Why getting more EVs on the road is all about charging

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The first time I took a road trip in an electric vehicle, I didn’t mind the charging very much. I wasn’t in a rush, and there was an In-N-Out Burger near the fast charger where I stopped. By the time I’d finished my fries, the car was pretty much ready to go. 

But a person can only eat so much fast food—if my journey had been much longer and I needed to stop more than once, the pit stop might not have felt quite so convenient. Especially when, by comparison, gas stations can get internal-combustion vehicles back on the road in just a few minutes. 

But fast charging might be getting even faster soon. Last week, the world’s largest EV-battery maker announced plans to make new battery cells that can charge nearly twice as quickly as the competition. It could be a big deal, as I wrote about in a recent story. But there’s more to charging than just batteries, so let’s dive into fast charging: Why is it so crucial, and what will it take to speed things up? 

Charging up 

Charging speed is “very important” for EV uptake, especially as EVs start to gain ground in the market against gas-powered cars, says Jiayan Shi, an analyst for BNEF, an energy research firm.

But despite its crucial role, things aren’t going so well in charging. A lack of reliable charging infrastructure is one of the main barriers to EV adoption, according to the International Energy Agency. 

Existing stations are still too sparse in many parts of the world, including major EV markets like the US and Europe. The state of fast chargers, the kind that can add up to 80% of a vehicle’s range in under 30 minutes, is especially rough. 

The US added about 6,300 fast chargers to its stock in 2022, bringing the total to around 28,000, according to the IEA. It’s a big number, but not nearly enough—by 2025, the country will need to quadruple the total number of installed chargers (including both fast and slow varieties) from 2022 levels to meet expected demand from all the EVs coming onto the roads, according to a report by S&P Global.

Things are going better in other parts of the world. Globally, about 330,000 new fast chargers were built in 2022, and nearly all that growth happened in China.

But even today’s fastest chargers still can’t come close to competing with a trip to the gas station. So in addition to getting more infrastructure built and keeping chargers reliably online, some companies want to speed up charging even more. 

Speeding up

So how fast could charging really get? What I find interesting about progress in this area is that it’s a bit of a dance between charger technology and battery technology. You need both to actually speed up charging times at all. 

Take Tesla’s supercharger network, the most established in the US. (I’ll note here that I interned at Tesla for a few months in 2016, but I don’t have any ties to the company today.)  

Tesla Superchargers installed today top out at 250 kilowatts of peak power. That’s pretty speedy—for some vehicles, it can translate to adding 200 miles (or 320 kilometers) of range in about 15 minutes.

The fourth version of the automaker’s chargers will reportedly have a higher maximum power output at 350 kW. But a more powerful charger doesn’t necessarily mean faster charging. While there are vehicles on the roads today that can charge at this increased power level, like the Lucid Air, Tesla doesn’t make any—not yet, at least. 

Managing a battery’s charging speed isn’t quite as simple as just connecting a more powerful plug. As a battery charges, there are lithium ions shuttling around inside. If ions in the battery are moving faster than they can make it into the electrode, for example, they can start turning into lithium metal, which quickly destroys the capacity of the battery and can shorten its lifetime.

So getting fast charging going is as much about battery chemistry as it is about charging infrastructure. And while many research efforts and technology announcements have been focused on boosting energy density—the amount of energy that can be packed into a battery of a given weight and size—there’s been a growing focus on charging speed recently, says Kevin Shang, a senior research analyst at Wood Mackenzie, an energy consultancy.

That’s where recent news from battery giant CATL comes in. The company announced last week that its batteries could handle charging rates that would roughly double Tesla’s today. 

There are a lot of details that aren’t clear yet from this initial announcement—we don’t know what these batteries will cost, what their energy density will be, or how long they’ll last. But if the company can follow through on its promise to mass-produce these ultra-fast-charging batteries at the end of this year, it could mean a new era for EV charging. Check out the story for all the details.

Related reading

The US still needs to install a lot more chargers to take advantage of growing support for EVs, as I wrote earlier this year.

There’s been a long history of opposing technology in EV chargers in the US, but Tesla is gobbling up the competition, establishing its technology as somewhat of a standard.

Some companies still think that avoiding charging altogether and opting for battery swapping could play a role in getting more EVs on the road. 

Another thing

We’ve got a brand-new print magazine out! This issue takes on ethics, and it touches on everything from warfare to boardrooms. I’d highly recommend the cover story, an examination from my colleague Jessica Hamzelou about who gets to access experimental medical treatments. 

There’s also a range of stellar climate and environment stories inside, including a look at how drilling deep into ice in Antarctica could help scientists understand Earth’s climate cycles and this peek at how researchers want to save Venice from sinking—with salt marshes. 

There’s also a story about a company looking to use waste heat from computers to warm up water for homes, and a profile of Miami’s new chief heat officer, the first such official in the world. I hope you’ll give it a read. 

Keeping up with climate  

Dairy farms in Texas are a huge source of methane—a powerful greenhouse gas. This investigation peeks into just how massive the problem is, and how scientists are trying to track it better. (Inside Climate News)

We’ve come full circle, back to ships propelled by the wind. High-tech devices are being installed on massive ships to cut down on fuel consumption and emissions. One such vessel just completed the first leg of its maiden voyage. (Canary Media

New innovation hubs are popping up in unexpected places in the US, like Moses Lake, Washington. Here’s why legislation is helping this and other towns become hot spots for battery companies. (E&E News

Grid storage is crucial to helping reach clean-energy goals. But New York is having trouble with some installations catching fire. (Canary Media

→ Fire risk is why some companies are turning to alternative chemistries, like aqueous iron-based batteries. (MIT Technology Review

Officials will be discharging treated wastewater from the Fukushima nuclear power plant this week. The plan is controversial, but officials say that all the water being released will follow safety standards. (Associated Press

Automakers are slipping behind on goals for electric trucks. While the largest manufacturers project that electric versions of their vehicles will make up at least half of sales by 2030, there’s a long way to go. (Bloomberg

→ Here’s why the grid is ready for fleets of electric trucks. (MIT Technology Review

Biogas producers are pushing methane from agricultural waste as a renewable fuel. But whether or not it can actually cut emissions is a bit complicated. (Grist)

How new batteries could help your EV charge faster

Chinese battery giant CATL unveiled a new fast-charging battery last week—one that the company says can add up to 400 kilometers (about 250 miles) of range in 10 minutes.

That’s faster than virtually all EV charging today, and CATL claims the new cells, which it plans to produce commercially by the end of 2023, will “open up an era of EV superfast charging.” That is, if the finished product can meet the company’s promises for battery capacity, lifetime, and cost. 

