New Flyer unveils lighter, more efficient, longer-range electric bus - Charged EVs

Jeep has announced that this spring they will start a build out of Jeep charging stations at or near off road trail heads for free use by Jeep owners of their plug-in Hybrids and EV wranglers, Gladiators, and future product. While the charging stations will be connected to the electrical grid, they will also have solar roofs to help be as green as possible. The first two places that are already identified and to quote the article: Moab (UT), the Rubicon Trail in Pollock Pines (CA), and Big Bear (CA) will be the first off-road sites to get the charging stations this Spring. More locations are planned to be operational by the end of the year, Jeep will announce those locations at a later date. Jeep Is Building A Charging Network For The Wrangler 4xe At Off-Road Trails (optional title) (insideevs.com) EV Lifestyle is the future.

Last week the UK changed their government incentive to buy EV's from allowing any EV to qualify to any EV priced at £35,000 and below. Tesla imediatly saw the loss of what was a £3,000 incentive which is now £2,500 incentive with the new lower auto price. Government scraps Plug-In Car Grant for EVs costing more than £35k (motor1.com) As such while Tesla has refused to change pricing, seems Vauxhall and Citroen have decided selling more EVs is more important than a higher price and cut prices so that their product line of EVs now is eligible for the incentives. Mokka-e line of EVs. Vivaro-e line of EV vans. To quote Vaushall Director of sales Paul Wilcox : “At Vauxhall, we believe in making sure our vehicles are as accessible as possible to the greatest number of people, and especially so when it comes to zero emissions-in-use motoring,” said Vauxhall’s managing director, Paul Wilcox. “So I am pleased to confirm that all Corsa-e, all Mokka-e and the new Vivaro-e Life Combi are eligible for the government Plug-In Car Grant.” Vauxhall Tweaks Pricing To Remain Eligible For UK's Plug In Car Grant (insideevs.com) Is it me, ? Or does the Mokka-e look like an AMC Eagle? I guess you can say that BMW has also copied what AMC Eagle did.

This does reinforce that electrification will happen and faster than many realize. As such, imagine the market share Honda/Kawasaki/Suzuki/Yamaha will take with a battery swap program in the US. Buy the bike you like and know that you can stop at any of these dealers for a battery swap or any other batter swap location as your making your Bike road trip. Such a nice concept, be interesting to see how they actually implement it.

Some very cool 1968 sketches on the GM instagram thread today. https://www.instagram.com/p/CM2xA1YJGZt/ Hungarian-American designer Geza Loczi created these beautifully expressive sketches in 1968. Mr. Loczi worked at GM, VW and is currently a Design director at Volvo. A graduate of ArtCenter College, he taught Transportation Design from 1986-1996. From the GM Design Archive & Special Collections.⁠⠀ The very first sketch is right up @balthazar alley! Course being that the sketches are all Olds auto's very much right up @oldshurst442 Alley for sure!

Lovely!

Flower Power

Smart Chicks

Hi Balthazar, I will look and see if I can find any direct comparisons. The closest and why I think this way is companies that have been covered in the news and are at the build up stage to go mass production such as the following story: QuantumScape's New Solid-State Battery Is Twice as Energy-Dense as Lithium-Ion (singularityhub.com) Quote: Today’s lithium-ion batteries rely on a liquid electrolyte to ferry lithium ions between an anode (the negative electrode) made of graphite and a cathode (the positive electrode), which can be made from a variety of materials. The promise of a solid-state lithium metal battery is that you can swap out that graphite anode for one made of pure lithium and do away with the liquid electrolyte in favor of a solid one. This would obviously dramatically increase the energy density of the battery and is the reason scientists and engineers have been striving after the idea for decades. As we move away from early rare earth elements, we move towards solutions that use Silicon and Graphene over graphite. These materials are in abundance and cheap which is what will help to reduce battery cost and eventually stop the use of child labor in Africa for Colbalt as we stop using it. UPDATE on Quantum as they go into Pilot Production of less expensive solid state batteries not using rare earth elements such as Cobalt, Nickle and Magnesium. QuantumScape’s Next Step: Multilayer Solid-State Battery Cell Volume Production, CEO Says (forbes.com) Excellent info for those wanting to understand the changes coming from todays batteries built with rare earth elements to solid state batteries. EV Battery: What Materials are Behind It? (Anode and Cathode) (matmatch.com) Additional good high level info on battery and the changes coming. How solid-state batteries can transform electric cars - Roadshow (cnet.com) This I feel is a really good take on Solid State batteries and what we gain going from traditional Lithium-ion to solid state. The State of Solid-State Lithium Batteries (batterytechonline.com) Many sites have the same news today, but this one seemed to be the most complete on Solid State Batteries race: FutureBridge Predicts Solid-State Battery Cost Will Match Lithium-Ion By 2025 (insideevs.com) Pretty much the goal of auto companies and Toyota, Panasonic and the whole Japanese consortium that is planning to move into pilot production this year with auto use of solid state batteries by 2025 believe they can have solid stated batteries or SSB being equal in price with higher density to Lithium-Ion by 2025 with these Solid State Batteries to be good for 30 years retaining 90% of their charge holding power after 3 decades. Quote: Toyota says it is aiming for its SSBs to have a lifespan of 30 years - by that it means they should still retain 90 percent of their original capacity after three decades of normal use. Quote: analysis of the 2020 patent landscape in SSBs identified 426 published patent filings. China and US witnessed the highest patenting activity with 21% of the total filings each, followed by Japan with 18% filings. Toyota, Panasonic, Nippon, Hyundai, Murata Manufacturing, and LG Chem were among the leaders. Carmakers accounted for 28% of the SSB patent filings, led by Toyota and followed by Hyundai and Honda. The remaining 72% of filings came from diverse players like battery manufacturers, automotive suppliers, chemical companies, and academia. Quote: Back in 2010, the cost per 1 kWh in lithium-ion batteries was over $1,000 and in the space of a decade, it has gone down nearly tenfold. It is predicted that the cost of lithium-ion batteries will keep going down and that by 2030, the average price per 1 kWh will dip below $60. It currently seems implausible that SSBs would drop so much in cost by then, but with the sheer number of companies actively working on this, a breakthrough that could allow it is not out of the question.

