Godfather of EVs Turns New Leaf With 'Brill' British Batteries Move & Urges UK EV Industry to Unite.

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1:00Hello and welcome to the Everything Electric podcast. Today's guest, Andy Palmer, has been on the show before. I've interviewed him many times. He's an extraordinary man. First met him around about 2011 when the Nissan Leaf was being developed. He was very much, that was very much his baby, very, very involved in that. He then went on to work at Aston Martins. And since then, he has been involved in many, many things. charging infrastructure companies, battery companies, and most recently EVUK, the kind of lobbying group that we're involved in helping set up and helping maintain. All of those topics we discuss in great detail.

1:44And just while I remember that, it is quite important that the next show that we're doing this week is at Farnborough, at Farnborough International, just outside London. And we have, there's some amazing stuff going on there, but very importantly on the Friday, that is the B2B day, business to business. There's going to be a lot of business people talking business to other business people and discussing all the aspects of the electric vehicle and renewable energy transition that we're going through at the moment and how that can best be facilitated and made easier for people to deal with and how we're going to do all those things.

2:24A lot of that stuff's being discussed on the Friday at Farnborough International. And EV UK and all the people involved in that are going to be there, but there's a lot of other stuff going on. Still loads of test drives for people, lots and lots of cars there. Then for those who are not in the business-to-business bracket, just normal people like you and I, the Saturday and Sunday is the public days, and that is when we do thousands of test drives. Amazing array of cars we've got this year. It's extraordinary. But also in the afternoon of both days, at about, I think at about two o 'clock, something like that, we are filming live in front of an audience the tests, the final tests of Zap Heap.

3:09And we are so, we've had lots of meetings where it is literally terrifying for us and the production, how we capture what's going to be quite a dramatic test. These are big, powerful machines. They're all electric. We don't know what they're going to do. We have a big audience seating area that is safe. That's all I can guarantee you. That's safe. But the rest of us, I think we're in horrifying. Well, it's going to be fine. It'll be fine. But it's just that these are not like small machines that aren't very powerful. These are kind of fairly big, chunky, weird machines. I mean, you won't believe what you see.

3:46So we're filming the test of that, and then that will go out as the shows later on in the year, the Zap Heap shows. So we've done two pilot shows. So on the first day, on the Saturday, we'll test two of the teams and the machines they've built. On the second day, on the Sunday, we'll test two completely different machines with two different teams. So we're really looking forward to it, but with trepidation and terror. Isn't that just the best mixture of things to have? Anyway, it is genuinely, I can't tell you, I was really looking forward to today. Because sometimes when I record podcasts, it's people I've never met before.

4:20I don't know them. I'm a little bit tense. I've got my questions all here. Will it work? Will they, you know, I didn't have to worry about Andy. He's just amazing. What an incredible enthusiast and a knowledgeable man. And his enthusiasm and optimism is based on literal engineering, ground up skills that he understands how things work, how things are made. Not only how things from that point of view, but how things are manufactured, how things, how materials are sourced and turned into things that we need. Really interesting. So please welcome to the Everything Electric podcast, Andy Palmer. our three free youtube channels on evs and clean tech are funded by our fun packed test drive tastic events in farmbra london the southwest the north melbourne and sydney and next up everything electric farmbra and new for uk viewers you can now buy a battery ev and much more at everything electric dot store so andy thank you so much for taking time to to talk to us it i mean it's always a joy to pick your brains because you've got, I think it's fair to say you've had a bit of experience in the automotive industry and you know some stuff.

5:30Would that be a fair appraisal? I guess you've been around the block a few times. Yes, indeed. Thank you for that. I just turned 46 years. Yeah. I started as a 16-year-old in a company called Automotive Products, do clutches and brakes in 1979. So yes, I guess I've been around the block a bit. Yes, yes. But then, I mean, what's incredible actually as well, if you think of the, say, the 40 years prior to that, the changes that you would have seen in engineering and automotive would have been mainly sort of around safety, probably more fuel efficient. You know, there would have been changes. But what you've seen in your career is phenomenal change.

