Vocal Voices

Tony Seba does a good job on this.

Whilst it looks to be all about electric vehicles it is not. This is a 3 part presentation.

Electric vehicles and why the time for them is NOW. Also why these vehicles will, allied with AI, change the way we consume transport.
Electric power and how we generate, store and use it and what it will mean to costs of power. Note he is delivering this speech in Saudi.
Precision Fermentation. Originally used in Pharma to produce insulin without the need of a herd of animals, it has branched out into other areas and can produce specific proteins. Milk is one product but they are looking at many others, potentially talking about much of the human diet.

One of the things about Seba and his presentations is that he has a long track record and also a track record of predictions he made a decade or more ago which are reality now. At the time people said "no way" but now they have come to pass.

One of Seba's big predictions was the cost of Li batteries. Originally they were around $1,000 per kwh. Which is why many phones still used NiCD. He predicted in 2014 at $500 per kwh that by 2023 it would drop to $100. Here we are in 2023 and it is $100.

These are some of the things he uses to make his predictions.

Like the fact that he says AI driven ride hail EV's will be cheaper to ride in than the equivalent petrol to do the journey yourself. Forget up front cost of buying the vehicle, forget depreciation, forget maintenance costs. The ride will be cheaper than the Fuel for your nice fossil burner.

It is price changes like this that make a massive impact but also the convergence of multiple technologies and materials all at the same point in history. He contends that the iPhone and Android were two faces of the same disruption which killed off Nokia and Ericsson phones.

He doesn't talk about some other things but consider this. If AI is finally licensed to drive and you are 17 and you want a car, do you get a driving license? Or do you buy an AI driving car? How much more different is it then from don't get a driving license; use ride hailing 99% of the time and get an AI driving hire car for the holidays or specific journeys.

Disruptive change It makes an interesting presentation...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7eJKTYc_v-I

Tony Seba eh. . Again. He never gives up does he?

So, according to him, St Elon's Tesla is dead and BYD is the future. Bless the Lord.

And AI is going to get me from A to B, anytime I want, in an emissions free, driverless, smoke free, puke free, crap free, super clean vehicle. Yeah, right. Not in Harehills, Chapeltown or Middleton it's not, sunshine.

My 17 year old Nissan Note will though... and for a few years yet, and at less cost. Then I'll get a 70 plate Kia, or similar. just to piss Seba and his ilk off.

Toyota have made progress with a solid state battery for EVs.
They are claiming that their battery will do 700 plus miles and take ten minutes to recharge.
Early production is slated for 2027, in small batches.
Apparently the battery is difficult to assemble.
All pie in the sky so far, but if anyone can make EVs work Toyota will.

Ride hailing services have been going for years but are costly for the operator to run and are not particularly popular with the travelling public. OK they currently have a driver and that bumps up costs, but at least s/he can keep the interior clean and fresh. AI cannot do that. AI also has to keep to speed limits, follow the rules of the road and cope with congestion, just like any other vehicle. They will also need to 'top-up' more frequently = more charge points. They will be for the few but not for the many.

In 2014 the cost per kWh was not $500 it was about $350 (US DoE) it is now roughly $150. In that time annual sales of EV have surged, boomed, soared globally from ~ 450k vehicles in 2014 to 10.2m today. They are still a tiny fraction of all vehicles sold. However, their rise in volumes is what has largely driven the kWh costs down - economies of scale - though new tech has helped. The floor below which the price cannot fall further is fast approaching.

As for precision fermentation, well!. Seba claims that by 2030, the number of cows in the U.S. will have halved and demand for cow products will have fallen by 70%, thus bankrupting the US cattle industry. He also claims that by 2035, demand for cow / meat products will have shrunk by 80% to 90%. The world will follow. Just seven years to go, folks, and we will all be eating 'chicken' breasts and 'fillet' steaks grown in petri dishes and drinking milk 'brewed' in large vats.

Cromwell, if you think that Toyota can solve EV you are in lala land. I've been following this for a decade now. The point is EV is already "solved". What has not percolated down is that "filling" practises have to change.

For most people, today, with an EV, they start the day with a full battery and fill it up every night. Which means charging times are not an issue. Longer distances? Niche for most people, a few times a year. I'm not saying that it is not a problem to be solved, but that mostly it is already solved it is more niche users that will have issues.

Solid state batteries? You know that lab to high volume production is a decade to two decades right? Tesla bought a company doing dry rolled electrolyte for their 4680 batteries. It had moved from the lab to small scale production and had been a decade doing so. Even then Tesla took an additional 3 years to get the kinks out of the production system and to start getting volume. They produced their 10 millionth cell in Texas last month. About enough for 100,000 Cybertrucks (main user). But their Cybertruck manufacturing capability is 125,000 per year to date and they expect to rise to 500,000.

