2025 Wrapped: EV Myths, Dream Cars & 2026 Predictions!

19:52Robert Llewellyn:And I think the PV5 is the hero car, both in terms of, well, the hero commercial van, certainly. But it's been astonishing to see the response to it. You filmed with it twice this year. And those two videos are in the top spots, one and two, in terms of episodes with the most views this year, which says something that people adore. It's kind of affordability, it's innovation, it's utility, it's funness as well, if that's a, is that a word? Funness?

20:19Imogen Bhogal:Absolutely. It can be now, yeah. What about you, Bogues, or Bobby, who's next? I'll do my two, because I'm really, basically I've already blown one, because the Polestar 5 was extraordinarily impressive. But, you know, in a sense, it was under very extreme conditions that I drove it. So it was on test tracks. It was pushing it to the limit. It was all those things that were kind of, you know, fun but silly. So I didn't drive it for that long or that far. But whereas, in contrast, so the Nissan Leaf, which is, you know, my, was my kind of, the first car that was, that I, yeah, I think was the first car that was built from the ground up as an electric car.

21:00The first one that I bought and still own, you know, it is an amazing car that's done incredibly well. It's just passed its second MOT since it had a bit of welding done last year. It had nothing done. It was absolutely fine. One of the tires will need replacing in the next year. That's the most severe note it's had, which I just think is crazy because that's now getting on for 16 years old. and it's not really been terribly well looked after. And it does a lot of miles as well. It's just past 90 ,000 miles. Yeah, so it's doing very well. But so the new Nissan Leaf, when I went to see that, again, I mean, Jack, I mean, I need your advice on that because it looks sort of a bit generic to a lot of other electric cars now, where in a sense the Leaf didn't at the time.

21:50It looked a bit weird and quirky and it had lots of weird and quirky things, some of which are really incredibly annoying, some of which are fine. The new Nissan LEAF is so extraordinary underneath. You know, they've waited for a decade to bring out another electric car, in a sense. You know, why didn't they do it sooner? But I mean, the leap in technology, in the software, when you think of what the original LEAF was like, the software in the new LEAF is brilliant. The drive is delightful, really solid, secure. I just felt really at home in that car really quickly. And essentially, I'm going to stick with the summer.

22:30In the summer, it does 300 miles more than the original Leaf, which I think is pretty impressive.

22:38Robert Llewellyn:It's mad. It's so mad. It has a genuine, I think, 350. You would get 350 miles out of that car in the summer, not in the winter, but in the summer and on relatively flat roads and driving sensibly. But the thing is, the old Nissan Leaf, If you got 55 miles out of it, yes, result. If it was raining, if there was the merest hill in your route. And obviously that's been enabled by the increase in energy density in batteries, but also the decreasing in cost in those batteries as well. And I always find it interesting that if you'd gone back to the moment that you first got in the original Nissan Leaf, there's no way that you could have projected to 2025 and predicted this.

23:20Robert Llewellyn:Not at all. Or imagined it, at least. it's it's absolutely crazy um yeah some significant moments yeah yeah no i'm also kind of just want them because they're building them in sunderland and i really i mean i know we've been invited up there and we have not able to go now but i really want to go up there next year because it's an amazing facility and they're making the batteries there and it's kind of we somehow kind of that's been taken for granted you know we'll do a story about they're going to try and build a battery factory in somerset and then they never do and they've already got a battery factory that's been going all the time we've been making fully charged and everything electric churning out batteries for for electric cars there but yeah so it's a i i feel i i'm in need emotionally in need of a factory visit yeah yes i feel yeah you haven't had one for a while no yeah i think the last one i can remember is cowley is the the mini factory tour it was a few years ago when the electric mini came out.

24:19It was a while back.