6:13You know, if you think of what's happened in the last, say, the last 10 years in particular with the electrification and hydrogen, all the things that have been tried out in the last 10 years. Yes, I agree. I agree. And it's a very innovative moment, I suppose, goes back, feels like back in the 1930s and 40s, in fact, when you were getting really big changes. But, for example, it's basically, for example, I'm a transmission engineer by training. So for a long time, particularly when I was at Nissan, I was arguing for the need to continue a manual transmission rather than also and i was right i mean basically europe stayed for a long time on uh on manual transmissions and all of a sudden because of the i suppose the advent and the adoption importantly of electric vehicles no one is taking their tests with manual gearbox anymore right and that's the seed change that the technology is driving yeah yeah now that is true because both my kids who were now in their 30s had to learn to do manual gear change but they both learned to drive in a Nissan Leaf in my original Nissan Leaf we still got it so they they went what's this thing you have to move this lever around and press it why's it got three pedals you know it's very antiquated in some respect isn't it although just of course yeah they've got a joy from driving and racing eraser.

7:37Right, yes. And interestingly, I've just started using basically synthetic fuel as a means of powering that to get to the net zero effect. But it does just show you the technological change that's around us, be it, as you say, basically electric, be it's hydrogen, although I'm not a great fan of hydrogen for cars. and synthetic fuel where I am. I am a big fan. Yeah, so can you briefly, I know this is slightly off tangent for us, but briefly explain what the difference between, say, synthetic fuel and biofuel. I mean, there is a difference, isn't there? Synthetic fuel essentially creates, you can create gasoline out of thin air, literally out of thin air.

8:22What you're doing is taking CO2 out of the atmosphere and turning it basically with an awful lot of energy. You're turning it into gasoline. and then of course you burn it and it emits it back the co2 goes back into the atmosphere but net net you're net zero so you're right you're you're you're using and and creating co2 in equal proportions so in that respect it's very good it's a very good way of getting to net zero but the fuel itself is rather expensive and you're using a lot of electrical energy that arguably you could more efficiently used by going directly to the car the other thing of course is it's not zero tailpipe so you're burning fuel and therefore you're putting pollutants into the local atmosphere so particulates or nox so so there are as always there are merits and demerits of every uh every every technology generally speaking i would say that ev has more of the solutions than it does of the problems yeah yeah and actually i have to admit so i haven't driven you know combustion cars for you well i think i've driven a rented one about five eight years ago in italy which was great fun and i kept stalling it i had a manual gearbox which i've you know i'm old i've driven manual gearboxes for like 42 years and then i stole the damn thing all the time but i've just recently literally the last few days had a loan of a um hyundai ioniq 5n which has noise and paddle shift gears.

9:56I've got to tell you, it's utterly unnecessary to do that when you go down the shops to get some milk, but I still do. I mean, and it makes you feel like you're going faster. It's a really interesting car because of the way it is. I mean, it's beautifully done. The software works and it does little backfires and burbling exhaust when you're slowing down. I mean, it's ridiculous. It's all fake. You can only hear it inside, thank goodness. Your neighbours don't have to hear it. But it does reiterate, and it's a problem I tried to grapple with when I was developing the Nissan LEAF. But sound is an important sense for us, and it evokes emotion.

10:38As we know, music produces emotion. The question is, does it have to sound like an internal combustion engine, or do you make it sound like something very different? And certainly with the Leaf, we try to create a noise maker and make it a different sound when the car was reversing. I'm sure that we didn't get it right. But I recently drove a simulator. I won't say for which company. But it had a number of sounds, which also increased in volume and intensity the faster you went. So you got this sense of the speed. And it does make a difference. And I do think that there is still some revolution around sound that we need to get to.

