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Over 300 million electric vehicles are expected to be on the world’s roads by 2030, according to the International Energy Agency. However, the American EV market is small. In 2021, the U.S. accounted for less than 10% of new global EV registrations, while China and Europe accounted for 50% and 35%, respectively. China also accounts for over 70% of global EV battery production capacity, meaning the U.S. is heavily dependent on imports of batteries and battery minerals. 

“It has been clear since 2014 that China had a plan to lock up the bulk of the world’s production of battery minerals,” said John Voelcker, an EV analyst. “The world’s largest battery company is now in China.”

By 2050, the National Renewable Energy Laboratory expects the demand for graphite, lithium and cobalt, all critical minerals in EV batteries, to increase by 500%. It estimates that the lifetime of an EV battery is around 12 to 15 years in moderate climates. 

“The degradation of an EV battery pack is one of the biggest questions of the industry,” said Lea Malloy, head of electric vehicle battery solutions at Cox Automotive Mobility. “Every battery will reach the end of life. It’s important that these end-of-life packs are recycled, so they don’t end up where they don’t belong.”

With the estimated reuse lifetime of an EV battery ranging anywhere between five to 30 years, extending the life cycle could reduce the need for mining critical minerals. Companies like American Battery Technology have already developed processes to recycle lithium-ion batteries, but Oklahoma-based Spiers New Technologies or SNT is pioneering a different process. 

“It’s fantastic that you can drive an electric vehicle, knowing that the end-of-the life of that battery pack, the ingredients will be reused in a new battery pack and a new electric car, and that we really want to play a role in,” said Dirk Spiers, founder and CEO of SNT.

SNT was founded in 2014 with just two employees. In 2021, it was acquired by Cox Automotive, a subsidiary of Atlanta-based media conglomerate Cox Enterprises. The company now has over 400 employees and offers what it calls a “one-stop solution” for used and faulty EV batteries.

“We are like a diner of battery services,” said Spiers. “You can come to us for a cup of coffee, but if you want to have a steak, a cup of soup or apple pie, we serve all these things.”

The company receives EV batteries directly from the dealership or original equipment manufacturer. It then puts the battery packs through its diagnosis system, named Alfred. Alfred assesses the health of the battery pack to determine whether it can eventually go back into a vehicle. A pack can be repaired to operational conditions, remanufactured to original factory standards, refurbished and upgraded to current factory standards. If truly at its end-of-life, SNT will recycle it. 

“A couple of years ago there was a cost associated with recycling a lithium-ion battery pack. Now it is a positive,” he said. “If you give me a lithium-ion battery pack, I probably will give you money back for it. And that’s the beauty of it. The intrinsic value of that battery pack is higher than the cost of recycling.”

In addition to its Oklahoma City-based headquarters, SNT also has facilities in Las Vegas, Detroit and the Netherlands with plans to expand to the east coast and the U.K. Right now it says being centrally located in the U.S. is key to its business model.

“We need to be where our customers are, being bang in the middle of the country helps. We can reach either cost between two and three days,” Spiers said. 

The company wouldn’t disclose the number of battery packs it’s capable of storing but said it handles on average 15 thousand battery packs and modules per month.

“We get anything from, say, 50 to 100 battery packs per day. Probably 80, 90% can be refurbished. Recycling is maybe 5 to 10%. And the rest is repurposing, second life. But those numbers will fluctuate,” he said.

Since its inception, SNT says it’s serviced more than 240 thousand packs and more than 50 thousand have been repaired, refurbished or remanufactured. 

“If you look at the EV market and take Tesla out, we probably have 60, 65, 70% of that market,” said Spiers. “GM, Ford, Stellantis, Porsche, Volkswagen, Nissan, Toyota, Volvo we keep adding to the list.”

But, why doesn’t it work with Tesla, the most recognizable American EV company? 

“They like to do their own stuff. You know, they’re a little bit like Apple,” he said. 

“When I think about the future of EV battery recycling specifically, I see it as an increasingly competitive space,” Malloy said. “At the same time, there is a bit of a mismatch of maybe more supply and capacity around EV battery recycling than demand. We’re just riding this first wave of electric vehicles who could be on the road for ten-plus years.”

