electric vehicles

Mercedes-Benz partners with Canadian mining company for CO2-neutral lithium hydroxide for EVs • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on October 20, 2022Posted in electric vehicles, EV, mercedes, Mercedes-Benz, mining, TransportationNo Comments

Mercedes-Benz AG will source carbon-neutral lithium hydroxide to build batteries for electric vehicles from a Vancouver-based mining startup. Starting in 2026, the agreement with Rock Tech Lithium will provide Mercedes-Benz AG with an average of 10,000 tons of battery-grade lithium hydroxide per year — enough for around 150,000 electric vehicles. Mercedes-Benz, which sells about two million vehicles worldwide annually, plans to go all-electric by the end of the decade. Automakers worldwide are scrambling to secure the lithium supply required to produce enough electric vehicles to meet their 2030 targets, especially as they bring more of the battery pack manufacturing process in-house. In September, Chinese EV maker Nio bought a 12% stake in Australian lithium mining company Greenwing Resources as it gears up to make its own battery packs beginning in 2024. The partnership with Rock Tech “will play a key role in securing the lithium supply for our battery production in Europe,” Markus Schäfer, chief technology officer for Mercedes-Benz AG, said in a statement. Under the agreement, Rock Tech will supply battery-grade lithium hydroxide to the automaker’s battery partners — including Envision AESC in the U.S., and ACC and CATL in Europe — from a converter based in Guben, Germany. The automaker also works with Farasis and CATL for its China operations. Over a five-year term, the agreement represents roughly $1.5 billion in sales and more than 40% of the expected annual production from the planned converter capacity in Guben, according to Rock Tech. Terms require that Rock Tech source from sites audited by the Initiative for Responsible Mining Assurances, according to Mercedes-Benz. Both companies are expected to cooperate in “creating a roadmap to achieving CO2 neutral production” of lithium hydroxide by the end of 2030.

Sony and Honda envision an EV that entertains while it takes the wheel • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on October 13, 2022Posted in electric vehicles, honda, Media & Entertainment, Sony, TransportationNo Comments

Sony and Honda have officially launched their joint mobility venture that aims to start delivering premium electric vehicles with automated driving capabilities in the United States in the spring of 2026, followed by Japan in the second half of 2026. The joint venture from hardware, software and entertainment conglomerate Sony and automaker Honda to produce what the companies promise to be a wildly smart vehicle perfectly demonstrates the direction of the auto industry today. As the software-defined vehicle moves beyond car performance and into autonomous territory, cars are not just about transportation anymore — they’re about entertainment and automakers are scrambling to up the ante. The future of premium vehicles will focus less on torque and horsepower and leather seats, and more on what a driver can do to entertain themselves when they take their hands off the steering wheel. Earlier this week, BMW partnered with AirConsole to bring in-car gaming to the BMW 7 series next year, a series that will already be built with Amazon Fire TV for streaming. Volvo is working to integrate Google Home and YouTube into its vehicles. And let’s not even get started on the EVs that promise to mine crypto. The launch of the JV comes a few months after Sony and Honda signed a JV agreement to establish the new software-oriented “mobility tech company,” called simply Sony Honda Mobility Inc. (SHM). The JV will begin taking preorders for their first product in the first half of 2025 and start selling entirely online before the end of the same year, the companies said. The new EV, which will be initially manufactured at Honda’s North America factory, will be developed with Level 3 automated driving capabilities under limited conditions, and with Level 2 advanced driver assistance systems that can handle situations as complex as urban driving, according to the companies. According to SAE, Level 3 autonomy means the car is capable of driving in certain situations, like traffic jams, when automated features are engaged, but the human driver must take over when the system requests it. Sony will provide the sensors and tech for the autonomous capabilities, as well as all of the other software, from cloud-based services to entertainment, that drivers will hopefully be able to enjoy all the better for not having to actually drive the car all the time. The companies didn’t share too much about what the infotainment system would look like, but they did say the metaverse would be involved. “SHM aims to evolve mobility space into entertainment and emotional space, by seamlessly integrating real and virtual worlds, and exploring new entertainment possibilities through digital innovations such as the metaverse,” according to SHM. Neither Sony nor Honda responded to ZebethMedia’s request for more information about how, exactly, they plan to integrate the metaverse into a vehicle, however, it’s possible SHM will integrate augmented reality through safety features, as BMW has done. Part of SHM’s mission is to “create new mobility entertainment” and position mobility as a “mobility experience service.” What exactly does this mean? We don’t have all the facts yet, but it looks like SHM is subscribing to the same feature-bloat newsletter as other luxury brands that want to encourage drivers to interact with the vehicle more than they interact with their phones. Other details missing from the JV announcement include pricing, battery range or even what type of vehicle we’re looking at. Honda has been slow to push out its own electric vehicles, so the JV with Sony is also a move toward embracing not only EVs, but also the idea of the car as a connected device. The Sony Honda EV, if it makes it to market, will also help Honda get a foothold into the luxury vehicle market in the U.S.