11:25Yeah. I mean, I think it's, you know, one of the things I remember discovering very early on. So when I would have first had a leaf or even prior to that, is I just set a camera up by the side of a road out in the countryside and left it running and watched. And so four cars drove past and I drove past as fast as I could. i was in a mitsubishi imeve right i went past as fast as i could and it sounded exactly the same there was no it wasn't quieter you know at speed but at low speed above about lethally quiet yeah 15 miles an hour then the the sound of the the generally the the wheel tire noise the tires becomes the dominant noise so yeah you're only you're only basically this the the sound at low speed is arguably um useful to uh to to pedestrians yeah to warn but otherwise it's it's more an emotion around sound and yeah we forget how how important our other senses not just our eyes we forget how the other senses are important including smell yeah you know if you jump going to a shangri-la hotel anywhere around the world you're immediately hit by the perfume that tells you're in a shangri-la and it's it's it's it's an important sensory uh um means of you know telling you that you're in a safe place you're in a you're in a gorgeous environment yeah i i'm going to admit now i've never been in a shangri-la hotel i now want to go because i i mean that was the the thing that i never think about it until you go to a hotel where you love the soap yeah If they give you a little bar of soap, I'll go, oh, my God, that is amazing.

13:02So I have nicked some soap. I've still got one bit of it here that was really good in a nice hotel. The same is true of, you know, people used to talk about, you know, jumping into an old car and smelling the Connolly leather. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. That's very, very familiar, that old smell. But let's try and get back on. I'll try and get back on. Sorry, it's my fault. Because what I find fascinating at the moment, I've just been reading a couple of articles before I spoke to you. the sort to find your way to what is really happening i mean that this applies to every topic on the planet but specifically regarding electric vehicle uptake the statistics tell us that the the uptake is constant and increasing and it's very particularly let's stick with the uk at the moment yeah but then the opinion pieces you might read go oh it's all over it's a complete failure nobody wants them we're being they're being rammed down our throats by government And, you know, obviously the truth lies somewhere between the two.

14:04It feels to me. There's some truth in it, but, I mean, look, a lot of it is obviously lobby group funded. We have to remember that. The oil and gas lobby is extremely powerful. The OEM industry is extremely powerful. Car companies that are behind are lobbying hard, naturally. And, look, I mean, I've used the same tactics myself as part of a car. So it's just business in the end of the day. But we have to remember that. The adoption rate is partly government incentivized. But honestly, incentives have been part of the industry from the day dot, right? You know, basically legislating for a man with a red flag walking in front of the car, legislating for catalysts euro one legislations for cfc free air conditioning i mean the car industry is is full of regulation and it's also full of incentives um and yes right now evs um benefit from it and to some extent even you know fuel duty so uh yeah petrol cars benefit from it I think the interesting stuff is to look at the second-hand market, because if you start to see these cars coming through in the second-hand market in quantity, then you know that you've started to overcome some of that inertia.

15:32And it's my great belief that the issue is no longer the car. The issue is basically the price of the car and standard economic supply. You know, basically, we live in a world of pricing elasticity. And if your electric car is more expensive than your ICE car, then you'll never match it from a market share point of view. So the first and key thing is for the equivalent electric car, it has to be at the same price as the internal combustion car. That will drive people to acquire. The second point is the cost of running, and that's where you can have a compelling advantage for the electric car. So basically, it's been my goal for the past five years to try and work out that dilemma of low running costs.

16:25And in fact, even zero running costs, because if you're smart in the way that you deal with your energy generation, and so if you're lucky enough to have a roof if you're lucky enough to be able to charge or basically off-road overnight then it's possible as one looks forward to having a proportion of your electricity for free so imagine a world where where basically the car's cost was the same as an internal combustion vehicle but it costs you nothing to run it the majority of your time forget all of the discussions around the environmental impact uh benefits of of electric cars or how nice they are to drive how quick they are etc etc it just doesn't cost you anything to to run that economic argument is a game changer and i think that's where we're going and it really revolves around the decentralization and democratization of energy deployment yeah yeah Yeah.

