Weekly-ish News - Episode 42 (March 20, 2022)

What's the Alternative?

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Vehicles:

The Southern Alliance for Clean Energy has a year-end report for 2021 about the EV industry in the Southeast U.S. and it has some pretty interesting stuff in it.

• The link above is for a 2-page infographic with some cool stats.
• EV sales more than doubled from 2020 to 2021 in the Southeast.
• 43% of the U.S.'s total announced investment in EV manufacturing and jobs were in the Southeast in 2021.

Tesla has once again increased prices.

Rivian increased the price of their vehicles by a lot, and kinda goofed in the process.

• They increased the price of their R1T truck by up to $12k in some cases, including increasing the price for existing reservation-holders.

We have a first drive review of the Subaru Solterra electric vehicle by Green Car Reports, but no release date apart from "in 2022" so far.

Porsche has announced plans to build a charging network beginning in 2023, but details are currently scant.

• They also upped their EV sales goals to 50% battery-electric by 2025 and 80% battery-electric by 2030.

Ford officially has pricing available for their bi-directional home chargers at $1,310.

• These chargers will be necessary for vehicle-to-grid functionality for the F-150 Lightning (unless some 3rd party chargers come along to offer that function).
• They are 80A chargers, so they can offer nearly 19.2kW of charging, which is super high.
• This price is high, but it's not exactly unreasonable, really. A ChargePoint home charger may cost around $600 on its own.
• These chargers will be built by Siemens.

GM's Cadillac Lyriq EV will begin production on March 21, 2022, with preorders reopening in the coming months.

GM and the utility Pacific Gas and Electric (PG&E) are partnering on a pilot project looking at bidirectional charging and the grid.

GM has sold its stake of $75m (less than 5%) in Lordstown Motors.

Jaguar is using old I-Pace batteries to support operations for its Formula E program.

• These batteries power auxiliary and such where grid access is limited during Formula E testing.
• The batteries are charged by solar panels on-site.
• It's not a huge thing, but it's pretty cool.

Ascend Elements (discussed briefly in Ep. 40) has been selected by SK Battery America to recycle their battery manufacturing scrap.

• “People often think lithium-ion battery recycling is just for end-of-life batteries, but waste from the battery cell manufacturing process is the biggest segment of the battery recycling market right now,” said Michael O’Kronley, CEO of Ascend Elements.

Mercedes-Benz is going to get into the battery recycling game, planning to open a pilot plant in 2023 at a site in Kuppenheim, Germany.

• This pilot plant will be able to process 2,500 tons of batteries per year.
• They have a goal of recycling over 96% of a battery.

A battery manufacturer startup, SPARKZ, is planning on building a battery factory in West Virginia in 2022 that will employ displaced coal miners.

• They are partnering with the United Mine Workers of America to recruit and train those displaced miners.
• The facility will employ around 350 workers.

Deployment:

Volvo and Momentum Dynamics are partnering to pilot wirelessly charging taxi vehicles in Gothenburg, Sweden.

• These wireless chargers will charge at 40kW.
• They will be used on a "small fleet" of XC40 Recharge EVs operated by Cabonline.

Volvo and Starbucks are teaming up to install DC Fast Chargers at Starbucks locations, initially on a route between Seattle, Washington and Denver, Colorado.

• This initial charging network will have up to 60 chargers along the 1,350mi route between those cities, with up to 15 locations selected around 100mi (160km) apart.
• These will be ChargePoint chargers.
• Drivers of Volvo vehicles will get either free or discounted charging at these locations.
• The installations are slated to be completed by the end of 2022.
• This may be a wider network in the future.

The companies Tritium and Wise EV are partnering to develop a national charging network in the U.S., starting with 25 locations in Florida.

• The press release doesn't say when the chargers will be built by.
• The release also mentions the Infrastructure Bill funding at length and it's not clear if they will build the network primarily through Infrastructure Bill funds or if they will foot the bill if they don't win funding.

IndianOil, a huge oil producer in India, has installed over 1,000 charging stations across India.

Florida's Pinellas Suncoast Transit Authority has received $18.4m of federal funding to deploy 12 electric buses, 12 depot chargers, and 2 inductive wireless chargers.

Denver's transit agency has ordered 17 electric transit buses from New Flyer.

Energy:

Burlington, Vermont's electric utility is offering an incentive for multi-unit dwellings to install EV chargers.

• There is extra funding for sites that benefit lower-income communities.
• The funding can cover over 50% of the total cost of installation.

Early County, Georgia will get 70MW of new solar by the end of 2022, built by Infrastructure and Energy Alternatives.

Dominion Energy has received regulatory approval in Virginia to move forward with around 1GW of solar projects.

Duke and Dominion Energy will begin factoring in Scope 3 (supply chain and customer) emissions into their net zero goals.

• We will learn more about what actions they will take on this front in October.

Oak Ridge National Labs and the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) will partner to explore different decarbonization technologies and strategies.

• They will explore:

Chevron has acquired Renewable Energy Group for $3.15b.

• Renewable Energy Group (REG) produces renewable and bio diesel.
• We should have more info about what this means for the future of the companies in the coming months.

A new report finds that coal mining releases more methane than venting and flaring from oil and gas wells.

• The report is by the Global Energy Monitor.
• This is pretty huge, considering how major methane emissions from oil and gas is.
• According to this report, each industries methane emissions are:
• The report says that these emissions are equal to the total greenhouse gas emissions from 1,100 coal-fired power plants in China.
• These numbers come from directly measuring methane emissions from around 2,300 coal mines globally.
• Full report.

Miscellaneous:

Big Storm Brewing Company in Florida captures CO2 from the brewing process and uses it to carbonate their own beer, and apparently saves money in the process.

• This is a cool story and it's super surprising that it's apparently profitable for them.