EVs are making up a growing fraction of global new-vehicle sales—14% in 2022. But many drivers still have concerns about limited range of current battery technology and are put off by the need to stop to charge for upwards of half an hour, even at fast-charging stations. Innovation in battery materials, if matched with progress in charging infrastructure, could help mimic the convenience of gas-powered cars and encourage adoption of EVs. 

CATL, whose name is an acronym for Contemporary Amperex Technology Co. Limited, is the world’s biggest EV battery manufacturer. The company supplies cells to major automakers like Tesla, Mercedes, and Volkswagen.

Last week’s announcement is the latest piece of high-profile technology news from the company this year. Among other things, it plans to build high-energy-density condensed-matter batteries for airplanes and to mass-produce new EV batteries built from sodium instead of lithium.

CATL’s new fast-charging batteries would be twice as fast as competitors, says Jiayan Shi, an analyst for BNEF, an energy research firm. Tesla’s fast charging adds up to roughly 320 kilometers, or 200 miles, of range in 15 minutes.

Some commercially available batteries can already hit the speeds announced by CATL last week, says David Schroeder, chief technical officer of Volta Energy Technologies, a venture capital firm focused on battery and energy storage technology. But those batteries are used in products like stationary energy storage. CATL would be the first to put these fast-charging cells in electric vehicles. 

With lithium-ion batteries, there tends to be a stiff trade-off between how much energy they can store and how quickly they can charge. These batteries can generally be split into two categories: “energy cells” and “power cells.” Energy cells prioritize packing in as much energy as possible, which is helpful in extending the range of an electric vehicle without adding too much bulk. Power cells, on the other hand, tend to prioritize charging and discharging quickly, which is helpful for uses like the stationary energy storage that stabilizes the power grid. 

Power cells today can reach fast charging speeds, but they can be too bulky to use in a car and probably wouldn’t last for hundreds of thousands of miles. Batteries that can charge quickly while also being small, light, and long-lasting would be a step forward. 

The trade-off between high capacity and fast charging comes down to the way charged molecules called ions move around in batteries. As a battery charges, an electric current pushes lithium ions from one side of the cell to the other. The ions can then nestle into spaces in part of the battery called the anode, where they wait. Eventually, they’ll rush back, releasing stored electricity when someone uses the battery to power a device. 

To increase a battery’s total capacity, these anodes can be made with thicker layers of material, meaning there will be lots of space for ions to slot into. However, in batteries with thicker anodes, some of the storage space will be deep within the layers, so ions will have to travel farther to get there, slowing the charging process. To speed up charging, battery makers can slim down those layers, so ions don’t have to travel so far.

Materials innovations could help get around this trade-off. In CATL’s announcement about its fast-charging battery, the company mentions several changes to the anode, including modifications to the graphite’s surface and a multi-layer design to help shorten the path for ions and speed charging.

But it’s not just the anode—every part of the battery seems to be contributing faster charging speeds, says Kevin Shang, a senior research analyst at Wood Mackenzie, an energy consultancy. The company’s release also credits a new electrolyte (the liquid that ions move through in a battery) that improves conductivity, for example. With their new products, battery giants like CATL aren’t necessarily banking on any one innovation, but adding up a host of research and development efforts and combining them into one product, Shang says.

Yet questions remain about this battery and what it will mean for vehicles, Shang says. By saying that the batteries could be used in a vehicle with a range of 700 kilometers (430 miles), CATL’s announcement implies high energy density. But it’s not clear how large the vehicle and battery will need to be to deliver that kind of range. 

In addition, a higher charging rate can generally mean a shorter lifetime and a higher price, Schroeder says. In response to a written question from MIT Technology Review about the lifetime of the new fast-charging batteries, CATL said: “Be it fast charging or not, the warranty on our products remain the same.” (The current warranty lasts for eight years or 800,000 kilometers, according to the website.) The company also said it had “improved the cost efficiency,” but didn’t provide details on what the battery would cost. 

Ultimately, how quickly batteries can charge will be limited not only by their design, but by the charging infrastructure that’s available. While China has been leading the world in charger installations, many more electric-vehicle chargers will be needed to meet the rising demand. It’s also possible that new chargers would be required to reach the charging speeds that CATL’s new batteries can handle, presenting more challenges for infrastructure development. 

Announcements from battery companies about progress are “always good news,” Shang says, “and we welcome it.” The question is whether companies can actually deliver on what’s promised.

China’s car companies are turning into tech companies

This story first appeared in China Report, MIT Technology Review’s newsletter about technology developments in China. Sign up to receive it in your inbox every Tuesday.

This year, car buyers in China are constantly bombarded with claims about how advanced Navigation on Autopilot (NOA) systems are coming to their city. These software systems are not quite fully autonomous driving—your hands are still supposed to be holding the wheel—but they let cars stop, steer, and accelerate in the city by themselves.

Both EV makers and AI startups have published aggressive roadmaps for national rollouts of their city NOA services, claiming their customers in dozens or hundreds of Chinese cities will soon be able to experience being driven by their cars through narrow city streets. 

This morning, I published a story that took a closer look at how city NOAs have become the industry darling in 2023, including how they actually perform and the difficulty in educating drivers on using the system responsibly. You can read all of it here.

But during my interview with Zhang Xiang, a Chinese auto industry analyst and visiting professor at Huanghe Science and Technology College, one comment stuck out to me. “The auto industry is very competitive now. Consumers are expecting those vehicles to be tech products, like smartphones. It’d be hard for auto brands to sell their cars if they didn’t advertise their products this way,” he said.

Zhang’s observation is consistent with what I saw this year, particularly when I went to the massive auto show this April in Shanghai. Not only was everyone boasting about their brand’s autonomous driving capabilities, but companies were also showcasing all kinds of other advanced software features.

For example, SenseTime, an AI company, uses facial recognition tech to monitor driver fatigue and also to identify children left in the car; SAIC Volkswagen is using augmented reality to display map information on the windshield; Baidu is incorporating its generative AI model in the in-car audio chatbot for route planning.

NIO, one of the frontrunner companies in China’s homegrown EV industry, has embraced the subscription model. By paying 380 RMB ($52) a month, NIO owners can get the basic version of an NOA system in their cars, which works on highways and major urban roads. In the future, they will be able to pay double the amount for a more advanced version. Meanwhile, as batteries make up the majority of the costs and upkeep of an EV model, NIO also launched a monthly battery-swap service in China and a monthly battery-rental subscription in Europe.

All of these examples show that we are increasingly seeing auto companies turn into tech companies. Beyond horsepower and exterior/interior design, companies are now also competing on who can adapt the latest technology into a consumer-facing product. Globally, this trend is spearheaded by Tesla, with traditional auto brands slowly playing catch-up. But that transition is happening even faster in China.

Tu Le, managing director of Sino Auto Insights, a business consulting firm that specializes in transportation, breaks down the ongoing auto industry evolution into four phases: electrification, smartification, servicification, and autonomization. (While the first two are easy to understand, the third phase means the auto companies’ business models revolve around selling services, and the fourth phase means the proliferation of robotaxis.)