17:26I mean, it's so much down to, I mean, that was one of the questions that I've wanted to ask you, but also have been asked is that the thing that I still find can be challenging is much, much better than it was. But it is a sort of universality of public charging. I'm not talking about charging at home. but you know if there was one thing that you needed just one to use any charger any speed anywhere you know that would be and i think that's a hugely complex problem that i think it has been struggled with because i know you worked with podpoint you were you were for many years i was the interim ceo for a while and i was chairman for a while as you know it's now been sold back into edf which i think tells you that the energy companies see um see electrification as really really important obviously you can see that with octopus as well and yeah and their their sales line of electric cars so the electric car is part of that energy infrastructure uh and is an important part of it going forward uh but but charging is really really important absolutely yeah i think we have a reasonably prolific rollout of electric chargers yeah but they've got to work i i went to i went to watch my the the other love of my life uh leeds united at the weekend and coming back down the m1 pulled into one of the uh one of the service stations only to find a whole lineup of new chargers none of which were working and when that happens that's so frustrating yeah uh and that's that's you know we we don't really i don't i don't think we really have range anxiety anymore but we probably still do have charger anxiety you have charger anxiety well and that's the you sort of hope that because there's a whole row of them it won't be but if all of them are out that is really bad well it is like i mean i can remember going you know on a motorway in you know 30 years ago stopping because i really needed some petrol and the petrol pumps were out of order because there was no electricity to power the pumps yes they'd had a power cut so then i i can't remember what i did but i was stuffed i couldn't go anywhere else the point is ultimately and i said at the start the thing about evs is ultimately they have more of the solutions than they do the problems yes for for ev charging particularly fast charging infrastructure the concept of putting a battery behind it gives you uninterrupted supply, but also has the possibility to significantly reduce the cost of charging.

20:04Because obviously, you charge the battery up with cheap electricity, and you hopefully pass on that cost saving to the consumer so they don't have to buy expensive electricity. So battery storage, and as I said, this decentralization of supply and democratization of supply is really a key. and the EV, at the end of the day, it's a big energy storage device. It has a role to play in giving back electricity to the grid and helping you with that concept of free travel. Yeah. I mean, that was definitely a topic that was on my list, was what your opinion is of vehicle to whatever, grid, home, other vehicle, whatever it is.

20:52But I mean, that topic is fairly central in my mind as it's clearly the next step that could really have a massive impact and actually could increase interest in the vehicles as well. Yeah, you know, 2012, I installed the first leaf to home system in the world, my home. It came after the tsunami. We saw people dying because of lack of electrical supply. so we raced it through the lab uh so it's been a you know 2012 it's been a long time coming but the the idea that some part of your battery can give back to either to your home battery or back to the grid i think is an important element of the future i i don't think we'll be cycling our batteries from you know 80 to 20 but i think the idea that you cycle 10 of your battery 10 % of your battery on average, 7 to 10 kilowatt hours.

21:52If you think about that 10 % sold back when the electricity is costing 70p and 10 % of it's that 7p, that's giving you free miles. And that's the incentive for plugging in your car. But I do think it probably works in harmony with a home battery, and a home battery will be as ubiquitous as a boiler in your home in the future. Yeah. No, I think you're right. I mean, I've just seen a report. In fact, we've just reported on it. The colossal uptake of home batteries in Australia. Well, obviously, they are a bit ahead of us in terms of solar installation in houses. It's very ubiquitous there. But, I mean, they had a very modest government support to have a battery fitted and it was overwhelmed instantaneously.

22:40instantaneously i mean everybody would and they did something like 160 000 batteries they installed in 28 days just an insane uptake of it but it's you know that stuff then you once you get to a certain level you know the fact that you and i have batteries in our houses makes no difference to the national grid or anybody else but the one one a million people do that makes a very big impact there's a concept called vpp which is virtual power plants and the idea that's what You link all of the home batteries together. And as soon as you get over one megawatt hour, you can trade back to the grid.

23:16And I think that's the game changer. Now, it does require your DNO and national grid to be cooperative, and you can understand why they might resist. And talking about lobby groups, there's probably one right there that we need to think about in the future. But we all know that electricity is insanely expensive in the UK. Why not grasp the opportunity to have a linkage back into the grid and club together with your neighbours to create these networks of VPPs? Yes. No, you're absolutely – I mean, it's been such a long time coming. I do feel now that it's – the technology is catching up with the idea.

23:58Yes, yes. And more and more cars are fitted with that ability. You know, they're being built with a bi-directional power ability. Indeed. Indeed. There's one, and I get rather passionate about this subject, but from an industrial point of view, you have to step into technology and not step away. If you use all of your energies to protect and create tariff barriers and create regulatory barriers, you step away from the technology. And you see that happening right now in the US, basically stepping back into the world of internal combustion engines because it doesn't believe in that transition, perhaps.