Interesting history

Imperial Butter

Too funny that you say politician as I am anything but, yet I do look forward to what the future will bring.

Awesome, I would love to be in a custom ranch style rambler. Sadly, that would require me moving to an area that has slow internet speed which I need for work and the wife not being near our kids and the suburban area. So I am planning to remodel and add onto my house with a mother-inlaw apartment which I can rent out till my old age makes having a single level living space a must, then the daughter will move back home into the rest of the house is the plan. We will expand the regular house to have a more professional kitchen since the wife and I love to cook and remodel the rest of the house with an updated master bedroom. Love to see pictures of your house some time.

Valid points, but I still believe that science will find a way to increase density while reducing cost and moving to more natural, plentiful material in a solid state battery.

Yes, I say living in the past not last century people. There are those here that look at life of ICE as a point in time and are not believing that it will change, living in the past. I also pointed out how everything has continued to change and I also have posted that I accept that some want to live in the past with old tech. We each have our choice, but technology and change of auto's is the reality and it is happening and will happen and ICE will go away. So you have a choice of living in the past or moving forward with the bulk of humanity into the future. Simple. Yes and they also ignored that the race is on to due away with Cobalt and Nickle. The core still needing Lithium which Canada does mine as well as Chile. Lucky that China has not secured the bulk of the worlds lithium supplies in Chile while they have in Africa. Tesla, GM, VW and Diamler have all stated they have working prototypes of batteries that have higher energy storage using alternative solid state substrate materials and have these updated batteries in testing as they build production sites. Competition will force to keep prices in check. I do not agree with Goldman Sachs report.

Very nice house Robert. Here they call them a tri-level house as it looks like the right side is at a different level then the bedrooms over the garage area which are different than the right living space area. Love these homes and the brick work.

Sighhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh Where does one begin when one has (ASSUMPTION) not ever been to India. I work with plenty of Indian Engineers who will back me up on this having grown up in India. First off the lite population areas are pretty much farming areas and for a population of 1.3 Billion the cities are packed, traffic is packed all the time. Lets also go with a modern map not one from 2001. Plus some web sites so you can check the facts yourselve. India Population 1950-2021 | MacroTrends Here is just the population change from 2000 to 2020, They had 1,056,575,549 people and in 2020 they had 1,380,004,385 people for a gain of 323,428,836 more people. If your up to it, you can review the actual India census info. They last did it in 2011, 2021 is the year for updating detailed census data. Census of India Website : Office of the Registrar General & Census Commissioner, India (censusindia.gov.in) Here is the statistical data for the country showing just how populated the country of India is at almost 1.4 Billion people with a land mass of 3,287,263 sq km compared to the US at 9,833,517 sq km or 3 times bigger and yet we only have about 400 million people. So yes the place is very crowded. India population 2020 - StatisticsTimes.com India is a cast system country that has been working very hard to build a middle income class. Usually families will pool together money to send one child to college to get into tech and then expect him to help out the rest of the family to get more members to college. Bikes are common to India, auto's are for the rich. Fact in comparison to the US which is the opposite. Current map from the sites listed of current population by region.

Common sense not so common me think!

Thank you, Yes I live in a basic Split level House built in 1952, total of 1600 sq ft. 4 bedroom 1 3/4 bath on a 1/4 acre pie shape lot in a Cul-D-Sac. Here is from the latest snow storm here this year. Poor SS got caught out in the Snow. ?

So true, I see the NY airport is now looking to confiscate the plane due to the storage cost, repairs needed and Trump ignoring the airport billing. So funny that the so called Billionaire is unable to pay his bills. Seems he is now traveling in a much less luxury style. Photos Reveal Trump's Broken and Grounded Private Plane (businessinsider.com) OUCH, that Rolls Royce engine is not cheap to fix, but for him it should be pocket change. Cheap or broke, interesting and funny. Joke of the day for this:

Actually as a person that has been in India many times, even among the wealthier families, bikes are preferred due to the terrible road system and lack of signals such that riding a bike is easier to get around than in an auto. This is pretty much average traffic making a bike to get around a superior way to travel.

Putting this in numbers in a market that Bikes is the primary form of transportation and they sold 17,420,000 bikes in India with 1,520,000 sold were EV form, that is 8.7256% of sales were EV and they are averaging 20.9% sales gain of EV bikes over ICE. At this rate, yes by 2030 they can replace ICE bikes with EV bikes for sure. Electric Scooter & Bike Sales In India For FY 2020: Registers A 20.6% Growth With Low-Speed Scooters Accounting For 90% Of The Total Sales - DriveSpark News Auto's will be a bigger challenge as I posted above 156,000 EV auto's were sold in 2020 on sales of 2,770,000 auto sales or 5.631% of sales in 2020. If this stayed the same at 5% a year, yes over the next 9 years that would only be a 45% replacement and so a challenge, but I as the industry also expects as more auto EV options come on the market will see a bigger change over.

This is also a country where Bikes (mopeds to motorcycles) outsell auto's by millions. They are selling over a million EV Bikes a year as I posted earlier. The middle income class and up are buying auto's but the size of the country does not favor auto's over bikes in all forms. Having visited India plenty of times with a Team in Bangalore and Pune, I see bikes everywhere compared to auto's.