With the world having a finite amount of minerals necessary for EV batteries, could it reach a point of indefinite cycling and reuse? 

“I think we will be mining metals for the balance of my lifetime,” said Voelcker.  “The hope is as batteries get more powerful, smaller, lighter and cheaper, with luck, we will need fewer metals.”

“Why would you get cobalt from Africa or lithium from South America, if you can get it here in Oklahoma City,” Spiers said. “The circular economy is happening. It’s happening right now. It’s happening here in Oklahoma City…the volume is still small, but it will get bigger and bigger.” 

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E-commerce firm Shopee agreed to adjust its practices in Indonesia after watchdog says it violated competition law

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E-commerce firm Shopee agreed to adjust its practices in Indonesia after watchdog says it violated competition law

BRAZIL – 2022/03/22: In this photo illustration, a woman’s silhouette holds a smartphone with a Shopee logo in the background. (Photo Illustration by Rafael Henrique/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images)

Rafael Henrique | Sopa Images | Lightrocket | Getty Images

Shopee and its courier service Shopee Express agreed to adjust its current practices after admitting to breaching a competition rule in Indonesia, the country’s watchdog said on Wednesday.

Shopee is the e-commerce arm of Southeast Asian tech giant Sea Limited.

“Shopee and Shopee Express admitted that they had violated Law no. 5 of 1999, regarding delivery (courier) services on the Shopee platform by agreeing to various behavioral change points determined by the KPPU Council in the hearing yesterday,” Indonesia Competition Commission Komisi Pengawas Persaingan Usaha said in a Google-translated statement.

KPPU said Shopee proposed adjustments to its current practices on June 20 which were approved by the commission council.

“Shopee Indonesia attended a meeting with KPPU on 25 June to discuss points of the integrity pact that was shared by KPPU last week. On 20 June, Shopee proposed changes to our user interface to enhance our services and demonstrate our compliance in providing the best services to our users, in accordance with the feedback provided and approved by the KPPU,” Radynal Nataprawira, head of public affairs at Shopee Indonesia, told CNBC in emailed comments.

“Shopee is always committed to complying with all applicable regulations and laws in the Republic of Indonesia in conducting our business operations,” said Nataprawira.

Last month, KPPU revealed its preliminary investigation found that Shopee allegedly prioritized Shopee Express in every package delivery to consumers.

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The watchdog also accused Shopee of “discriminatory behavior,” saying Shopee Express and another delivery service J&T Express were “automatically activated en masse on the seller dashboard” while other companies that also have good service performance did not get selected automatically.

KPPU investigators also named an employee who held director positions in both Shopee Indonesia and Shopee Express, saying this “dual position” has the ability to influence competition and control the behavior of both companies.

KPPU is also probing Shopee rival Lazada, the Southeast Asian e-commerce arm of Chinese tech giant Alibaba, saying it has found indications of similar violations.

“If it is later proven to have violated, Lazada can be subject to a fine of a maximum of 50% of the net profit or 10% of the total sales it earned in the relevant market during the period of the violation,” KPPU said in a statement last month.

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Europe is at risk of over-restricting AI and falling behind U.S. and China, Dutch prince says  

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Europe is at risk of over-restricting AI and falling behind U.S. and China, Dutch prince says  

Prince Constantijn is special envoy to Techleap, a Dutch startup accelerator.

Patrick Van Katwijk | Getty Images

AMSTERDAM — Europe is at risk of falling behind the U.S. and China on artificial intelligence as it focuses on regulating the technology, according to Prince Constantijn of the Netherlands.

“Our ambition seems to be limited to being good regulators,” Constantijn told CNBC in an interview on the sidelines of the Money 20/20 fintech conference in Amsterdam earlier this month.

Prince Constantijn is the third and youngest son of former Dutch Queen Beatrix and the younger brother of reigning Dutch King Willem-Alexander.

He is special envoy of the Dutch startup accelerator Techleap, where he works to help local startups grow fast internationally by improving their access to capital, market, talent, and technologies.

