+++ BMW has confirmed that the raft of Neue Klasse EVs coming in the next few years will all share the new-generation design language seen on the Vision Neue Klasse concept, and not just the also-new electric platform it rides on. But that doesn’t mean they will be the same around the world. While Europe, Asia, America and Australia will all pick and choose from the same selection of models, BMW already has teams engaged in creating Neue Klasse (NK) vehicles that will be exclusive to the Chinese market, Oliver Zipse, who is CEO, has confirmed. “I cannot reveal too much today, but BMW Design Shanghai is already working on special designs and functions for China-specific models of the New Class”, Zipse told attendees at the World New Energy Vehicle Congress. Production of NK cars is slated to begin in Debrecen, Hungary, in 2025, followed by Munich, Germany, and Shenyang, China, in 2026. Completing the set is BMW’s San Luis Potisi plant in Mexico, which gets its shot at building NK vehicles in 2027. Zipse didn’t expand on how different the China-only cars would be, but the country’s unique vehicle tastes and the sheer size of the market (over 33 percent of BMW sales happen in China) means it’s not surprising the BMW is tailoring its offerings to suit the region’s buyers. The China-only Neue Klasse vehicles certainly won’t be the first BMW’s designed for the country and not available to the rest of us. Last year, for example, BMW revealed the i3 eDrive35L, a fully electric version of the 3-Series that can’t be bought in Western BMW dealers. And this year it announced a long-wheelbase version of the new 5-Series complete with the 31-inch Theatre Screen rear infotainment package from the 7-Series. Other China-only cars offered over the years include a sedan version of Europe’s 1-Series hatch and a long-wheelbase 3-Series. +++
+++ Spurred by falling battery prices, ELECTRIC VEHICLES could hit price parity with fossil-fuel models in Europe in 2024 and the U.S. market in 2026, and account for two thirds of global car sales by 2030, according to new research. A report by the Rocky Mountain Institute (RMI) on Thursday predicts battery costs should halve this decade, from $151 per kilowatt hour (kWh) in 2022 to between $60 and $90 per kWh, making EVs “for the first time as cheap to buy as petrol cars in every market by 2030 as well as cheaper to run”. Batteries are expensive and account for around 40% of an EV’s price tag, a cost that has so far made them unaffordable for many consumers. But those prices are steadily coming down as carmakers invest in new battery chemistries, materials and software to make more efficient EVs, RMI senior principal Kingsmill Bond told. According to RMI’s analysis, the rapid growth of electric models in Europe and China “implies that EV sales will increase at least 6-fold by 2030, to enjoy a market share of 62% to 86% of sales”. EV sales in the European Union jumped almost 61% in July versus the same month in 2022, accounting for 13.6% of all car sales. The European Union aims to ban the sale of new fossil-fuel models from 2035. The United States has not yet committed to a date for ending sales of combustion engine models, but California and New York are both targeting 2035 to switch to selling only zero-emission models. “It’s not radical whatsoever to see the continued exponential growth of electric vehicles”, RMI’s Bond told. “This is what one should expect”. According to the RMI research, oil demand for cars peaked in 2019 and will fall by at least 1 million barrels per day every year after 2030. Research released concurrently from Exeter University’s Economics of Energy Innovation and System Transition (EEIST) project also predicts exponential growth in EV sales. It suggests EVs will reach a “tipping point” in price parity with fossil-fuel models as early as 2024 in Europe, 2025 in China, 2026 in the U.S. and 2027 in India “for medium-sized cars, and even sooner for smaller vehicles”. +++
+++ New investments in the United States and Europe aim to challenge China’s stranglehold on a key ingredient used in most electric vehicle batteries, GRAPHITE , but industry experts said that will be an uphill battle. The focus is shifting to a new front: Synthetic graphite, an element developed in the late 19th century, but only redirected toward EVs in the past decade. Its application is growing quickly. Synthetic graphite could account for nearly two-thirds of the EV battery anode market by 2025, estimates Benchmark Mineral Intelligence. Each EV on average needs 50-100 kg of graphite in its battery pack for the anodes, the negative electrodes of a battery, about twice the amount of lithium. While the market for synthetic graphite is expected to grow more than 40% over the next 5 years to $4.2 billion in 2028, according to researcher Mordor Intelligence, companies looking to carve out a new direction face formidable competition from China. That country refines more than 90% of the world’s natural graphite (used in virtually all EV battery anodes) and Chinese battery materials giants such as BTR and Shanshan are investing hundreds of millions of dollars to ramp up production of synthetic graphite. The introduction of synthetic graphite in the battery supply chain “is mature and commercially successful in China”, said analyst Victoria Hugill of UK-based researcher Rho Motion. “It’s dumbfounding, especially on the anode side, to see the number and the scale of participants” in China, said Chris Burns, chief executive officer of Australian battery materials supplier Novonix . “Guys like BTR and Shanshan just keep growing out of proportion to the rest of the world”. While Chinese producers control a significant share of the small, but growing synthetic graphite market, newcomers such as U.S.