WeLion reportedly expects to send NIO 150 kWh solid-state batteries at volume in Q2 2024
Days after Chinese automaker NIO showcased the massive range potential of its incoming 150 kWh solid-state batteries, their manufacturer, WeLion, shared some insight on when consumers can expect to see the technology roll out in mass quantities. This could herald a new era of EV mobility of safer cars that charge faster and drive farther.
Solid-state batteries remain the holy grail for OEMs as their non-volatile, lightweight, and energy-dense properties offer the performance spec consumers have long sought in their decision to ditch gas-powered vehicles once and for all.
While solid-state technology already exists and continues to evolve amongst several battery developers, the ability to scale and reach cost parity with traditional lithium-ion cells remains a massive hurdle.
Chinese OEMs are paving the way by introducing the first passenger EV models to feature the tech. For example, some vehicles with semi-solid-state cells are already for sale overseas, but we have yet to see the full potential of solid electrolyte batteries on the consumer market.
NIO ($NIO) hopes to change that with its EVs, particularly its ET7 sedan. When the flagship EV was first introduced in early 2021, NIO also unveiled a 150 kWh packed equipped with solid-state batteries from Beijing WeLion New Energy Technology, better known as WeLion.
However, the public saw few updates on the progress of the potentially revolutionary battery technology until this past May, when a filing with China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology revealed that two NIO SUVs and one sedan would receive battery upgrades using cells from WeLion. By the end of June, WeLion held a ceremony with NIO to commemorate the progress of the potentially revolutionary battery technology.
Earlier this week, NIO founder, chairman, and CEO William Li took an ET7 equipped with WeLion’s solid-state batteries out for a range test and successfully drove 1,044 km (650 mi) with 3% battery remaining.
Now that we’ve seen the range potential of the solid-state packs in real-world driving situations, WeLion has shared that it expects to begin mass production of the packs next year.
NIO may be first to offer EV lineup with solid-state batteries
According to a report from Chinese media outlet Jiemian, WeLion has made plenty of progress on its 360 Wh/kg solid-state batteries for NIO and is planning to deliver them in mass quantities by April 2024. Per WeLion:
The company expects to supply semi-solid-state batteries to Weilai (NIO) in bulk in April next year. The specific scale will be determined based on Weilai’s needs, and it should be a gradual climb.
NIO will use the solid-state batteries in a cell-to-pack (CTP) design that removes the need for modules, thus further increasing energy density and, as a result, all-electric range. While we’ve already seen the technology propel NIO’s ET7 sedan, we should expect to see solid-state batteries in plenty more of its current and upcoming models.
As we reported back in October, NIO’s initial tests with WeLion’s energy-dense cells led the automaker to file plans to expand the battery upgrades to 11 additional EV models. This Saturday during its annual NIO Day event, the automaker will unveil its most premium model to date – an executive flagship sedan called the ET9. No word yet on whether that EV will offer the solid-state CTP technology, but it would make sense given the sedan is expected to debut as NIO’s most technologically advanced offering to date.
We will learn more as we venture into 2024 and approach WeLion’s Q2 mass production target.
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Tesla is now pulling on all the demand levers in the US with new discounts and incentives as sales are crashing due to brand damage.
Over the last few days, Tesla has introduced a series of new discounts and incentives in the US.
Previously, Tesla had a program to offer a $1,000 discount for US military personnel, but the automaker has now extended it to “students, teachers, first-responders, military veterans, retirees, active-duty members, their spouses, and surviving spouses.”
The update incentive applies to Tesla’s entire lineup of new vehicles.
Tesla also introduced a new incentive for Lyft drivers. They are eligible to $1,000 in Tesla credits when taking delivery and $1,000 from Lyft if they complete 100 deliveries by July 13.
The automaker wrote on its website:
Eligible Lyft drivers who purchase a new Tesla vehicle can receive $1,0001 in Tesla Credits upon taking delivery and a $1,000 incentive from Lyft after completing 100 trips on or before July 13, 2025. Tesla Credits can be used toward Supercharging, a new Tesla vehicle, service appointments or select Tesla Shop or upgrade purchases. Offer available to active Lyft drivers in good standing.
Tesla also started reaching out to Cybertruck reservation holders to let them know that they only have a month before they can’t take advantage of lower FSD prices.
The automaker wrote in the email:
As an early reservation holder, you have access to a reserved Full Self-Driving (Supervised) price of $7,000. To keep this price, you’ll need to take delivery by June 15, 2025. After June 15, 2025, FSD (Supervised) will be available at the latest price, which is currently $8,000.
