🌎 EV Industry²: Tesla Impact Report – 🔋 CATL raises $9B – Ferrari welcomes the 🔌

You're here to know exactly what's going on around the EV industry globally.

Take a deep breath.

And let's get into it.

- Jaan

Tesla Impact Report of 2020

Dig deeper into this 94-page report here: (pdf).

I'll try and give you some highlights:

Tesla avoided 5M metric tons of CO2 emissions in 2020.

The company is aiming towards complete and vertically integrated energy and transportation ecosystem:

Here's Tesla's comparison on the average lifecycle emissions in the US, comparing Model 3 with an average mid-size premium fossil car:

If you want to dig deeper on how to bust the myth of "EVs are really dirtier than fossil-fueled cars", then head to page 11 of the report, you'll love the outline. This is how Tesla sees their recycling loop ensuring 100% recycling and up to 92% of raw metals being reused:

Rather than this holistic view above that I added just because I wanted to make a cool GID, here's a little more detail:

This is something directly for the eyes of media with their overreporting of Tesla fires:

Fire Incidents are ~11x Lower for Tesla VehiclesFrom 2012 to 2020, there has been approximately one Tesla vehicle fire for every 205 million miles traveled. By comparison, data show that in the U.S. there is one ICE vehicle fire for every 19 million miles traveled.

So after you're through with the newsletter, go ahead and read the rest of the report (here).

🌎 Companies & Global

• Owners of Tesla Model 3 sedans with salvaged titles are reporting that they have regained access to the Supercharger network, after the ban last year claiming the cars might be "unsafe" (link).
• Ferrari CEO John Elkann on the EU's proposal to ban new fossil car sales from 2035 (link):

"We see the regulation as welcome. The opportunity set by electrification, electronics and other technologies that are coming available will allow us to make even more distinct and unique products"

(Ferrari's first all-electric car will be here in 2025).

• BMW Group grew its first half of 2021 battery-electric vehicle sales by 183.9% to 36,087 units. "We are making the right decisions at the right time: the decisions that will keep our company profitable and successful for a long time to come," said Oliver Zipse, Chairman of the Board of Management. (link)
  
  Agree to disagree, Oliver. You are making the right decisions but about 5-10 years too late.
• A good comparison to above, NIO has sold 41,956 EVs in China in the same timeframe, up 116.1% y-o-y in June. (link) XPeng delivered 30,738 in the first part of the year, growing a whopping 459% Y-o-Y. (link).
  
  The difference is that for NIO and XPeng it is near record production numbers of 7-8k cars/month, while EVs are just a small percentage of overall production. The positions of the companies are similar... yet different.
• Palantir Technologies ($PLTR) will invest in the PIPE (private investment in public equity) of Tritium's SPAC merger with $DCRN. Tritium will also get access to the Palantir Foundry platform. (link)

🚗 Models

• Chevrolet Silverado electric pickup truck will drive circles around the competition, GM claims. Here's a teaser of the Four-Wheel Steer:

• The fastest-selling used cars in the US were Tesla M3, Chevy Bolt, and Tesla Model S (link)
• GM announced is adding two new zero-emissions vehicles to its commercial portfolio, a Chevy similar to Chevy Express and a medium-duty truck running on Ultium tech (and hydrogen fuel cell) (link).
• Solectrac, a subsidiary of Ideanomics, launched the new e70N electric tractor with a focus on handling for vineyards and farm operations (link):

• Here's the new fully-electric BMW i4 M50 Safety Car for the FIM Enel MotoE World Cup:

🔋 Battery, Mining and ♻ Recycling

We've got more than usual happening in this sector this week. And I don't see this stopping for... like a decade.