24:21Robert Llewellyn:Well, we can definitely add that to the 2026 wish list. Robert needs to go to a factory. He doesn't mind what it is. Yeah. I'm here at a baked bean factory outside Doncaster. It's fascinating. I've got a fact about baked beans. Oh, yeah. So apparently all of the beans from baked beans come from the same sauce and it's only the source that is different. Oh, so all the beans are identical regardless of the brand. Yeah, but it's the source, S-A-U-C-E, that is different. I mean, I would invite anyone to check that and to put in the comments that is indeed correct. But I'm 97 % sure of the accuracy of that statement.

25:06Imogen Bhogal:But does the beans happen on the podcast? We just throw facts out there and you let us know if it's true. We haven't checked. but do the beans do they come from the same farm i mean a specific location or you know it would be

25:19Robert Llewellyn:a large farm obviously well i i think this is where we're going to turn to our audience and continue to use the comments section as like a google search we've just projected the questions out there and we invite people to to help us out this episode is brought to you by hong cook the The Hankook ION tyre is built exclusively for electric vehicles, engineered to deliver what EV drivers need most – confident grip, quietness, energy efficiency and long mileage. As the official tyre partner of Formula E, Hankook proves its EV technology is at the highest level of performance and brings that same innovation to every ION tyre on the road.

26:12Imogen Bhogal:Imogen, tell us about your highlights of the year in terms of shoots, products, things you've seen.

26:18Robert Llewellyn:Well, do you know what? I was looking back at what have I done this year? And I've done very, very few car bits. I think I've only done the BYD Dolphins. No. No, you did that. I just haven't been in the car.

26:35Robert Llewellyn:BYD Sealion 7, Hyundai Insta and the G-Wagon. So I think actually from a car perspective, that's what I've done. But I'm not sad about that at all because I've done some just maybe the best shoots that I've ever done for Everything Electric Show. They just blew my mind away. So over the summer.

26:55Imogen Bhogal:It was about Namibia.

26:56Robert Llewellyn:Well, I'll leave that one to laugh because I think that's really hard to top. Yeah. But we started off the year, we went to see a lovely lady called Judith Leary Joyce. She's just written a book, which I think is on my desk. Oh, good. Yes. what the builder won't tell you wow brilliant this is all well done fantastic she is so inspirational so her book is all about how to retrofit your home she lived uh or she has retrofitted her victorian home um victorian terrace house that she'd lived in for 40 years and she's just so motivated by you know reducing her bills looking after future generations proving to other people of her age because she is in her late 70s that this is possible and that you can live a more comfortable life if you do it so that was really really fun um over the summer we did a trip again to Vancouver and I went with videographer George and we did some amazing shoots and we went to the sightsee dam which again huge piece of infrastructure that just when you step back and think about how dams are made how reservoirs are made it's mind-boggling and you know we were really lucky to see how a reservoir and a dam had been made back in the 50s and 60s and it was not brilliant from a human rights perspective or an environmental protection perspective but to be able to reflect back on that and to see what's done today that was like genuinely actually very moving um we also saw some new ways of refining lithium using electrolysis which I totally nerded out about that was fantastic but at the top of the list is Namibia and in September I went to Namibia in Botswana with videographer Louis and we had a few days on this solar powered battery powered electric safari boat and I think luxury hotel is probably better description correct yes and it was one of those things that you know because there's there's a huge amount of solar gain there that basically this this boat barely even like needs to have batteries on it because it can basically just power itself from solar all day um and I've definitely mentioned this before but when when we got invited out there I was like oh no it's not real so I ignored the emails for ages I was like it's a scam why on earth would they invite us um but they were super keen to tell the technical story behind this boat and it was just such a a privilege to be there um and i know it sounds very kind of holy as thou but also to spend time in nature properly and i had didn't have any internet so i was like fully there kind of mentally as well it is a good reminder of why we spend so much time and effort and energy wanging on about the benefits of clean energy it's it's really important that you don't you know screw up the habitats for these animals or their sort of how their cycles within the year so it was it was astonishing it was really really amazing um yeah I know I won a good

30:03Imogen Bhogal:spectacular video as well not just a jolly you came away from that with just an unbelievable video which I think is the most popular thing that's gone out on the tech channel this year

30:15Robert Llewellyn:yes it is um and i think i'm so glad it was because we were very acutely aware that it could seem like oh hey look at me on a boat i'm having a lovely time yes um but i think louis edit is is second to none um but this the video that comes second and it is quite a close second on the everything electric tech channel is the cherry tree farm actually which is also another louis one It was, wasn't it? Annoying. It's annoying that he's that talented. But that was another extraordinary experience because of the sort of extreme. I mean, that is kind of extreme in the sense that the cherries they grow, for a start, are stunningly gorgeous cherries.