As I wrote earlier this year, China has managed to achieve a significant lead with the development and adoption of EVs, through a mix of different factors like government subsidies and battery tech innovations. That enables the Chinese auto industry to hop on the next phase earlier than everyone else. “The United States and Europe are in phase one, electrification; China is in phase two, smartification,” Tu says. 

The third phase is not far away, he believes. “Once more and more EVs on Chinese roads have ADAS [advanced driver-assistance systems]—the free systems and the premium systems—then we will get to servicification. Then they will start adding more features and trying to charge you,” he says. 

Chinese car companies aren’t just becoming tech companies, Chinese tech companies are also turning into car companies. Autonomous driving tech is one of Baidu’s main focuses now that it has transitioned from a search engine to an AI company. Xiaomi, one of China’s smartphone giants, has spent nearly a billion dollars on becoming an EV company. Even Huawei, forced by US sanctions to reinvent itself, is now targeting smart cars as its next strategic focus.

With these tech juggernauts joining the race, Chinese car companies are being forced to up their tech game to have a chance of competing.

At the end of the day, is that a good thing? I’m not sure. The heated competition is pushing Chinese auto companies to offer more advanced tech products at more affordable prices, and consumers stand to benefit from that. At the same time, it also brings in the difficult problems that the tech industry has failed to address: data security, privacy invasion, AI biases and failures, and potentially more.

But it does seem like this is an inevitable trend. In that sense, whatever’s happening in China now will be a valuable lesson for the industry in other countries.

What do you think of the trend of automakers turning into tech companies? Let me know your thoughts at zeyi@technologyreview.com.

Catch up with China

1. With domestic adoption of the digital yuan stalled, Beijing is increasingly pushing for its use in international trade settlement. (MIT Technology Review)

2. The Biden administration released new rules that ban US private equity and venture capital investment in Chinese AI, quantum computing, and semiconductor companies. (CNN)

  • Afterward, Beijing issued a document of 24 guidelines on how to attract more foreign investment, including strengthening the enforcement of intellectual property rights. (Reuters $)
  • Foreign investment in China is already at its lowest point in decades. (Bloomberg $)

3. The best place to buy a Tesla is in China, where they are 50% cheaper than in Europe and the US, after several rounds of price cuts. (Financial Times $)

4. International students are more likely to be accused of cheating by AI writing detection tools, new Stanford research finds. (The Markup)

5. China’s internet regulator was busy last Tuesday: it released one regulation restricting the use of facial recognition tech to protect privacy (Wall Street Journal $) and another that mandates all mobile apps available in the country must register their business details with the government (Reuters $).

6. The Village Basketball Association, a national league for amateur players from the countryside, has become the latest sports sensation in China. (Wall Street Journal $)

7. Taiwanese chip giant TSMC is investing $3.8 billion to build a new factory in Germany. (New York Times $)

8. After Taiwan’s justice department announced that being filmed smoking marijuana abroad is a prosecutable offense, an activist filed a lawsuit against Elon Musk to show the rule’s overreach. (Radio Taiwan International)

Lost in translation

An anti-corruption campaign is shaking up China’s healthcare and pharmaceutical industry. According to the Chinese publication Lanjing Caijing, China’s top anti-corruption regulator has in recent months been publicizing cases of bribery in the healthcare field. Most hospitals are publicly owned in China, and the investigations focus on pharmaceutical companies allegedly bribing hospital executives to secure procurement contracts through sponsoring their research, hosting academic conferences, and paying kickbacks. 

While these practices are not new, the campaign this year seems to be particularly serious. At least 160 top hospital executives in China have been placed under investigation so far—that’s already twice as many as in all of 2022. Because these bribes would often be recorded as marketing expenses in the companies’ accounting books, companies with sky-high marketing spending are under particularly strict scrutiny right now. In 2022, nearly 40 of the top 66 pharmaceutical companies in China spent half of their annual revenues on marketing, according to their financial disclosures.

One more thing

Don’t you just long for some VR-powered propaganda education when you are exercising on a stationary bike? A Chinese company recently posted a video of its “Red VR Rides” educational device, which allows the user to read about the Chinese Communist Party’s history while pedaling. In fact, there are quite a few Chinese VR companies that have released similar products in the past. This niche industry is apparently thriving.

Three people riding on different VR stationary bikes designed for Chinese Community Party history education.
Rivian hopes to earn carbon credits for its home electric vehicle chargers

Rivian markets its high-end electric trucks to climate-conscious consumers hoping to simultaneously explore the great outdoors and do right by the planet. Now, the California-based automaker has applied to earn carbon credits for the chargers that power its pickups and SUVs, including those installed in its customers’ homes—an effort that MIT Technology Review is revealing for the first time. 

The move raises new questions about who deserves credit for the environmental contributions associated with green products like electric vehicles: the person who buys a $75,000 electric pickup or an $800 charger, or the company that manufactures and sells those products? And if those benefits can be quantified, should they be purchased by individuals or businesses hoping to cancel out their own ongoing greenhouse-gas pollution?

In a project application submitted last year to Verra, one of the world’s largest certifiers of carbon credits, Rivian said it “retains all environmental attributes” from the use of its chargers. Rivian is seeking to earn Verra-endorsed carbon credits for the emissions reductions achieved through those chargers. The credits, in turn, could be sold to other parties, who could use them to offset their emissions.

The basic idea behind carbon offsetting is that a person or company taking steps to cut a metric ton of greenhouse emissions or draw it out of the atmosphere—by, say, planting trees or canceling logging plans—can earn a credit through a registry like Verra or a government-backed program like California’s cap-and-trade system. In turn, that credit can be sold to another party willing to pay to balance out a ton of climate pollution. If the carbon math squares perfectly on both sides of the transaction, it should be a wash for the climate (though complexities abound).

The proposed project covers Rivian’s own Adventure Networks charging stations, Waypoint chargers purchased by third-party site hosts, and residential chargers located “throughout the continental US,” according to a description and map in the documents. 

According to the application, contracts with host sites specify: “All Environmental Attributes shall be the sole and exclusive property of Rivian to transfer, sell, hold or convey in its sole and absolute discretion.” It adds that “additional language … will be included” for residential chargers. 

Carbon market experts questioned whether the “charging network” project meets one of the fundamental criteria for reliable carbon credits and offsets. Several also criticized the specific inclusion of residential chargers in the proposal, which they read to mean that Rivian hopes to earn carbon credits from chargers that customers purchase, install and use in their own homes.

The company’s vehicles come with a portable charger that works with standard outlets. Its wall chargers cost $800, according to its website. 