“We’ve seen this in the data space [with GDPR], we’ve seen this now in the platform space, and now with the AI space,” Constantijn added.

European Union regulators have taken a tough approach to artificial intelligence, with formal regulations limiting how developers and companies can apply the technology in certain scenarios.

The bloc gave final approval to the EU AI Act, a ground-breaking AI law, last month.

Officials are concerned by how quickly the technology is advancing and risks it poses around jobs displacement, privacy, and algorithmic bias.

The law takes a risk-based approach to artificial intelligence, meaning that different applications of the tech are treated differently depending on their risk level.

For generative AI applications, the EU AI Act sets out clear transparency requirements and copyright rules.

All generative AI systems would have to make it possible to prevent illegal output, to disclose if content is produced by AI and to publish summaries of the copyrighted data used for training purposes.

But the EU’s Ai Act requires even stricter scrutiny for high-impact, general-purpose AI models that could pose “systemic risk,” such as OpenAI’s GPT-4 — including thorough evaluations and compulsory reporting of any “serious incidents.”

Prince Constantijn said he’s “really concerned” that the Europe’s focus has been more on regulating AI than trying to become a leader innovating in the space.

“It’s good to have guardrails. We want to bring clarity to the market, predictability and all that,” he told CNBC earlier this month on the sidelines of Money 20/20. “But it’s very hard to do that in such a fast-moving space.”

“There are big risks in getting it wrong, and like we’ve seen in genetically modified organisms, it hasn’t stopped the development. It just stopped Europe developing it, and now we are consumers of the product, rather than producers able to influence the market as it develops.”

Between 1994 and 2004, the EU had imposed an effective moratorium on new approvals of genetically modified crops over perceived health risks associated with them.

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The bloc subsequently developed strict rules for GMOs, citing a need to protect citizens’ health and the environment. The U.S. National Academies of Sciences says that genetically modified crops are safe for both human consumption and the environment.

Constantijn added that Europe is making it “quite hard” for itself to innovate in AI due to “big restrictions on data,” particularly when it comes to sectors like health and medical science.

In addition, the U.S. market is “a much bigger and unified market” with more free-flowing capital, Constantijn said. On these points he added, “Europe scores quite poorly.”

“Where we score well is, I think, on talent,” he said. “We score well on technology itself.”

Plus, when it comes to developing applications that use AI, “Europe is definitely going to be competitive,” Constantijn noted. He nevertheless added that “the underlying data infrastructure and IT infrastructure is something we’ll keep depending on large platforms to provide.”

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Waymo opens robotaxi service to all San Francisco users

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Waymo opens robotaxi service to all San Francisco users

A Waymo rider-only robotaxi is seen during a test ride in San Francisco on Dec. 9, 2022.

Paresh Dave | Reuters

Waymo robotaxis are now open to all users in San Francisco, expanding the self-driving ride-hailing service, which has been available in the city to a limited number of riders.

In a blog post on Tuesday, Waymo said nearly 300,000 people have signed up for the service, called Waymo One, since the Alphabet-owned company opened its waitlist. The company began commercial passenger operations in August after a period of testing.

“We’re committed to growing our service gradually and responsibly,” Waymo said in the post. “We work closely with city and state officials, first responders, and advocates for road safety to ensure our service helps local communities gain access to reliable, safe, environmentally friendly transportation and has a positive impact on mobility.”

It is the second citywide rollout for Waymo, following Phoenix in 2020. Waymo One also operates in limited capacity in Los Angeles and Austin, Texas. As of February, the company had approximately 700 vehicles in the Waymo One fleet, including about 300 cars as part of its San Francisco service.

Driverless vehicles have faced some public backlash in recent months following collisions and other accidents. In October, General Motors’ Cruise autonomous vehicle unit paused all driverless operations after collisions led to investigations and a suspension of its licenses in California.

However, Waymo has experienced less controversy. The company has a large public affairs operation and communicates closely with the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and local first responders.

In total, the 15-year-old project, which became Waymo in 2016, has driven about 20 million fully autonomous miles and nearly two million paid ride-hail trips, Waymo said. The company said it has logged 3.8 million rider-only miles in San Francisco as of the end of March.  

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