Tiger Global, Blume back startup bringing safety — and intelligence — to EVs • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on October 12, 2022Posted in blume ventures, electric vehicles, EV, Startups, tiger global, TransportationNo Comments

Tiger Global’s latest investment in India is Vecmocon, a startup building solutions to bring safety and reliability alongside intelligence and health monitoring to light electric vehicles (EVs), addressing concerns that are curtailing the sales of electric scooters in the South Asian market. Unlike traditional internal combustion engine (ICE) vehicles that have existed for more than 100 years, EVs are pretty new to the market. The data recently shared by the Indian government shows that the country has over 1.3 million EVs, compared to more than 278 million non-EVs. The cost of service and turnaround time of an EV in the country are also quite high compared to those of traditional combustion engine-powered counterparts. A number of EVs, especially EV scooters, that are available in the Indian market are also not meeting quality standards. Some have even caught fire in the recent past. Vecmocon, an abbreviation for vector motor control, is trying to solve all this using its core EV components and software that it sells to OEMs. The New Delhi-based startup additionally offers platforms for cloud integration to enable remote diagnostics for fleet operations. “For electric vehicles to happen, its ecosystem has to happen, and that ecosystem has to be data-driven. It has to be digitally enabled for a quick evolution,” said Peeyush Asati, co-founder and CEO of Vecmocon, in an interview with ZebethMedia. IIT Delhi alumnus Asati co-founded the startup with Shivam Wankhede and Adarshkumar B — alumni of IIT Delhi and Indian School of Business (ISB), respectively, in August 2016. Before starting their venture, the trio provided pro bono consultancy to e-rickshaw manufacturers. That helped them notice the industry’s strong reliance on China. “The Chinese component manufacturers are not cooperating because the ecosystem in China around EVs is fundamentally different from how it is in India. The geography is diverse, the use cases of how people use electric vehicles are two-wheelers, kind of in terms of culture in terms of behavior, in terms of geography, all of it was different,” Asati said. All this brought them to the conclusion that while many companies have started building the mechanical side of things for EVs locally in the market, the core tech side continues to leave a lot to be desired. Vecmocon offers battery management systems, vehicle intelligence modules, instrument clusters and chargers, among other components. It targets light EV manufacturers making two-wheelers, three-wheelers, forklifts and electric tractors at the moment, as those are the lowest hanging fruits, said Asati. He believes electric cars would still take some time to enter the Indian market due to the lack of physical infrastructure, though the solutions that Vecmocon makes are also ready for four-wheelers. The co-founder said the startup’s battery management systems comply with the Automotive Industry Standards (AIS)-156 that the Indian government introduced last month to address EV battery fire issues. The safety standards are yet to become mandatory for manufacturers, though. “We have already executed those recommendations in our previous generation and improved on them further. So, we are ahead in terms of safety and reliability,” he said. Now they secured some much-needed fuel to expand. Tiger Global co-led the pre-Series A round of $5.2 million in Vecmocon along with Blume Ventures. “We are impressed with the deep commitment and progress that Peeyush, Adarshkumar and Shivam have made to solve long-term problems in India’s EV industry, and we are excited to partner with them as they build a high-quality global automotive tech company to support the adoption of EVs,” Connie Lee, partner, Tiger Global, said in a prepared statement. The funding from the all-equity round will be used to build a business around the offerings created by Vecmocon, Asati said. He noted that the startup is planning to hire sales, HR, operations and finance people in the team, which currently has 20 engineers developing different hardware and software solutions. Vecmocon, which is currently using labs at IIT Delhi, also plans to build its in-house labs to test and develop new offerings for the market. “An electric vehicle is a technologically advanced product. For the larger number of OEMs, it is hard to develop the expertise to design and perfect the software and hardware components like a BMS (battery management system) or VIM (vehicle intelligence module). Such customers stand to win greatly by adopting Vecmocon’s platform which allows them to launch high-performance vehicles faster to the market. Over the last 5 years, Vecmocon has built a unique capability to engineer such data intensive components and deliver a highly robust and safe system,” said Arpit Agarwal, director, Blume Ventures. In this financial year, Vecmocon claims to have already orders of around $5 million to execute — giving it touch points with 30,000-40,000 odd vehicles. Asati said that the plan is to power more than 100,000 vehicles by next year and the hit the milestone of 500,000 by 2025. The startup also does not want to limit itself to India, as it has started working in a pilot phase with clients in global markets and has its initial customers in the U.S., Sri Lanka and Malaysia. Prior to the pre-Series A funding, Vecmocon had raised $300,000 in a strategic seed round in 2019 from Tessellate Tech Ventures. It also received seed support in a debt and equity mix from India’s Department of Science and Technology (DST).