30:56And we were there after the season had ended. So they were the kind of leftover, they were the scrag end cherries. And they're still the best cherries I've ever eaten in my life. but they pick huge cherries that are kind of the size of a small apple that they individually wrap and send to China and are given as gifts I think they're very expensive in China and they're given us gifts which is like a whole new world but the fact is from the point that where the trees have been planted cultivated looked after the cherries are picked the cherries are packed the cherries are put on a truck. The cherries arrive, presumably, I would think, at either a dock or an airport.

31:36They're 100 % solar-powered, electric. There's no diesel used at all anywhere. Every machine they've got is electric. Their factory is powered by, their packing plant is powered by solar. I mean, and they're in New Zealand, so they're not in as much sun as you would be where I'm now in Brisbane. But yeah, that was a pretty special and amazing experience to see that and such a lovely you know amazing guy that runs it really you know very um you sort of just inspirational you felt more positive after speaking to him you

32:11Robert Llewellyn:know he was he is inspirational because a large part of why he's done this is to prove to other farmers that actually this is a much more cost-effective way to to operate your farm yeah no he's i mean that's his main visitors other than the people who they're all french and british the ones who and students who are picking the who go there to pick the cherries in the season the vast majority of his visitors are other farmers from new zealand and australia who who kind of arrive cynical and leave evangelical you know because they see and they have a go on his electric tractor and they see and he's got a big you know he's converted a big truck which carries tons of cherries i mean it's very very impressive the whole thing i mean it's such an extraordinary i'd never i don't think i've ever been to a cherry farm before anywhere so it was you know an eye-opening thing the scale of it that he produces a lot and it was also one of those ones which um was put on our radar by a lot of people writing in the comments of various other videos saying yeah you guys really really need to go and see mike you need to go and see cherry tree farm um it's not even called cherry tree farm whatever it is called i'm desperately trying not to google it i'm not going to google it all yeah i can't remember it does show that if you want us to cover something your best way to let us know is in the comments we do read them even the nasty ones but then the other one that i did around that time was in um hobart which i'm now sort of looking back god we did travel quite a bit there but that was extraordinary to see hull 96 i believe 096 which was a a giant catamaran uh across i guess cross river although it's kind of almost cross bay ferry for between paraguay and argentina yeah yes uh on the river plate but i mean what you know this when you go around a shipyard where it's not a boat with it's not it's not a boat you know when you see the scale of it you go you walk along the side of it for 10 minutes go okay this is a ship i know the difference i know how big a boat is and this is a ship it's huge i think it's 2500 cars or something like that that can fit on it it's 2 ,500 people, passengers, it's about 800 cars, I think, which is a lot of cars still.

34:23And it's essentially a, it will be, and it's doing sea trials at the moment. I couldn't get there to see it. It was just too difficult. So it's on the water now being whizzed along with its incredibly enormous electric motors and batteries that are still lighter and smaller than the diesel engines they would have had to put in to do the same thing, which I think is extraordinary. so with a diesel engine and a full tank of of diesel is heavier than the whatever it is the four and a half megawatt hours of batteries and the huge motors they've got in it and they are they are big and it's it's powered like a jet ski so it fires water out of the back of the thing and it fires the water goes hundreds of meters out back when it's at full pelt you know so i i would I'd love to have seen it.

35:09But once it's going, it's basically a supermarket with a car park because it's all about duty-free. And the scale of it, when you're in it, you go, oh, no, this is like a big, you know, waitrose, a big out-of-city centre waitrose, or Tesco or Lidl.