Adam Millard-Ball, a professor of urban planning at the University of California, Los Angeles, and acting director of the UCLA Institute for Transportation Studies, says he doubts most customers would notice such a clause—or that salespeople would be likely to highlight it. 

“If someone is buying a charger and the company is selling away the good so someone else can pollute more, I don’t think that’s in the spirit of the marketing or the branding or the motivations of many people who buy electric vehicles,” he says. 

The company, based in Irvine, has earned stellar reviews from customers and automotive critics for the modern design, power, and luxury features of its high-end electric pickup truck and SUV, known as the R1T and R1S

The Verra application states that adding charging infrastructure “encourages increased EV charging and use,” which in turn displaces gasoline-fueled cars and trucks and cuts greenhouse-gas pollution. It estimates that the charging network in question will reduce emissions by 200,000 metric tons per year by the end of a seven-year project period. 

Verra is still reviewing the proposed project, and no carbon credits have yet been issued or sold. 

Andrew Peterman, Rivian’s director of renewable energy, defended the proposal, stating in a prepared response that the program could help accelerate the shift to a carbon-free transportation sector.

“Alternative revenue sources from programs like this not only make the scaled transition to clean electric transportation possible (and at the necessary speed) but enable companies like Rivian to do so while generating a greater positive impact for communities, conservation, and the climate,” he said.

He stressed that the company itself is not using carbon offsets to meet its own corporate climate objectives. Rivian didn’t respond to concerns raised about the inclusion of residential chargers, or to a question about whether it’s already begun inserting language claiming ownership of “environmental attributes” into customer contracts or other documents. 

Credible credits

One of the fundamental tests for carbon offset programs is known as additionality: a project is considered “additional” if it brings about climate benefits that would only have occurred because of the money earned from selling carbon credits. If the emissions reductions were going to happen anyway, the carbon credits weren’t the driver and thus can’t plausibly cancel out another party’s pollution. 

Several observers were skeptical that it passes this test for Rivian to install EV chargers or induce others to do so, given market trends, growing policy support, and some of the company’s own statements. 

Barbara Haya, director of UC Berkeley’s Carbon Trading Project, says the proposal effectively assumes that those chargers wouldn’t be installed without the added funds from carbon credits, even as more automakers produce EVs, more consumers buy them, and more government policies support the purchase of vehicles and construction of charging networks. 

“It’s ridiculous,” she says. “You can’t have an offset program for a project type that’s taking off.” 

Rivian has faced challenges in the booming EV market, despite the popularity of its vehicles. It has struggled to ramp up production, and since it went public in 2021, its stock price has plummeted amid concerns that a startup with limited manufacturing capacity will face growing challenges as larger rivals scale up their EVs lines and cut prices.

Grayson Badgley, a research scientist at CarbonPlan, a San Francisco nonprofit that analyzes the scientific integrity of carbon offset programs, flagged wording in Rivian’s latest 10K that could also argue against the additionality claim.

The company states: “We market our ability to provide our customers with comprehensive charging solutions, including our networks of charging stations, the Rivian Adventure Network and Rivian Waypoints, as well as the installation of home chargers for users where practicable.” 

“Those disclosures are consistent with the interpretation that Rivian likely intended to build charging infrastructure independent of offset credit payments,” Badgley wrote in an email. 

The effort to earn credits from chargers that customers buy and install themselves raises its own set of issues. Notably, it seems to assert ownership over climate benefits that many customers might believe they deserve the credit for, and which may have been part of their rationale for making the purchase.

“Does this mean that the carbon good of owning a Rivian isn’t owned by the driver?” Badgley asks. “They buy the car. They buy the charger. They buy the electricity.” But then someone else “gets to claim the environmental benefit?”

Accelerating EVs

The company didn’t respond directly to questions about additionality, but Peterman stated: “We at Rivian believe that enabling e-mobility through clean renewable charging solutions has a systemwide emissions benefit.”

“The crux of this transition relies on the ability of our industry to provide affordable energy and charging solutions in all parts of the country, from cities to rural communities,” he added. 

“In many cases, the additional revenue from programs like this will accelerate that deployment, especially across regions where significant investments into infrastructure and grid improvements will be required,” he wrote. “These additional revenue sources, especially in states or regions where there are limited state or utility incentives, also help support greater access to and more affordable home charging solutions.”

How might that occur? Mark Mondik, vice president of carbon markets at 3Degrees, a climate advisory firm that prepared the Verra application on behalf of Rivian, said in a statement that the funds could allow Rivian to pass on price cuts to customers, in the form of less expensive charging equipment. 

“The 3Degrees team looks critically at every project we work with, and we were happy to help Rivian pursue revenue from the carbon market arising from their aggregation of emission reductions,” he said, adding: “Successful project validation and verification is not guaranteed, so the criticism you’re hearing feels a bit premature.” 

Carbon concerns

Verra approved a protocol in 2018 that allows companies to earn carbon credits for emissions reductions achieved through EV charging systems under certain circumstances. It has approved a handful of small projects to date and issued several thousand carbon credits. Several additional proposals are pending.

In a response to MIT Technology Review, Verra said the Rivian project hasn’t “completed registration,” that additionality is “assessed during the validation process,” and that the organization doesn’t comment on projects “undergoing review.”

It noted that its rules for electric charging projects include several safeguards to ensure additionality. For instance, nationwide penetration levels of charging systems must be less than 5% of “the maximum adoption potential,” and the buildout of EV chargers can’t already be “mandated by any law, statutes, or regulations.”

Rivian’s proposed project doesn’t include chargers installed in states where government programs already award similar sorts of credits, which would create “double counting” risks, the application stated. It specifically excluded California and Oregon.

Verra reassesses and updates its methodologies every five years to incorporate new market data, and the company said it’s in the process of updating certain provisions for demonstrating additionality.

‘Greenwash a polluter’

Carbon offset programs have faced growing criticism: a variety of studies and articles find they often inflate the climate benefits from projects, and that purchasing them can amount to a form of corporate “greenwashing.”

An investigative piece by the Guardian and other outlets earlier this year raised questions about the reliability of Verra’s rainforest offset projects. It was based on scientific analyses concluding that among the projects assessed, more than 90% of the credits likely “do not represent genuine carbon reductions.” 

Verra strongly disputed the findings. 

Millard-Ball says the generous way of looking at Rivian’s proposal is that the market for voluntary offsets is basically unreliable and “performative” anyway. One could simply think of the money that individuals and companies spend on them, seeking to feel better about their behavior or market themselves as climate friendly, as a kind of financial subsidy to support the development of the EV industry and charging infrastructure. In that reading, it becomes less important for the carbon math to balance out perfectly between parties.

“But that’s not the sales pitch of the carbon offset industry,” he says. Moreover, it’s also not the way many buyers of carbon credits think of them. Major corporations, including oil and gas giants, are using them as a literal, ton-for-ton way to address significant shares of their ongoing greenhouse-gas emissions. 