24:38Whereas, you know, my encouragement to all governments, especially the UK government, is you need to step in. Because if you don't step in, that space will be dominated by China. That's already made 20 years ago the decision to dominate in this area. and so whether it be electric cars whether it be batteries whether it be the ai interaction into interactions that make all of this work we need to step into it we've probably lost the the initiative on things like batteries and even maybe things like electric vehicles we haven't yet lost the uh the advantage in things like software stacks and electronics and i do believe that's still a point of entry where we as the UK can win back some of that lost ground.

25:31Right. I mean, that is quite chilling. But I mean, I absolutely agree with you that, that, you know, I went to China for the first time this year. You know, I've been accused on numerous occasions in comments on YouTube for being a shill for the Chinese Communist Party, because I've said, but what I'm saying is, guys, look, these cars are coming. you know they might they might we might have to stop them coming but the fact is they're being made they're being made really well they're being made in numbers we can't even comprehend you know and that when you're then you can't put the genie back in the bottle you know they 1992 i think is the first time that the central central government government of china made an industrial strategy that says we're going to win in new energy vehicles and in 1992 they didn't They didn't even know what that was, what that meant.

26:24By 2002, I was a member of the board of Donfar. They already started to articulate that as either plug-in hybrids or electric vehicles. And obviously, as time went by, you saw the rise of the electric vehicle. You cannot put that technology back into the genie bottle. It's out there. and they will do everything possible, including hopefully building factories in the West and hopefully in the UK, in order to try to win that battle. The worst thing that European and American industry can do is basically pretend it doesn't exist. You've got to step into the problem, not step away from the problem.

27:05You've got to win on your own terms. And that means doing things better than them and might even mean being a little bit humble. about working with some of these Chinese because some of their technology, honestly, is 10 years ahead. And that's, as you said, that's not a commentary on the politics of China. That's a commentary on the quality of the vehicles that they're making. Yeah, and the engineers that are there. I mean, when I heard that statistic, I did just, this was at the Shanghai Motor Show, I just stood for it. I had to be pushed because I just heard mouth open so that, you know, there's roughly 100 ,000 people work for Tesla.

27:43around the world, which is amazing for a new car company to reach that. But then you hear that there's 115 ,000 who work in BYD's R &D department and they employ over a million people. And you go, oh, okay. And if you have the chance, Robert, at any time, visit BYD or visit Geely. Yeah, hopefully I will. It is stunning, absolutely stunning, the amount of capable manpower there, but also their factories, which are largely lights-off factories these days. They're all run by robots. And hence, you know, the quality of the vehicles. We know that if you drive a Chinese car, it may lack a little bit in Seoul, but it doesn't lack anything in terms of perceived quality or basically performance.

28:34It's really, really good. They are really good. I mean, do you think, I mean, you sort of implied it a little bit, but that we might be seeing, say, in the next 10 years, some partnerships or I don't know how you, or joint ventures with well-established brands that we all know in the West and in Europe and Chinese. I mean, I think it's almost happening already, isn't it? It's starting to happen. I mean, it started, obviously, the other way around. When the Western car makers wanted access to the Chinese market, the Chinese government forced a collaborative model. So you had to be part of a joint venture.

29:14Obviously, from that joint venture, those car companies, those Chinese car companies learned how to make cars and learn the technology and weren't shy in borrowing that technology, let's say, like that. But now, basically, they've been relentlessly moving forward, and you see it particularly in their technology of batteries. We probably in the West need to be a little bit humble and think about a similar mechanism where we allow access to our markets, but only in return for collaboration. and that's the quid pro quo and that's the leverage. Much more powerful than this honestly stupidity of putting a tariff on it.

29:59Only the tariff is just a tax on your own people. It's so blunt where there are much smarter ways of creating jobs in one's country. Yeah. Yeah.