When Tesla started taking Cybertruck reservations in 2019, Tesla said that by reserving the truck, reservation holders were locking in the then $7,000 price for its ‘Full Self-Driving’ package.
It looks like Tesla is now putting a deadline to take advantage of this deal to boost orders of the Cybertruck, which has proven to be a commercial flop.
On top of all these incentives, Tesla is also subsidizing interest rates to offer 0% financing on Model 3, and 1.99% financing on Model Y.
All those incentives in place point to Tesla having significant demand issues in the US.
Tesla’s global sales came about 50,000 units below expectations, which the company blamed on the production changeover of Model Y, its most popular model by far.
However, production is now back up to normal in Q2, and Tesla is clearly having issues selling the updated Model Y.
The automaker has no backlog of orders for the new Model Y and vehicles are already piling up in inventory:
We reported last week that Tesla employees wrote an open letter calling for Elon Musk’s removal as CEO due to the damage he has caused to the brand.
In the letter, the employees confirmed Tesla’s demand issues, saying that thousands of new Model Ys are now sitting unsold on lots in the US.
Electrek’s Take
This is not a great sign for Tesla. These are end-of-quarter level incentives when we are just about halfway through the quarter.
And that’s just in the US, where Tesla’s sale performance is more opaque.
In Europe and China, where we know for a fact that Tesla is struggling with sales, the automaker is virtually offering 0% financing on its entire lineup.
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The electric box van experts at Harbinger announced a new, EREV version of their medium-duty van that pairs a big battery with a small, gas-powered ICE engine to offer fleets that are hesitant to electrify a massive 500 miles of autonomy on a single charge + tank.
The American truck brand is putting its latest $100 million raise to good use, developing a cost-competitive EREV chassis that marries a low-emissions 1.4L inline four-cylinder gas engine with a close coupled 800V generator sending power to a 140 or 175 kW battery for up to 500 miles of fully loaded range. More than enough, in other words, to meet the needs of just about any fleet you can think of.
That’s a good thing, too, because medium-duty trucks are put to work in just about any circumstance you can think of, as well – a fact that’s not lost on Harbinger.
“Medium-duty vehicles serve an incredibly diverse range of applications, just like the fleets and operators that rely on them, ” explains John Harris, Co-founder and CEO, Harbinger. “There are some fleets whose needs simply can’t be met with a purely electric vehicle—and we recognize that. Our hybrid is designed for use cases and routes that go beyond what an all-electric system typically supports. The series hybrid delivers the benefits of an electric drivetrain, along with the added confidence of a range extender when needed.”
In addition an up-front cost that should make it an attractive prospect for fleet buyers, the new Harbinger EREV pack performance that should made it attractive for its drivers, too. The new chassis’ electric powertrain delivers 440 hp and 1,140 lb-ft of tq for quick acceleration into traffic and smooth running, even under load. Charging performance is also quick, with the ability to get the big battery from 10-80% charge in just under an hour on a 150 kW port.
You’ve heard all this before
If that sounds familiar, that’s because it is. This medium-duty chassis was first shown last year, making its debut under a Thor Class A motorhome concept that we covered in September. That vehicle promised the same great EREV range and capability to a market that values independence and spontaneity more than most, and bringing those values to a medium-duty commercial market that’s lapping up “messy middle” propaganda from Shell NACFE is just smart business.
The new Harbinger chassis’ batteries are manufactured by Panasonic. No word on who is making the 1.4L ICE generator, but my money’s on the GM SGE four-cylinder last seen in the gas-powered Chevy Spark. You guys are smart, though – if you have a better guess who the supplier might be, let us know in the comments.
SOURCE | IMAGES: Harbinger.
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Environment
Trump wants coal to power AI data centers. The tech industry may need to make peace with that for now
President Donald Trump wants to revive the struggling coal industry in the U.S. by deploying plants to power the data centers that the Big Tech companies are building to train artificial intelligence.
Trump issued an executive order in April that directed his Cabinet to find areas of the U.S. where coal-powered infrastructure is available to support AI data centers and determine whether the infrastructure can be expanded to meet the growing electricity demand from the nation’s tech sector.
Trump has repeatedly promoted coal as power source for data centers. The president told the World Economic Forum in January that he would approve power plants for AI through emergency declaration, calling on the tech companies to use coal as a backup power source.
“They can fuel it with anything they want, and they may have coal as a backup — good, clean coal,” the president said.
Trump’s push to deploy coal runs afoul of the tech companies’ environmental goals. In the short-term, the industry’s power needs may inadvertently be extending the life of existing coal plants.