When those credits don’t represent real improvements over the status quo, it means companies aren’t making the emissions progress claimed, even as they put off the harder work of cleaning up their business practices in the face of mounting global climate threats.

Aneel Nazareth, a Texas resident who recently purchased a Rivian SUV and home charger, reviewed his paperwork at the request of MIT Technology Review and didn’t find any wording about “environmental attributes.” He was of two minds about the company’s proposal to earn carbon credits for chargers.

“I think that the purpose of incentives is to get people to do things that they wouldn’t otherwise have done. I’m going to charge my Rivian at home. That’s true whether or not I have a Rivian-branded charger,” he wrote in an email. “So it seems suspect to reward them with a carbon credit that they can then sell to greenwash a polluter.”

But he also stressed that EVs can make a big difference in vehicle emissions. He noted that using his Rivian R1S to haul a travel trailer during a recent camping trip cost him about $30 in electricity, while that drive would have previously required around $100 worth of gas.

“If carbon credits bring a shift to EVs a little closer, I guess I’m for them,” he said. “Without shifts like that, we’re doomed.”

Why some companies want you to rent the battery in your EV

This article is from The Spark, MIT Technology Review’s weekly climate newsletter. To receive it in your inbox every Wednesday, sign up here.

I seem to be constantly signing up for new subscriptions these days. Netflix, Paramount+, and of course I’m glued to the latest season of Succession, so now I’m back on HBO Max too. 

And soon, I might have another subscription to consider adding to that list: an EV battery. Instead of owning the batteries that power our EVs, some companies want to rethink our relationship and are pushing batteries as a service. Pay a monthly subscription fee, and you could consistently change out the nearly-spent batteries powering your vehicle for fresh ones in swapping stations. 

Some companies are working to make battery swaps a reality, and I wrote about their progress in a story that you should check out here. And for the newsletter this week, I want to dig in on an issue raised by these companies’ vision for the future that I can’t get out of my head: Should we own our own batteries? 

The vision

Picture this: It’s 2030, you’re on a road trip, and your EV battery is getting low. You stop in a city you’ve never been to before, and instead of plugging in, you pull into a battery-swapping station. You press a button on an app and the station platform raises the car, unscrews the battery powering your EV, and installs a new one in its place. In less than five minutes, you go from almost empty to 100% charged, ready to continue on your way. 

The battery you’ve picked up to power the next leg of your road trip isn’t yours. But then again, neither was the one that you dropped off. 

This is the vision for some companies, including Nio, an automaker based in China. Nio has about 300,000 vehicles on the road and about 1,400 of its own battery-swap stations up and running. 

If you drive a Nio, you do have the option to purchase the battery outright when you buy the car. Alternatively, you can get access to the battery-swapping network by basically subscribing to the company’s pool of batteries.

Nio recently expanded its operations into Norway, so let’s take that as an example of what the financials might look like here. (I’ve converted everything to US dollars here, using May 2023 conversion rates.) 

Say you decide to purchase a Nio ES8 in Norway, and you want to opt for the smallest battery, which has a capacity of 75 kilowatt-hours. 

If you want to own that battery, and you don’t want to visit swap stations, your vehicle will cost you roughly $58,500. If, on the other hand, you prefer to lease the battery, you’ll pay just under $50,000 up front, plus a monthly fee of $135. (The costs are all a bit higher if you opt for the 100 kWh battery, but the idea is the same.) For that monthly fee, you get a couple of swaps or a set amount of rapid charging. 

It would take you just over five years to start paying more in the monthly fee than you would have paid with the up-front option, and most EVs on the roads today have battery warranty coverage for eight to 10 years. 

The implications

I’m fascinated by this potential shift in ownership for batteries, and I think if the vision turns out to be the reality, there are a lot of potential upsides.

The ability to rent batteries could mean less stress about battery degradation for drivers, according to Fei Shen, the VP of power management at Nio. “It’s not necessary for them to worry about it at all, because they can swap this battery at any time, whenever they want,” he says. 

And for the company, it’s easier to track and service batteries. “If we find some potential problems, we can keep this battery in our swap station and do the maintenance,” Shen says. The same goes for reclaiming batteries for recycling at the end of their lifetime, he adds. 

Then there’s the possibility of customization: drivers could opt for a smaller-capacity battery and upgrade only before longer trips, for example. That could cut costs and even reduce the total quantity of materials needed to build batteries for EV fleets.

But on the flip side, some EV experts aren’t so sure the battery-swapping picture would turn out quite so rosy. 

It might be harder to keep consistently high-quality batteries in stock than companies are letting on, says Gil Tal, director of the plug-in hybrid and electric-vehicle research center at the University of California, Davis. “So when you swap a battery, you may get a worse battery or a better battery,” depending on what’s available, he says. 

He’s also skeptical that people will be willing to take a chance on availability. “It’s not going to work—everyone will ask for the big battery at the same time,” Tal says. Have you ever tried to rent a car at an airport during a storm, or find a spot for your Citi Bike at a big event? Those logistics can be tough for companies to figure out. 

There are a lot of fascinating dynamics at play for EV battery swapping, and it’s not just about the possibility of changing the relationship we have with batteries. Check out my story for so much more on this technology and what it might take to really make it happen. 

Related reading

Keeping up with climate

One little-known group is having a huge influence on the climate goals of major corporations. Here’s what you need to know about the Science Based Targets initiative. (MIT Technology Review)

The US Environmental Protection Agency just released a new set of rules that will govern emissions from power plants, potentially cutting emissions by 617 million metric tons by 2042. (Inside Climate News)

→ A lot of the buzz around these new rules is about how they treat carbon capture and storage, a technology that’s still expensive and largely unproven. (E&E News)

→ The problem, though, is that these rules still aren’t enough to meet climate goals for the power sector. (Heatmap News)

The iconic cobalt-blue Citi Bikes have officially been on the streets for 10 years in New York City. Celebrate a decade of fun, climate-friendly transportation with this oral history of the bike-share program. (Curbed)

School buses are going electric. New funding in the US is pushing the change, and I love how these charts show the shift. (Canary Media

→ By the way, the US Postal Service is finally getting with the program on EVs. (MIT Technology Review)

The EU is relying on green hydrogen to fuel climate progress in heavy industry. But without major financial subsidies and quicker regulatory processes, some executives are doubtful that the bloc can reach production goals. (Financial Times)

We should all be talking more about beans. Low-emission, delicious—what more could you ask for? I’ve personally gotten very into cannellini beans recently. (Vox)

You’ve probably never heard of the Loan Programs Office in the US Department of Energy, but the office and its director are a major driving force in clean energy today. (New York Times)

Nickel is a key ingredient in batteries, and Indonesia has plenty of it. But getting the metal into a form that’s useful for the energy transition involves an intense chemical process and a lot of waste that the country is going to have to reckon with. (Washington Post)

→ Yes, we have enough of the materials we need for the energy transition. (MIT Technology Review)

Looking for an EV? You might not find one at your local car dealership. Part of the problem is supply-chain holdups, but a surprising number of dealerships are resistant to the idea of selling EVs, which can disrupt their business model. (Vox)

How 5-minute battery swaps could get more EVs on the road

Charging has emerged as the primary way people keep their EV batteries full of juice while on the go, but some companies have an alternative in mind that they think could be even quicker than the fastest chargers today: battery swapping.