35:28Robert Llewellyn:Yes, other supermarkets are available. But I think it's quite a high-end supermarket. That's why I was waitrosing it. um m &s food maybe that could be the other m &s yes but uh the guy who owned um that shipyard or that that shipping company oh what a dude he what would you guess he's in his 80s he's in his slightly later i think he's about 87 works full-time all day is amazing and full of energy and knowledge and enthusiasm and has built well that's his 96th hull so that's why it's hull 96 yeah and even prior to obviously doing this electric one they had been really pioneering in lightweight aluminium yeah structures as well so efficiency it's probably his middle name it is yeah and that whole yeah but it's important to point out for people who haven't seen that it is entirely aluminium the whole whole the whole structure of the ship is aluminium and it's kind of aluminium on a big you know i still think of aluminium as sort of a bit wibbly wobbly i don't know why it shouldn't but it's it's just a scale of the structure and the fact that it's there's twin hulls with this enormous arch in between it when you're inside underneath it it's like being in a cathedral it's on that sort of scale it is it is really impressive and camera uh camera operator louis had to go up in a very tall crane to get a shot of me standing on the front of the ship i think that was quite a challenge for him oh it was a cherry picker but a really for enormously tall cherry trees oh my god here would i have definitely spoken about that thing of like cooling of the void where you know at that point you could just drop a camera yes what if what happens if yeah yeah anyway but those were yeah i mean i think also you know it kind of fills me with a certain amount of hope i've just read this report from catl who are saying we they'll be powering ocean going transport ships in five years with their new batteries because that's all it is i mean the motors work it just turns a big screw you need a big electric motor you just need monstrous batteries yeah and solar panels you know that would help i suppose you could put them on the top and uh and like you know shipping it does need that redundancy and backup as well and you don't want a system so it's yeah it's it's tricky um the other thing that we should talk about because we've done a lot of them this year is live shows and so i guess question to both of you do you have any key highlights from any live shows this year any favorite panels or favorite shows stories that the people who attended might not be aware of any of the above i mean the one the one thing that's really stuck in my memory is the final day of the Sydney show in March of this year where for whatever reason I think we still don't quite know the audience the public that were attending sort of shifted so you suddenly knew you know like on the Friday you knew that most of the people that were there were long-term electric vehicle users or fans or stuff there There would be some people that have seen me on TV or whatever.

38:53Some people who've watched, a lot of people who've watched Fully Charged and all those things. So kind of what you expect. And there was a lot of them, but that was sort of, they all fitted in that kind of general thing. On the Sunday, it was people who were interested in electric cars have heard about them. They knew nothing about the Fully Charged show, everything electric. They'd never heard of me. They'd never heard of any of us. They'd never watched anything we've ever done. And they were there in droves. I mean, it was just jam-packed with people. And that was a kind of turning point for us, I think, really of any show, because even in Farnborough, where we do get really big audiences, I still feel they're within that, you know, they're kind of aware of what we're doing and aware of those discussions around that, whereas this felt completely different.

39:35And it was, you know, I think the racial mix as well was very reflective of Sydney. I.e. there's a lot of Asian people, a lot of Indian people, a lot of families, hundreds of families. And sometimes when I walk through, it's the same for all of us, but, you know, when I walk through the show at Farnborough, quite a lot of people will say hello or want to do a selfie or want to ask a question. I walk through the Sydney show, no one looked at me twice. I could get to the stage really fast. other than the fact that I was pushing through a crowd you know it was very very different thing and it kind of felt like this is what I was really pleased you know this is a kind of what we

40:11Robert Llewellyn:need to happen the next step yeah and I think it was sort of that moment of this is about affordability this is about people seeing a more efficient energy efficient way to live their lives and I feel like I really recollect you at one point always I think you might have been stood with a clipboard asking people why they were here why they were there what brought them here yes

40:39Robert Llewellyn:and yeah you're right none of them none of them had a scooby who you were which is great that's well that was that was one of the things we thought my goodness we should be publicizing the youtube channel at the live events rather than you know we always aren't there all the way around you know and actually i think what we now know is we don't need you know we don't have to publicize the low events on the YouTube channel. It's definitely, we should be giving out leaflets at the door. Have you ever watched this? Tune in, it's on YouTube. Please watch our videos. We make videos on YouTube. Please watch them.