-based Anovion, Novonix and Norway’s Vianode are being driven by 2 factors, said Hugill. “It’s easier to set up a synthetic graphite production facility than it is to commission new mining sites for natural graphite” because producers can take advantage of incentives in last year’s U.S. Inflation Reduction Act to build synthetic graphite capacity in the U.S. or Free Trade Agreement partners, she said. And new facilities don’t need to be located near a graphite mine, she said. New synthetic graphite production operations in the United States, including Anovion’s $800 million plant in Bainbridge, Georgia, and Novonix’s $160 million plant in Chattanooga, Tennessee, will benefit from U.S. incentives included in the IRA and the bipartisan Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, executives said. Vianode, jointly owned by Norsk Hydro and battery maker Elkem, aims to build synthetic graphite facilities in both Europe and North America, with enough capacity to supply up to 2 million EVs a year by 2030. It’s a unique proposition: A production process powered by renewable energy, with a carbon footprint 90% lower than that of Chinese graphite refiners, according to Hans Erik Vatne, a former Hydro executive, now interim chairman of Vianode. The Vianode process could dispel concerns that synthetic graphite’s production process, traditionally based on fossil fuels, is not sustainable. Vatne also cites the benefits of synthetic graphite: Faster charging and longer battery life. Other experts note synthetic graphite is generally higher purity and offers better and more predictable performance than natural graphite. And the price gap between the 2 has narrowed significantly this year, driving producers to blend even more synthetic material into their battery anodes, which still represent less than 10% of the cost of an EV battery cell. The growing need for clean, consistent battery material “is one of the main drivers for synthetic graphite”, according to battery expert Bob Galyen, founder of Galyen Energy and former chief technology officer of China’s CATL , the world’s largest EV battery maker. Still, the construction of new production facilities for synthetic graphite, even with federal incentives, requires a staggering investment, said Novonix’s Burns. “The biggest challenge that our industry faces is the amount of capital that has to flow to make a dent in the supply chain”. In the meantime, China will continue to dominate synthetic graphite production, according to researcher Fastmarkets, which forecasts Chinese production of the material will grow from about 1.6 million metric tons this year to 2 million in 2030. “The real truth is China will be the biggest player in this market for the next 10 or 20 years”, said Burns. “The balance of supply and demand is and will remain absurdly askew for the balance of this decade in terms of North American options”. +++
+++ Focusing just on battery-electric vehicles (BEVs) as a way of reaching the country’s carbon targets will “fail”, the boss of INEOS AUTOMOTIVE has said, insisting we need a mix of technologies in order to successfully hit goals. Lynn Calder, who was speaking at the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders’ (SMMT) Electrified conference, told delegates that focusing on power sources such as hydrogen (as well as more efficient hybrid combustion engines) alongside BEVs was the best route forward. She said: “We talk about EVs all the time. I think that is quite dangerous. I think we’re going to need a mix. I think we need a plan, because at the moment, if we just say electric vehicles are the way forward , and that’s all we are going to have, I think there is a risk we are going to fail and a risk that it is going to be expensive”. But her remarks were rebuffed by the Department for Transport’s director of transport decarbonisation Richard Bruce, who said pushing forward with more than one fuel option “can be used as an excuse for inaction”, given its ambiguity within policy. He said: “There is a clear advantage for BEVs given the current timescale involved. If we have alternative fuels available, use that in other parts of the market where batteries aren’t as viable, such as aviation”. This was backed by head of Renault Trucks Carlos Rodrigues, who pushed the point that battery-electric vehicles should, especially when it comes to the commercial sector, be the first choice, with hydrogen used when issues, such as weight, make batteries less effective. “Looking at figures such as NOx nitrogen oxide