Coal produces more carbon dioxide emissions per kilowatt hour of power than any other energy source in the U.S. with the exception of oil, according to the Energy Information Administration. The tech industry has invested billions of dollars to expand renewable energy and is increasingly turning to nuclear power as a way to meet its growing electricity demand while trying to reduce carbon dioxide emissions that fuel climate change.
For coal miners, Trump’s push is a potential lifeline. The industry has been in decline as coal plants are being retired in the U.S. About 16% of U.S. electricity generation came from burning coal in 2023, down from 51% in 2001, according to EIA data.
Peabody Energy CEO James Grech, who attended Trump’s executive order ceremony at the White House, said “coal plants can shoulder a heavier load of meeting U.S. generation demands, including multiple years of data center growth.” Peabody is one of the largest coal producers in the U.S.
Grech said coal plants should ramp up how much power they dispatch. The nation’s coal fleet is dispatching about 42% of its maximum capacity right now, compared to a historical average of 72%, the CEO told analysts on the company’s May 6 earnings call.
“We believe that all coal-powered generators need to defer U.S. coal plant retirements as the situation on the ground has clearly changed,” Grech said. “We believe generators should un-retire coal plants that have recently been mothballed.”
Tech sector reaction
There is a growing acknowledgment within the tech industry that fossil fuel generation will be needed to help meet the electricity demand from AI. But the focus is on natural gas, which emits less half the CO2 of coal per kilowatt hour of power, according the the EIA.
“To have the energy we need for the grid, it’s going to take an all of the above approach for a period of time,” Kevin Miller, Amazon’s vice president of global data centers, said during a panel discussion at conference of tech and oil and gas executives in Oklahoma City last month.
“We’re not surprised by the fact that we’re going to need to add some thermal generation to meet the needs in the short term,” Miller said.
Thermal generation is a code word for gas, said Nat Sahlstrom, chief energy officer at Tract, a Denver-based company that secures land, infrastructure and power resources for data centers. Sahlstrom previously led Amazon’s energy, water and sustainability teams.
Executives at Amazon, Nvidia and Anthropic would not commit to using coal, mostly dodging the question when asked during the panel at the Oklahoma City conference.
“It’s never a simple answer,” Amazon’s Miller said. “It is a combination of where’s the energy available, what are other alternatives.”
Nvidia is able to be agnostic about what type of power is used because of the position the chipmaker occupies on the AI value chain, said Josh Parker, the company’s senior director of corporate sustainability. “Thankfully, we leave most of those decisions up to our customers.”
Anthropic co-founder Jack Clark said there are a broader set of options available than just coal. “We would certainly consider it but I don’t know if I’d say it’s at the top of our list.”
Sahlstrom said Trump’s executive order seems like a “dog whistle” to coal mining constituents. There is a big difference between looking at existing infrastructure and “actually building new power plants that are cost competitive and are going to be existing 30 to 40 years from now,” the Tract executive said.
Coal is being displaced by renewables, natural gas and existing nuclear as coal plants face increasingly difficult economics, Sahlstrom said. “Coal has kind of found itself without a job,” he said.
“I do not see the hyperscale community going out and signing long term commitments for new coal plants,” the former Amazon executive said. (The tech companies ramping up AI are frequently referred to as “hyperscalers.”)
“I would be shocked if I saw something like that happen,” Sahlstrom said.
Coal retirements strain grid
But coal plant retirements are creating a real challenge for the grid as electricity demand is increasing due to data centers, re-industrialization and the broader electrification of the economy.
The largest grid in the nation, the PJM Interconnection, has forecast electricity demand could surge 40% by 2039. PJM warned in 2023 that 40 gigawatts of existing power generation, mostly coal, is at risk of retirement by 2030, which represents about 21% of PJM’s installed capacity.
Data centers will temporarily prolong coal demand as utilities scramble to maintain grid reliability, delaying their decarbonization goals, according to a Moody’s report from last October. Utilities have already postponed the retirement of coal plants totaling about 39 gigawatts of power, according to data from the National Mining Association.
“If we want to grow America’s electricity production meaningfully over the next five or ten years, we [have] got to stop closing coal plants,” Energy Secretary Chris Wright told CNBC’s “Money Movers” last month.
But natural gas and renewables are the future, Sahlstrom said. Some 60% of the power sector’s emissions reductions over the past 20 years are due to gas displacing coal, with the remainder coming from renewables, Sahlstrom said.
“That’s a pretty powerful combination, and it’s hard for me to see people going backwards by putting more coal into the mix, particularly if you’re a hyperscale customer who has net-zero carbon goals,” he said.
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