41:13Robert Llewellyn:Jack, how about you? Which ones have been highlights for you?

41:16Imogen Bhogal:Oh, gosh. Well, obligatory Zap Heap Farnborough mention. I'm sure that we'll do a whole thing on that later on. But just one of the highlights of my year, an unforgettable experience filming the builds, and then doing the showdowns at Farnborough, and then what that did for the Farnborough show in terms of just how buzzy it was and how giddy with excitement everyone was. Unbelievable experience. I've got a panelist of the year, and I'm going to get a tiny bit serious for a moment here, if I may, gang. A rare occasion. But in Melbourne, the Melbourne shows a few weeks ago, Bobby was a bit unwell, so I took a few of his panels, and they were panels that I wouldn't typically do, i.e.

41:55Imogen Bhogal:not stuff where I'm just nerding out about cars. We did some stuff about home energy, public transport. And I had a panelist called Claire Walter on the panel about electrifying public transport. And she's a lecturer at Melbourne University, Human Sciences, Health Geography. She does research and policy work. And I don't want to say she derailed the session because that's the wrong word. But when she started talking about her specialist subject, it was very hard to talk about anything else for the rest of the session. because what she does is collates data about air pollution in cities, how it affects children in terms of spikes in learning difficulties and mortality rates, and then tries to convince the government to do something about it.

42:41Imogen Bhogal:Not by showing them the data about spikes in learning difficulties and mortality rates, but by trying to quantify financially why it's in our interests to do something about that. And it was not dissimilar, Imogen, I imagine, although quite different, to the experience you had when you were on the boats in Namibia and having this kind of reminder of like, ah, yes, there are actually bigger, more serious reasons why this is important. we i sort of try to distance myself from the sobering reasons why this electric stuff is important most of the time we don't like moaning at people or scaring people on our youtube channels i would much rather go hey these electric cars they're fantastic and cool and you're going to love them instead of sort of really going down the process of thinking actually well here's what happens if we don't electrify and green up quite quickly um but it was sobering is the word and just a really really really really powerful reminder of this sort of the stuff that really matters the reasons why these things really really really are important and it it turned out to be a very kind of inspiring and educational session but yeah I felt like someone had dumped a bucket of cold water over my head and yeah it's a privilege that even I having been to 20 of these flipping shows of ours now can come away from these sessions having learned new things and just having a different perspective um and that is what the shows are all about truth be told that just quickly imagine just because I've I'd forgotten about that Jack but on the Wednesday after the show we had dinner with my wife and I had dinner with um some there's no other way of describing them retired circus performers i'm just going to leave that there but one of them saw one of them had saw that talk because they were just really raving about it yeah so they'd come along but was it on those sunday i can't tell you anyway it was on one of the day anyway they were there no very very clear description because they didn't know any of the people who any of the people were that's not their field but they just went i've never even thought about it before this is amazing i can't stop thinking about telling all my friends about it you know they're not in our world of sort of they knew nothing about it you know at all but yeah anyway yeah no that was clearly it was a very good panel yeah but it is it is so fascinating

45:10Robert Llewellyn:because i mean you're right we learn something new on these panels every single time from experts and we often as is our role kind of skim the surface of a lot of these topics and then you get these opportunities to speak with global experts and get this new window this new perspective but I think the other thing that's interesting is that so often we've wanted to have this conversation from that position of these technologies are brilliant we can be really pragmatic about it we don't want this to be political they shouldn't be politicized but we are unfortunately in a period of time where we do have to go back to those hardcore facts and say are you really having an argument about whether it's a good idea or not to improve air quality and mortality rates for children are we there like are you denying that fact and it's sobering but it's also it's so important because i think it sadly we we're probably going to have to speak a little bit more about some of those things um just to make the pragmatism make sense perhaps yeah yeah yeah very true yeah but some positive reflections because we are coming towards the end ish maybe you never know we could be here for five minutes we could be here for 17 hours who knows um but jack you alluded to some cars that you think are going to be significant for 2026 and i almost i don't want to take away from your amazing video that i know you've just filmed but can you give us any glimpses of anything that you're excited about for next year