Toyota is sitting on the fence and getting a really sore crotch with promises of fanciful designs and "a technology for everyone", where they have convinced themselves that people don't know what they want.

Toyota has a design system which takes 5 years. Today your entire battery stack has changed 3 times in 5 years. GM made a HUGE play about their Ultium batteries but are now having to row back on it because the format they chose is not going to make it. Toyota has made a big thing of reliability by not changing designs for 5 years. 2 years before going to production it is locked, 3 years after they open it up for re-design. With the design process counted in, Toyota will see one large design change every decade. Tesla and all the Chinese manufacturers are feeding in design changes real time into the production line.

WM, you are right that there is very little in the way of production for milk or animal protein today. However the process is both well defined and well known. It can produce what is needed at volume.

So if the producers are offering "manufactured" milk at 2% of the cost of animal produce, what are the resellers going to do? Say no? If the profit is up 500% and prices are down 90% it will take over in a flash. The same for grown meat products.

His timing may be off by 5-10 years but his analysis of what is going to change is rarely wrong.

And the milk has already begun.

https://thespoon.tech/starbucks-is-tria ... ular-milk/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&v=PNK854uskj4

Mind you prices are very high. But that scales with volume.

For most people, today, with an EV, they start the day with a full battery and fill it up every night.

Those, today, with driveways might. In the future the millions in terraced houses, country cottages, high rise flats, council or ex without driveways won't. They will have to rely on public charging points, and according to government figures there will not be enough.

Seba is the flip side of the denier coin, the inveterate arch optimist and an expert at 'predicting' things that are already happening.

He predicted battery kWh prices falling at a time when they were falling off a cliff.

He predicted ride-hailing and driverless cars with AI when we already have them - though maybe not together: yet.

He predicted the future extended use of PV electricity - no 5hit Einstein?

The Saudis probably invited him to preach on their patch because they needed a good laugh. It is why I sometimes go to rethinkx when I am feeling a bit low.

"And how would sir like his 'steak', laser or fusion cooked? And would that be with GM fries or 'old styleish' with potatoes grown in soil and cooked in synthetic oil?" "Just let me put this Riffid reader to your left buttock and we can get started." "Thank you. Shall I order a flying taxi or a mundane driverless AI one for your trip home?"

Yeah you, like me, grep up on the year 2000 and flying personal vehicles.

Well that never happened did it.

But Seba has identified something fairly important. He's identified an inflection point at which technology flips and a state change happens.

The speed of the flip and the state change will be a good one to watch.

But I get the sentiment.

BTW in France we went from almost no service stations with fast charge points to Every service station with fast charge points, on the autoroute; in about 18 months.

One of the problems with chargers is that it takes quite a while for reality to set in. Norway had 11kw and 22kw chargers identified as fast chargers. Until last year when a huge revision of charges made 50kw the minimum installed and 125kw as the base for a fast charge.

With 125kw you will top up your daily commute in a few minutes.

Norway also went through the charger scarcity issue. At about 50% penetration of EV in the new car market Oslo was struggling with chargers. This was around 2019. 4 years later and there are Zero issues with getting a charger. They are ubiquitous and well maintained. Supply and demand. Initially demand will outstrip supply until those supplying realise they are losing out on money. At which point they invest.

As for public charge points the numbers just keep climbing.

Now we have Today we have 29,000 locations with 49,000 devices and 77,000 connectors. Up 43% from September 2022.

I reiterated a journey I took, twice (which is stupid of me), from Aviemore to Perth on a Sunday night. Both times I realised about 10 miles out of Aviemore that the fuel light went on. Both times the 20 mile round trip seemed unappetising so I just went on.

Number of easily accessible fuels stations on the run? Zero on a Sunday night.

3 years ago the number of charge locations on the same route was 8. One of which was 50kw and most were single connection. Today I just checked the map, 17 locations, almost all sporting more than one connection, some sporting as much as 4. That particular stretch of the A9 is what you would call "out in the boonies" Large towns and cities are significantly better served.

Pretty soon this whole story of "there's not enough connections, will be gone. Every car park, every fuel station, every fast food place, restaurant, supermarket. They're all going to have multiple chargers with multiple outlets.

Check it out.

My friend who lives in France tells me that it is run better than the UK, and it seems so from what you say.

I do have an issue with fake food though.
The evils of meat and dairy are being pushed relentlessly.
So when we are eating factory produced meat and drinking factory produced milk, who owns the factories? Who is in control of our food?
And who get to own all the farms that aren't being used for producing meat and dairy any more?
I'd take a bet that it will be the same set of people.

There's a lot more going on here than meets the eye.