Today, a San Francisco–based startup called Ample demonstrated its new battery-swap system, which it says can exchange a depleted EV battery for a fresh one in five minutes.

Ample joins several other companies, past and present, with similar ideas. Battery swapping aims to match the convenience and speed of visiting a gas station, which proponents say could help strengthen the case for EVs by making it faster to replenish a car’s range. But some experts are skeptical, viewing battery swapping as an expensive solution that will at best serve a narrow niche within the future of electric transportation. 

Ample’s new swapping stations look like Silicon Valley–designed car washes, all gleaming white and rounded corners. “The whole vision is that we want to provide an experience that is as fast, affordable, and convenient as gas,” said Hamid Schricker, Ample’s director of product, as he gave me a video tour.

An Ample station has the footprint of roughly two parking spaces and offers drive-through service. When a vehicle is ready for a swap, the driver motors up to the station. A door slides up, revealing a platform inside. After navigating into position on the platform by following the instructions on screens inside the station, the driver hits a button in a connected app to start the swap. The station’s platform lifts the vehicle and its occupants several feet, and then the internal machinery gets to work, removing the used batteries in the vehicle and installing fresh ones. When the swap is finished, the platform lowers the vehicle back down to the road, and the driver can take off, charged and ready to go.

The depleted batteries can then be charged up over several hours and installed in another vehicle. While the batteries can be charged more quickly, slowing things down helps prevent degradation, says John de Souza, Ample’s cofounder and president. The number of swaps will be limited by the connection to the electrical grid, so a station with a 100 kilowatt connection will be able to charge and swap 48 batteries in the course of a day, each with a capacity of 50 kilowatt-hours.

Ample has a dozen of its first-generation swapping stations installed around the San Francisco area. Together, they’re performing a few hundred swaps each day at roughly 10 minutes apiece, de Souza says. The startup is partnered with Uber, aiming to demonstrate that battery swapping could help in demanding applications like ride-share fleets. But the ultimate vision is a drop-in replacement that allows people on commutes or road trips to swap out their EV battery and be on their way.

Building swapping stations will be more expensive than building superchargers: Ample declined to share exactly how much it planned to spend on each station, saying only that they would be less expensive than other battery-swap facilities that can cost half a million dollars to build and install.

A fork in the road

Ample is far from the first company to pursue battery swapping. Tesla Motors explored the concept, demonstrating the technology in its Model S in 2013 before eventually abandoning the plan in favor of its supercharging network.

Better Place was one of the most well-known battery-swap ventures. The startup was founded in 2007 and worked with automaker Renault, building a network of a few dozen swapping stations in Israel. But after raising some $850 million, the company failed to get more automakers and drivers on board and eventually filed for bankruptcy in 2013.

The specter of Better Place hangs over battery-swap efforts today, but de Souza says Ample’s approach addresses issues that sank previous iterations of the technology.

For a third-party company like Better Place or Ample to gain ground, it must find a way to be compatible with vehicles hitting the road. But getting automakers to converge on a battery is a challenge: companies are increasingly choosing different battery designs and chemistries for different models.

Ample’s solution is a modular system. Rather than take the whole battery out at once and screw on a fresh one, the startup plans to fit several smaller packs into a battery frame. This cuts down on the cost for machinery needed to move batteries, since the pieces are smaller, de Souza says.

And crucially, the modular design could make it easier for automakers to sign on, de Souza says. Ample’s vision is for vehicle makers to deliver their cars with an empty space where the battery should be. Ample can then build an envelope for that specific vehicle and plug in as many modules as will fit.

The number of modules can be customized both to the size of the vehicle (a compact car will hold fewer than a large SUV) and to driver needs—someone might install just a few modules for daily driving but load up when going on a long trip, de Souza says.

So far, Ample’s swapping stations are compatible with two vehicle models that have the company’s special batteries installed: the Nissan Leaf and the Kia Niro. According to de Souza, the system works with 13 vehicle models, though no other automaker partners have been announced.

Some experts are skeptical that even this altered vision of battery swapping is practical. “I think battery swapping is unlikely to be the primary way that we manage batteries for the general vehicle fleet,” says Jeremy Michalek, a professor of engineering and public policy at Carnegie Mellon University.

Every make and model of electric vehicle on the road today has a different battery design, shape, and chemistry. Swapping requires standardization, and even if modules can provide some customization, they would still be a major constraint for automakers. “Putting the same size modules into different vehicles is very limiting,” he says.

In the driver’s seat

While third-party companies like Ample are aiming to create a standardized swapping ecosystem, some automakers are establishing their own infrastructure that gives them more control over the details.

In China, Nio has established itself as a major player in battery swapping. The automaker has about 1,400 commercial battery-swap stations deployed; most are in China, though the company has started expanding operations into European countries like Norway and the Netherlands as well. The goal is to have 2,300 stations installed by the end of 2022. 

The major selling point for customers is convenience, says Fei Shen, senior vice president of power management at Nio. “If we do battery swaps, the time is almost equivalent to refueling,” he says.

Nio’s swap stations move its batteries around all in one piece. The company offers three different battery options with different capacities, with each fitting into any and all vehicles it makes.

Nio’s customers don’t have to swap batteries—the vehicles can top off at fast-charging stations that Nio also builds—but the option is there, and people are using it, Shen says. The automaker has 300,000 vehicles on the road, and about 60% of drivers have used swap stations, according to the company’s data. In total, the company’s stations have performed 20 million swaps, and its newest stations can perform 400 a day. 

Nio isn’t the only company going after battery swapping in China. In total, six Chinese companies including Nio plan to have 26,000 installed battery-swap stations in the country by 2025, according to projections by BNEF, an energy research firm.

Hitting the brakes 

These efforts might succeed at the higher end of the market, but it’s not likely that companies like Nio will be able to serve the vast majority of drivers, says Gil Tal, director of the plug-in hybrid and electric-vehicle research center at the University of California, Davis. “I think it’s a very expensive solution,” he says. 

Not only will battery-swap companies need to build expensive swap stations (which, according to some early estimates, can run roughly double the cost of an equivalent fast-charging station), but they’ll need to maintain the complicated machinery involved. “It’s very difficult to manage a lot of swap stations—all of them have to have a high reliability,” Shen says. 