46:40Imogen Bhogal:I'd be delighted. Instead of giving you specific cars, I'm going to give you some macro trends, which I do a lot of these at the start of our new cars guide video, which is going to come out somewhere in mid-January, but I'll just give you a little flavor. Here are three things I'm excited for in 2026. First of all, big year for British automotive, I think. Admittedly, it's quite high-end niche stuff, but Jaguar Land Rover, we'll finally see the new era of electric Jaguar. I'm personally quite excited about that. We'll finally see the flipping electric Range Rover that they've been teasing for years and years and years, which you cannot possibly imagine being anything other than a runaway global hit.

47:18Imogen Bhogal:Caterham might just release a small lightweight electric sports car. Big year for British electric stuff. I think the big overarching story of what's coming out this coming year is more cheap small stuff. last couple of years has been about that 30 000 pound price point which the mg4 kind of came in as the hero of and then everyone else panicked and delivered their own cars at that price point that's done now there's too many good cars costing about 30 grand this year it's about 25 000 pounds lots of those vw group uh then you kind of meb plus stuff um and then a couple of really exciting sort of 20 ,000 pound offerings.

47:56Imogen Bhogal:I'm talking Renault Twingo, potentially MG2, that's being teased. So just more small, cheap stuff. A couple more, big year for Japan. Again, Japanese industry kind of just getting a bit serious about this thing now. Nissan, we were talking about them earlier, have launched two electric cars to date. This year, they'll deliver three more and unveil another two. I think that's right. So that really kind of symbolizes the fact that Japan are kind of going, okay, maybe actually electric is the future. The whole hydrogen thing that we're banging on about. Anyway, hey, good for them. We're happy to have them along.

48:33Imogen Bhogal:And then final one, this is very subjective, but I think that cars are going to get more interesting this year. I have this idea that, and this is actually something that an audience member kind of posed as a question at a session at Farnborough. He's kind of going, do you think cars have got a bit boring in the last few years? I was kind of turning it over in my head and I was like maybe kind of a little bit and maybe the car brands have been so hung up on big important scary jobs like developing new electric vehicle platforms ripping out all the robots in their factories and fitting new ones that can build EVs retraining their staff figuring out the whole software debacle that there has been a little bit of just a not lack of effort but little nice thoughtful details and clever interesting designs has potentially just slightly fallen by the wayside in the last couple of years, while bigger fish have been fried.

49:30Imogen Bhogal:Looking at what's coming out next year, I just think there's some really cool, interesting, desirable electric vehicles. And that makes me happy as a car nerd, because I don't want cars to just become sterile boxes that get us from A to B. I want them to be interesting and desirable and slightly improve your day when you get in them. and there's a lot of stuff coming out this year that reflects that in my opinion so there you go there's my macro trends you don't have to watch my new cars guide now oh no but please do because it's always so brilliant and there's such yeah such succinct reflections and i just want to read you the note that i wrote on my bit of paper here fun equals next big thing so I can technically agree with you on your last one just phrased it in a far less eloquent way

50:19Robert Llewellyn:um Robert how about you any anything that you're looking forward to predicting want to have any hit list between 26. I think the thing I'm kind of have been excited about for the last 10 years and finally it feels like it's finally maybe starting to happen in a more plausible way is vehicle to grid. So the experiments they're going to be doing in South Australia, there's numerous projects here, but also in the UK. So I know Octopus are doing, you know, it's that finally, oh, like here's the box, you plug it in here, the electricity can go both ways. You don't have to do it if you don't want to, but the fact that you can finally, and if you can sell some electricity when you're not using your car at five o 'clock in the evening for more money than you paid for it.