30:16Can we talk a bit, a little bit about EV UK, because that is, you know, not something we talk about that much on Everything Electric show, but it's definitely something, you know, I've been involved with in the peripheral. Dan Caesar, who's our CEO, is very, you know, very much part of it. But you're part of that as well, because that, as we mentioned lobbying earlier on, it is effective. Am I right in describing it as effectively a lobby group for the other side? That's a very small, polite lobby group to say, Hang on a minute. Maybe we don't need to open more oil fields. Can we look at electric vehicles a bit more seriously?

30:50In its simplest way, I've agreed with Dan to, as the company is evolving, to become the chairman, which is a nice honour for me. And at its simplest level, it's about putting the record straight, so about trying to to help with the the education uh of of joe public in terms of the the merits of evs uh and you know i do it myself and i always try to do it in a balanced way because i'm not anti-internal combustion engine i spent my whole career developing engines um but but i i dislike the discourse which is very one side or the other so yes so i i like what dan is doing i like what EV UK is doing in terms of setting the record straight and giving more information around EVs and to some extent representing the EV industry.

31:49And obviously, you know, already signed up Octopus as one of the partners and OVO also as one of the partners. Hopefully some of the car companies will come on board as well. And basically, it's a collaboration of the willing to try and help with that transformation. So it's consistent with my own personal goals around basically solving that dilemma that I couldn't solve with the Nissan LEAF, which was not being able to get to net zero, only what we call back then zero well-to-wheel, only being able to remove the tailpipe but you've got to you know basically you've got to go further than that you've got to remove the carbon from the atmosphere and to do that it's not only great technology but it's also about education yeah i mean it's so difficult to constantly remind yourself i mean i without question live in an ev bubble and that's always a danger and so a lot of the people i talk to they've already got electric cars there's not it's not even a topic anymore but the other evening I went out to dinner with a lot of our local people that I live near here and a very lovely old lady who I've known for years she arrived in a Land Rover with a lot of kids and she got out and she was so sweet we sort of helped her out the Land Rover and she said oh you did you come in one of your electric cars and I said yes she said did it blow up that's what it said that's what i read in the daily mail and she just answered all my questions and i i said nothing and she said oh i suppose i shouldn't believe everything i read in the daily mail i gave her a hug i said no you really shouldn't but the point is 80 times less likely to catch fire it's well engineered you know as far as i know you please correct me if you know differently robert but uh as far as i know the nissan leaf has never suffered from a thermal incident um caused by that i've never heard of one i've never um yeah and you know one could say that the nissan leaf was very conservatively engineered and if that's the case then i'm entirely responsible for that but the the the the point above all else was was basically had to be safe you know these days i work in the world of of batteries both you know basically static batteries and mobile batteries, vehicle batteries.

34:18What's interesting, again, back to the Chinese, they're legislating zero thermal instances. So they're holding the manufacturers accountable for ensuring their batteries never catch fire. And that's done by a whole load of different ways. Great packaging, basically the way that you control the energy density. importantly the way that you control the battery and the way that you suppress it if you do have any incidences so it's all within the engineer's gift uh it it probably means that we we won't see quite such a fast race to the bottom on price but basically you can engineer an electric battery to be fire free you cannot say that about petrol it's very hard to say that about petrol that but I mean, I think the point I was making with the old lady was that's her instant response.

35:15The electric vehicle, oh, the batteries catch fire. You know, and you go, well, they don't. But I'm not going to argue with you. But no, I absolutely agree with you. And that was a fascinating thing I saw repeatedly at the Shanghai Motor Show this year was big videos that showed the testing of battery packs. And they used diggers with a big spike on and they smashed through it. They folded it in half. And my favourite one, I think it was CATL's stand. They put a battery on a load of bricks out in a yard and a man poured a load of petrol on it and set fire to the battery. So the battery was covered in petrol and set fire and it was...

35:53And then the flames died down and some of the plastic had melted and then it went out. Yes. And it won't burn. No, that was the point they were making. And look, that's one of the reasons that one could say that you've seen this huge revival in LFP chemistry, so lithium phosphate. It's much harder to see a thermal runaway. And, you know, technically it's less energy dense than NMC, but over time has been improving. It's safe. You can do the Chinese nail test and you don't see a thermal runaway. And it's a demonstration that, you know, as I said, EVs have more solutions than they have problems.