• Just announced: CATL is raising $9B to accelerate production, through private investments. The battery maker plans to reach a global production capacity of 230 GWh by the end of the year, which would supply roughly 4.6M electric cars with 50 kWh batteries. (link)
• Samsung SDI considers building a battery factory near Rivian in Normal, IL (link).
• Bosch aims to sell $250M/year worth of battery production equipment by 2025 (link).
• Finnish Minerals Group signed MoU with FREYR Battery to establish battery cell production in Finland (link).
• Romeo Power enters a long-term supply agreement with LG Energy Solution for 8GWh of Li-ion cells through 2028 (link).
• Renault Group secures a 5-year lithium deal from Vulcan Energy, resulting in 6 to 17k tons of lithium annually from 2026 (link).
• Rio Tinto will mine up to 58,000 tonnes of battery-grade lithium carbonate in the Jadar project in Serbia from 2026 (link).
• Piedmont Lithium, the one Tesla signed an agreement to get 160,000 tonnes annual spodumene lithium for 5 years from, confirmed that it still hasn’t submitted its mining permit application, delaying initial deliveries (link). Luckily it's a rather small scale considering Tesla's operations, it might affect the 2022-2023 supply a bit.
• Battery startup Magnis Energy Technologies (ASX: $MNS) raised ~$14.75M in funding from SBC Global Investment and Lind Partners, a total of $60M to date (link).
• Komatsu announced an Alliance to advance zero-emission mining solutions. The founding members of the alliance are Rio Tinto, BHP, Codelco, and Boliden (link).
• Meritor announced an equity investment in SEA Electric, the electric commercial vehicle maker (link).
• SK Innovation will spin off its battery production under SK Battery Co and its exploration & production business as SK E&P, to secure competitiveness in the battery business. Names not final. (link)
• RUMOR: Samsung SDI might produce the Unified Prismatic Cell for Volkswagen Group (link)

🔋 Manufacturing

Elon's recommendation to Rivian about building the second plant:

Graph: To the media reporting that Tesla China demand was plummeting in July. The reason is that Tesla makes cars for export in the first half of the quarter & for the local market in the second half:

Musk also called out Renesas & Bosch as those problematic in the supply chain. (link)

⚡ Charging

ChargePoint is on a shopping spree after going public in March - now acquires ViriCiti, an e-Bus and commercial vehicle management provider, for $88M in cash (link). Among other benefits, this acquisition adds another 2,500 networked ports and 3,500 connected vehicles to its growing portfolio. The previous acquisition was of has·to·be that we covered (here).

• Iberdrola plans to develop the first Mediterranean Corridor for 100% electric transport with heavy-duty EVs. The logistic firm Disfrimur is collaborating and the first locations will be on its bases. Ingeteam will provide the charging equipment, delivering up to 1 MW. (link) Iberdrola isn't fooling around and is moving fast on its €150M charging investment plan over the next five years. We'll be hearing more from 'em.
• Jolt, the free charging network that pays for itself by advertising (see pic), launched its latest free fast-charging site in Adelaide and is preparing to launch in Sydney thanks to a partnership with Ausgrid (link).

• With the $7.5B charging infrastructure bill confirmed, we can now guess why Tesla announced opening its network (here's our article on it) this year. These two requirements to get access to the funding might tickle your interest. You can find these on the bill (link) on pages 401-405:
  
  “to serve vehicles produced by more than one vehicle manufacturer” and
  
  providing "a charging connector type or means to transmit electricity to vehicles that meet applicable industry-accepted practices and safety standards”. Well, that's two for two.
• Revel selected software vendor Ampcontrol and network infrastructure provider EvGateway to supply a software solution to optimize charging at its fast charging Superhubs (link).

⚡ Fleets

• Canada’s Prince Edward Island buys 35 more Lion Electric school buses, reaching 47 total. (link)

• DPD goes all-electric with its 40 vehicle fleet in Oxford, UK, with plans to add 9 more cities this year (link).

• FedEx Ground operators (ISPs) ordered 120 electric trucks from Xos in the US (link).

Meme time

You can ☕ buy me a coffee to add zap to my writing to keep me going. ⚡