51:08You know, it's always going to be tiny. It's not going to make a living out of doing that. But the fact that you can, I know, will click a switch in people who've not got an electric car and don't know anything about them and aren't interested. And they go, oh, I see. You can buy and sell. You know, you've got this big battery and you can buy and sell stuff. And on a macro level, I mean, I just – it was basically an engineer at the National Grid when I first went to the National Grid. control room, I don't know how long ago, 10 plus years ago. Yeah, they just said, well, imagine there's 10 million electric cars, and, and 2 million are plugged in, and we can take a little bit of power from each of those.

51:48That's three large nuclear power plants, we've got switch on like that. You know, when you hear them talking about that, then, well, it, you know, it just hasn't happened, and it hasn't happened, and it hasn't happened until it feels like we'll see it actually start i don't think it's going to be a big thing next year but it will start to happen where you can go well they're doing it here there's 500 cars over there in derbyshire or leicester or somewhere where there are they are connected to the grid they are able to you know send power out i think you know i just think it's such an obvious use for a car when you're not using

52:22Robert Llewellyn:it yeah and i think the byd and octopus partnership will be certainly pushing it most acutely here in the UK. I think on that lease deal is for about 300 pounds, maybe a bit over. You get the BYD Dolphin and you basically get free miles if you agree to plug it in. And I think that's what's interesting with all of this. We're so fortunate to see the frontier of these technologies or these technologies that are emerging. And they're brilliant. We know they're brilliant. But ultimately, until they are convenient or cost effective or more comfortable or all of the other things they're not going to win the majority of people's hearts and minds and i think vehicle to grid is one of those ones where it's like oh i see i see like i suddenly the world of energy and and vehicles make sense to me and i can really benefit from this so i think it's such an important innovation that you have to see at scale yeah i

53:20Imogen Bhogal:just very quickly i again covered a panel for robert at the melbourne show which i would not normally have done no no it was a pleasure Robert please uh about V2G and I was sort of playing the layman because I am one about this technology and I was like so panelists break it down to me why as why would I as a normal civilian want to help the grid by giving my car and supplying it as a battery and one of the guests went do you like not spending money I said yes I said do you like being given money I said yes he said well there you go yeah somewhere like ours where they've all got solar panels on their roof they are staring down the barrel of a future where they're not driving for free they're getting paid to own these electric cars they're making money off them because they're charging when it's cheap and they're selling it back to the grid when the grid needs it it's yeah unbelievably exciting yeah but that's a good shout robert i can't wait to

54:13Robert Llewellyn:see that come to fruition yeah and i do think in a context of um and i know from almost breaking news Robert you've had a couple of rants just a couple about AI and data centers and the vast amounts of energy that they consume and all points that I agree and water yeah all points that I absolutely agree with you with but I was reading this article yesterday about how economic growth is really contingent on growing the amount of electricity that we have access to absolutely yeah and if data centers are going to be here for you know the rest of time yeah i just so hope that it pushes us in the direction of cheap affordable clean electricity which is cheaper and more affordable more sustainable than the fossil fuel equivalents yeah um so i think yeah hopefully there's a couple of things that are around the area so um because i discussed that with it's in recent podcast, Scott Cooney from Clean Technica, but they've got an amazing article about effectively data centres in space.

55:25And actually it makes sense. I mean, I can imagine getting hundreds and hundreds of tonnes of servers up into space, kind of, there's a few challenges there. But, you know, you have 24-hour solar. There's two aspects of it, which I've heard before. There is massive solar arrays in space, geostationary, massive satellites, and they beam down electricity 24 hours a day because there's no dawn or dusk or night. That was one thing. But he is so supremely optimistic about everything, completely at odds with the current administration in the United States, because there are amazing things happening in America, as has always been the case.

56:06But the other one is a report I read this week, which is about the cost, the global now, the kind of global cost of solar farms and batteries. And it's come down to just below the cheapest way of producing electricity in any other way. So gas, pica plants, nuclear, coal, everything, everything, hydro, wind, it's cheaper than all of those. And this is 24 hours. This isn't just for an hour in the evening. this is a 24-hour guaranteed supply. I think it's$65 per megawatt hour.