Nio and some other battery-swap companies plan to charge customers a monthly fee for their batteries and swapping privileges. In Norway, the cost for Nio’s lowest-capacity battery is roughly $135 monthly (owning the battery outright would cost around $8,500).

The marginal time savings of a battery swap might not be worth that extra cost and trouble. “Most EV drivers don’t drive more than the range of the car,” Tal says. For the few who do, he adds, stopping at a fast charger for 15 to 20 minutes won’t be a bigger barrier than stopping for a swap. 

Fast chargers are getting quicker all the time, with the Tesla supercharging network offering up to 250 kilowatts of charging power today—enough to add about 200 miles of range in 15 minutes. Other fast chargers deployed today can hit 350 kilowatts

Companies may be able to deploy battery swapping where people will pay a premium for speed: luxury vehicles, or for fleets of delivery trucks or taxis. It’s more likely to be helpful in the narrow range of cases where stopping at a fast charger is a major inconvenience. But at least for now, once we ditch gas pumps, we’ll be plugging in on road trips.

How sodium could change the game for batteries

This article is from The Spark, MIT Technology Review’s weekly climate newsletter. To receive it in your inbox every Wednesday, sign up here.

Buckle up, because this week, we’re talking about batteries. 

Over the past couple of months, I’ve been noticing a lot of announcements about a new type of battery, one that could majorly shake things up if all the promises I’m hearing turn out to be true.

The new challenger? Sodium-ion batteries, which swap sodium for the lithium that powers most EVs and devices like cell phones and laptops today. 

Sodium-ion batteries could squeeze their way into some corners of the battery market as soon as the end of this year, and they could be huge in cutting costs for EVs. I wrote a story about all the recent announcements, and you should give it a read if you’re curious about what companies are jumping in on this trend and what their plans are. But for the newsletter this week, let’s dig a little bit deeper into the chemistry and consider what the details could mean for the future of EV batteries.

Top dog

One of the reasons that lithium dominates batteries today is absolutely, maddeningly simple: it’s small. 

I mean that in the most literal, atomic sense. Lithium is the third-lightest element, heavier than only hydrogen and helium. When it comes down to it, it’s hard to beat the lightest metal in existence if you’re trying to make compact, lightweight batteries.

And cutting weight and size is the goal for making everything from iPhones to EVs: a lightweight, powerful battery means your phone can be smaller and your car can drive farther. So one of the primary ways we’ve measured progress for batteries is energy density—how much energy a battery can pack into a given size. 

When you look at that chemical reality, it’s almost no wonder that lithium-ion batteries have exploded in popularity since their commercial debut in the 1990s. There are obviously other factors too, like lithium-ion’s ability to reach high voltages in order to deliver a lot of power, but the benefit of being lightweight and portable is hard to overstate. 

Lithium-ion batteries have also benefited from being the incumbent. There are countless researchers scouring the world for new materials and new ways to build lithium-ion cells, and plenty of companies making them in greater numbers—all of which adds up to greater efficiencies. As a result, costs have come down basically every year for decades (with the notable exception of 2022). 

And at the same time, energy density is ticking up, a trend I’m personally grateful for because I often forget to charge my phone for days at a time, and it typically works out much better when that happens now than it did a few years ago. 

Branching out

But just because lithium-ion dominates the battery world today doesn’t mean it’ll squash the competition forever. 

I’ve written about the growing number of options in the battery industry before, mostly in the context of stationary storage on the electrical grid. This is especially important in the transition to intermittent renewable energy sources like wind and solar. 

While backup systems tend to use lithium-ion batteries today since they’re what’s available, many companies are working to build batteries that could eventually be even cheaper and more robust. In other words, many researchers and companies want to design batteries specifically for stationary storage.  

New batteries could be made with abundant materials like iron or plastic, for example, and they might use water instead of organic solvents to shuttle charge around, addressing lingering concerns about the safety of large-scale lithium-ion battery installations. 

But compared to stationary storage, there are fewer candidates that could work in EV batteries, because of the steep demands we have for our vehicles. Today, most of the competition in the commercial market is between the different flavors of lithium-ion batteries, with some lower-cost versions that don’t contain cobalt and nickel gaining ground in the last couple of years. 

That could change soon too, though, because just below lithium on the periodic table, a challenger lurks: sodium. Sodium is similar to lithium in some ways, and cells made with the material can reach similar voltages to lithium-ion cells (meaning the chemical reactions that power the battery will be nearly as powerful). 

And crucially, sodium-based batteries have recently been cramming more energy into a smaller package. In 2022, the energy density of sodium-ion batteries was right around where some lower-end lithium-ion batteries were a decade ago—when early commercial EVs like the Tesla Roadster had already hit the road. 

Projections from BNEF suggest that sodium-ion batteries could reach pack densities of nearly 150 watt-hours per kilogram by 2025. And some battery giants and automakers in China think the technology is already good enough for prime time. For more on those announcements and when we might see the first sodium-battery-powered cars on the road, check out my story on the technology

Related reading

Here’s how sodium batteries could get their start in EVs.

I wrote about the potential for this sort of progress in a story from January about what we might see for batteries this year.

Sodium could be competing with low-cost lithium-ion batteries—these lithium iron phosphate batteries figure into a growing fraction of EV sales.

Take a tour of some other non-lithium-based batteries:

a view inside the electromagnetic coil of the Polaris reactor
The electromagnetic coils that will be used in Polaris.
HELION

Another thing

A startup says it’ll be ready to turn on the world’s first fusion power plant in five years. Yes, you read that right: five years. 

Helion Energy, a fusion startup backed by OpenAI’s Sam Altman, announced that it’s lined up an agreement to sell electricity to Microsoft. The company says its first plant will come online in 2028 and will reach full capacity (50 megawatts of output) within a year after that. 