and its overall impact, BEV is by far the best option, especially when compared to hydrogen”, he said. “Let’s be clear: we know hydrogen is an option, but it is not the option”. But Calder, who last December took over at the Jim Ratcliffe-owned firm, backed her point by focusing on those who work in more remote areas, such as some buyers of the brand’s Ineos Grenadier, itself sold with only a 3.0-litre pure-petrol or -diesel engine. “We believe there are different use cases for different technologies for different vehicles”, she said. “There are vehicles out there that aren’t going to be ideally suited to electric. Ours, we believe, is one of them as it is going to be used in a way that will mean it is towing things, working hard; it is going to be up mountains; it is going to be in the middle of nowhere. “If you really want to use it like that, electric is not a great answer based on the infrastructure around today”. Toyota UK boss Augustín Martín agreed with Calder, telling the conference: “If carbon is the enemy, it cannot be solved by one technology alone. Choice can never be bad”. Taking a wider look on the issue, he added that “not every region in the world is at the same place”, with some countries not yet ready for electric cars and other alternatives could be used there. “Every effort to reduce carbon should be applauded”, he said. “Every reduction is great. That is how we build the path”. +++
+++ TESLA has combined a series of innovations to make a technological breakthrough that could transform the way it makes electric vehicles and help Elon Musk achieve his aim of halving production costs, 5 people familiar with the move said. The company pioneered the use of huge presses with 6.000 to 9.000 tons of clamping pressure to mold the front and rear structures of its Model Y in a “gigacasting” process that slashed production costs and left rivals scrambling to catch up. In a bid to extend its lead, Tesla is closing in on an innovation that would allow it to die cast nearly all the complex underbody of an EV in one piece, rather than about 400 parts in a conventional car, the people said. The know-how is core to Tesla’s “unboxed” manufacturing strategy unveiled by chief executive Musk in March, a linchpin of his plan to churn out tens of millions of cheaper EVs in the coming decade, and still make a profit, the sources said. While Tesla has said its unboxed model involves producing large sub-assemblies of a car at the same time and then snapping them together, the size and make-up of the modular blocks is still the subject of speculation. Terry Woychowski, president of U.S. engineering company Caresoft Global, said if Tesla managed to gigacast most of the underbody of an EV, it would further disrupt the way cars are designed and manufactured. “It is an enabler on steroids. It has a huge implication for the industry, but it’s a very challenging task”, said Woychowski, who worked for U.S. automaker General Motors for more than 3 decades. “Castings are very hard to do, especially the bigger and the more complicated”. Two of the sources said Tesla’s previously unreported new design and manufacturing techniques meant the company could develop a car from the ground up in 18 to 24 months, while most rivals can currently take anywhere from 3 to 4 years. The 5 people said a single large frame (combining the front and rear sections with the middle underbody where the battery is housed) could be used in Tesla’s small EV which it aims to launch with a price tag of $25,000 by the middle of the decade. Tesla was expected to make a decision on whether to die cast the platform in one piece as soon as this month, 3 of the sources said, though even if they do press ahead the end product could change during the design validation process. The breakthrough Tesla has made centers on the how the giant molds for such a large part are designed and tested for mass production, and how casts can incorporate hollow subframes with internal ribs to cut weight and boost crashworthiness. In both cases the innovations, developed by design and casting specialists in Britain, Germany, Japan and the United States, involve 3D printing and industrial sand, the five people said. So far, automakers have shied away from casting ever-bigger structures because of the “gigacast dilemma”: creating molds to make parts of 1.5 meters squared or more boosts efficiency but is expensive and comes with myriad risks. Once a large metal test mold has been made, machining tweaks during the design process could cost $100,000 a go, or redoing the mold altogether might come to $1.5 million, according to one casting specialist. Another said the whole design process for a large metal mold would typically cost about $4 million. That has been deemed prohibitive by automakers, especially as a design might need half a dozen tweaks or more to achieve a perfect die from the perspective of noise and vibration, fit and finish, ergonomics and crashworthiness, the sources said. But Musk’s vision from the start was to find a way to cast the underbody in one piece, despite the risks, the sources said. To overcome the obstacles, Tesla turned to