56:43Robert Llewellyn:Yeah. Which works out. Does that work out at 6.5 cents a kilowatt hour? I think so. Divide by 1 ,000. 1 ,000. I have to do that. Where do I move? Anyway, yeah. Yeah, so that is the cost it can do. And it's because of the drop in prices of batteries, which are just, it dropped 40 % last year, the price of manufacturing batteries, and they expect it to do the same. In 2024, it dropped 40 % and they expect it to do the same. So they've just got much cheaper. The materials have got, we know, we've talked about it a lot, the materials have got less contentious and cheaper and more abundant salt. And more circular as well.

57:29Robert Llewellyn:like you know there's batteries that exist in the world let's not use virgin materials let's reuse those existing batteries yeah so i mean that's that's exciting and i'm hopefully we don't know for sure but i'm going to see a fairly substantial solar and battery array in australia in the new year but um we haven't we haven't finalized yet i should probably shouldn't say in case we don't get to do it but it looks hopeful yes we so i just had a call with them this morning you'd sent an email over the weekend they have 980 000 solar panels there right and i reckon we'll film there with a 97 certainty yeah okay that's good that's pretty good yeah okay that's right because it's not finished is it it's it's only because i think it's going to be 1.8 million panels when it's fully done so they've got them they haven't put them all in yet they've done the first it's like a phase one phase it's a lot however yeah yeah yeah um well you know i'm so i'm so glad that you brought up the 65 dollars per megawatt hour stat because at the start of this year we did a video about predictions for 2025 and that was one of them not the specific cost but that just the economic case for batteries and solar would supersede that of of coal and gas and we're there and it makes these things harder to argue with yeah yeah yeah um before we close any last tiny little bits that you want to say or reflect on about the wonderful year that we've had on the show oh i mean i think that on the whole in just in on from a personal level when you when I see the news or I read something in the, I was going to say in the papers.

59:11I did buy a newspaper this year just so that I at least bought one. But you know, and it's pretty grim. And then when I look at what we're doing, you know, I think it's not deluded, but it is optimistic. You know, I think that if we can continue to follow that path, we're not kind of going, everything's fabulous. You know, we're sort of acknowledging that there's some bad stuff going on in the world. But there is, there is large lumps of hope and of optimism and of positivity and that's kind of i feel now that's kind of our job is to make sure we push that out as much as we can because there's plenty of negative stuff we certainly don't need to add to that no and the huge lumps of positivity are

59:56Robert Llewellyn:so often enabled by just the incredible people that we meet in panels on shoots who are so inspiring and I do feel like we have a real duty to shine a massive spotlight on those people and just shout from the hilltops the wonderful things that they're doing um Jack I know that that's something that you know every we always have a chat in the back room after panels and we come away being like oh my god that was actually a great discussion there's always someone who

1:00:27Imogen Bhogal:totally blows us away there really is yeah there really is it's I think the the reason it's the thing that keeps us going it's the reason that we have the energy and the optimism and the sort of willingness to plow on um you know in the face of just like endless um pessimistic and often inaccurate press about this stuff um yeah we don't we don't just wake up fall out of bed all energized and motivated it's the people that we meet in this job um and the stuff that they're doing um that that sort of keeps us keeps us going well i think that is probably the perfect

1:01:11Robert Llewellyn:note to end on so if anyone who has been involved in our shows in any capacity be that a panelist be that the pr who got the panelists to the panel and be that any of our episodes from the bottom of our hearts thank you for keeping us positive this year thank you for helping us to meet the 26 million or so people who've also heard your message this year as well on our channel thank you to our team who have put in an enormous amount of effort to deliver all five shows this year plus our production team who have been to all five shows and churned out some 169 episodes I don't know how they do it it is nice astonishing um so yeah honestly thank you um but that's it if you have been thank you for listening and watching and merry christmas and merry christmas Happy New Year.

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