firms that make test molds out of industrial sand with 3D printers. Using a digital design file, printers known as binder jets deposit a liquid binding agent onto a thin layer of sand and gradually build a mold, layer by layer, that can die cast molten alloys. According to one source, the cost of the design validation process with sand casting, even with multiple versions, is minimal: just 3% of doing the same with a metal prototype. That means Tesla can tweak prototypes as many times as needed, reprinting a new one in a matter of hours using machines from companies such as Desktop Metal and its unit ExOne. The design validation cycle using sand casting only takes to 2 to 3 months, 2 of the sources said, compared with anywhere from six months to a year for metal mold prototypes. The subframes in a car underbody are typically hollow to save weight and improve crashworthiness. At the moment, they are made by stamping and welding multiple parts together leaving a void in the middle. To cast subframes with hollows as part of one gigacasting, Tesla plans to place solid sand cores printed by the binder jets within the overall mold. Once the part has been cast, the sand is removed to leave the voids. But despite that greater flexibility achieved in both the design process and the complexity of the large frames, there was still one more major hurdle to clear. The aluminium alloys used to produce the castings behaved differently in sand and metal molds and often failed to meet Tesla’s criteria for crashworthiness and other attributes. The casting specialists overcame that by formulating special alloys, fine-tuning the molten alloy cooling process, and also coming up with an after-production heat treatment, 3 of the sources said. And once Tesla is happy with the prototype mold, it can then invest in a final metal one for mass production. The sources said Tesla’s upcoming small car has given it a perfect opportunity to cast an EV platform in one piece, mainly because its underbody is simpler. The kind of small cars Tesla is developing (one for personal use and the other a robotaxi) don’t have a big “overhang” at the front and the back, as there is not much of a hood or rear trunk. “It’s like a boat in a way, a battery tray with small wings attached to both ends. That would make sense to do in one piece”, one person said. The sources said, however, that Tesla still had to make a call on what kind of gigapress to use if it decides to cast the underbody in one piece, and that choice would also dictate how complex the car frame would be. To punch out such large body parts fast, the people said Tesla would need new bigger gigapresses with massive clamping power of 16.000 tons or more, which would come with a hefty price tag and might need larger factory buildings. 3 of the 5 sources said one problem with presses using high clamping power, however, was that they cannot house the 3D printed sand cores needed to make hollow subframes. The people said Tesla could solve these obstacles by using a different type of press into which molten alloy can be injected slowly, a method that tends to produce higher quality castings and can accommodate the sand cores. But the process takes longer. “Tesla could still choose high-pressure for productivity, or they could choose slow alloy injection for quality and versatility”, one of the people said. “It’s still a coin toss at this point”. +++
+++ Vietnamese electric-vehicle maker VINFAST said on Monday it delivered 9.535 vehicles in the second quarter, recording a more than 5-fold jump from the first quarter. It reported 11.315 deliveries for the first half of this year. Vinfast’s blockbuster debut on Wall Street in August saw its shares more than triple in value, but the company’s small amount of publicly available shares has made the stock prone to volatility. Its shares have fallen about 53% since debut and lost 2.17% to $17.15 in premarket trading on Monday. When VinFast debuted on the Nasdaq Global Select Market under the symbol VFS to a flurry of trading and volatility halts after completing a merger with special-purpose acquisition company Black Spade Acquisition Co, the 255% surge from the closing price of the SPAC made the company the top performing de-SPAC to debut this year on a US exchange. The eye-popping valuation made VinFast worth more on paper than BMW alone, and more than Ford and Rivian Automotive combined on paper in terms of market capitalization, lagging BYD’s market value. Vinfast said it will report its second-quarter results on September 21. +++
+++ Car makers operating in Europe’s traditional automotive manufacturing hubs are sounding the alarm over the cost of developing and building both cars and automotive technology locally as they brace themselves for competition from cheaper, more profitable Chinese electric cars. “We want to invest in technology, batteries, chips but Europe is too slow in this game”, Thomas Schäfer, head of the VOLKSWAGEN brand, told at the recent Munich mobility show. Schäfer singled out battery plants as an example where the local costs are hampering plans to onshore what will be a key investment as EVs ramp up. +++