As you might remember, the energy world reached a huge milestone in December when a fusion reaction generated more energy than what was put in to start it. But for a lot of reasons, that symbolic moment doesn’t necessarily mean cheap fusion power is within our grasp. And some experts are pretty skeptical about Helion’s announcement. Read more about the details in this story from my colleague James Temple

Keeping up with climate

Need a few extra miles of range on your EV? Might as well slap some solar panels on the roof. But don’t expect too much of a boost. (Bloomberg

For the first time in my entire life, I seem to be experiencing seasonal allergies. And climate change might have something to do with it. (The Atlantic)

Companies might be overselling the potential for so-called “renewable natural gas.” While it can cut emissions relative to fossil sources, critics worry that putting too much stock in methane made from cow manure or food scraps will slow efforts to ditch fossil fuels. (Canary Media)

→ I wrote earlier this year about how the process to make and capture methane from food scraps works. (MIT Technology Review)

Aubrey Plaza is hilarious and a gift to this world, but some people aren’t so happy about a recent ad she did for the dairy industry that takes aim at plant-based milks. (Vox)

India might stop adding new coal power plants to the pipeline. While this wouldn’t stop all current construction, it could be a major boost to the country’s emissions cuts. (Reuters)

A lot of the work to improve battery performance has been basically focused on one half of the device: the cathode. But some companies are working hard to improve the often-overlooked anodes by using silicon. (IEEE Spectrum)

→ Silicon anodes from startup Sila made their debut in fitness trackers nearly two years ago. The next stop? EVs. (MIT Technology Review)

Support for nuclear power in the US just reached its highest level in over a decade, according to a new Gallup poll. (Grist

Electric vehicles made up 80% of Norway’s new car sales last year. The country provides a picture of the potential future for electrified transport’s benefits (cleaner air!) and challenges (long charging lines). (New York Times)

This abundant material could unlock cheaper batteries for EVs

Move over, lithium—there’s a new battery chemistry in town.

Lithium is currently the ruler of the battery world, a key ingredient in the batteries that power phones, electric vehicles, and even store energy on the electrical grid.

But as concerns about the battery supply chain swell, scientists are looking for ways to cut down on battery technology’s most expensive, least readily available ingredients. There are already options that reduce the need for some, like cobalt and nickel, but there’s been little recourse for those looking to dethrone lithium.

Over the past several months, though, battery companies and automakers in China have announced forays into a new kind of battery chemistry that replaces lithium with sodium. These new sodium-ion batteries could help push costs down for both stationary storage and electric vehicles, if the technology can meet the high expectations that companies are setting.

In March, JAC Motors, an automaker based in China, released photos of a chartreuse car that it said was the world’s first vehicle built with sodium-ion batteries. The compact vehicle was fitted with a 25-kilowatt-hour battery made by another Chinese company, HiNa Battery, and a press release claimed the car’s range was up to 250 kilometers (155 miles). In April, China’s largest EV battery maker, CATL, announced it had developed a sodium-ion battery that it planned to release in a vehicle made by automaker Chery. None of the four companies responded to a request for comment. 

“They’re making these quite interesting announcements. There’s also a lot of details missing,” says Andy Leach, an energy storage analyst at BNEF. Neither CATL nor HiNa has released production timelines or detailed performance metrics for the batteries, or even revealed what specific types of sodium-ion batteries they’re planning to use. The mystery isn’t surprising for these large companies, Leach says: “They tend to keep their cards close to their chests.” But it does leave questions about just how ready sodium-ion batteries might be for real vehicles.

Sodium-based batteries are not new, but technical shortcomings have previously kept them from taking on lithium. Sodium-ion batteries traditionally wear out quickly, and they still have a lower energy density than lithium-ion, says Shirley Meng, a battery researcher at the University of Chicago and Argonne National Laboratory. 

That means in order to store the same amount of energy, a sodium-based battery will need to be bigger and heavier than the equivalent lithium-based one. For EVs, that means a shorter range for a battery the same size.  

A heavier, cheaper battery might be preferable in some circumstances, like for the smaller, lower-range EVs common in China. JAC’s announced range is comparable to that of the Wuling Hongguang Mini, one of China’s most popular EVs, whose long-range version can drive up to 280 km (175 miles) on a single charge.

A somewhat easier market for sodium-ion batteries might be stationary storage installations, like those used to provide backup power for a home or business or on the electrical grid. Some companies, like US-based Natron, are developing the chemistry specifically for stationary applications, where size and weight aren’t as critical as they are in a moving car.

Sodium-ion batteries have been in development for over half a century, and their performance has improved consistently, with especially steep gains over the past decade, Meng says. Battery researchers have worked out earlier issues with lifetime, partly by finding more compatible electrolytes (the liquid that helps ferry charge around in a battery) for the electrode materials used in sodium-ion cells. Researchers have also developed better electrode materials to boost the batteries’ energy density. 

But the real reason for sodium-ion’s sudden surge in popularity is that lithium mines and processing facilities are straining to meet skyrocketing demand for EV batteries.

The world isn’t going to run out of any materials needed for EVs or renewable energy infrastructure anytime soon. Estimated reserves suggest that Earth’s crust has plenty of lithium for billions of EVs. But adding the infrastructure to pull lithium and other materials out of the ground and process it for use in batteries is proving to be a challenge. It can take the better part of a decade in most parts of the world to get a new mine built.

Demand for lithium has skyrocketed because of increased interest in electric vehicles, which made up about 13% of global vehicle sales in 2022. Higher demand has sent prices soaring: the price of lithium carbonate, a material used in batteries, roughly tripled between November 2021 and November 2022 before finally starting to come back down.

The volatility in lithium prices and the steadily increasing demand have opened the door for other chemistries, Meng says, adding: “I think sodium is considered a good alternative to relieve that pressure.” Unlike lithium, sodium can be produced from an abundant material: salt. Because the raw ingredients are cheap and widely available, there’s potential for sodium-ion batteries to be significantly less expensive than their lithium-ion counterparts if more companies start making more of them.

But if market conditions have opened the door for lithium alternatives, they could just as easily slam it shut. The fate of sodium-ion batteries will likely be “directly tied to the cost of lithium,” says Jay Whitacre, a battery researcher at Carnegie Mellon University and previous founder of a sodium-ion battery company called Aquion.

If sodium-ion batteries are breaking into the market because of cost and material availability, declining lithium prices could put them in a tough position. It’s hard enough to make new batteries and build them at large scale, Whitacre says. It’s even harder to chase a moving target of ever-improving lithium-ion batteries that are getting cheaper. 

Sodium could end up in EV batteries in China as early as the end of this year, but the technology probably won’t overthrow lithium. Rather, the world of batteries will likely continue to branch out and diversify, with companies developing more battery options for different situations. There are “nooks and crannies” in the battery market, as Whitacre puts it, and soon, sodium-ion might finally find its place. 

EVs just got a big boost. We’re going to need a lot more chargers.

The US government is pushing for a massive wave of electric vehicles to hit the roads in the next few years, but the country doesn’t have nearly enough chargers installed to power them all. 

The Environmental Protection Agency released proposed standards today that set limits for companies on total carbon dioxide emissions from fleets of new vehicles. To make sure they are met, electric vehicles will need to account for up to 60% of manufacturers’ new vehicle sales by 2030, and up to 67% by 2032. The standards apply to vehicles starting with model year 2027. 

Today, the transportation sector is the single biggest contributor to greenhouse-gas emissions in the US. The new rules are part of a growing push from the US federal government to boost EVs and other low-emission forms of transit. In 2021, President Biden set a target for EVs to make up half of new vehicle sales by 2030. The Inflation Reduction Act, passed in 2022, includes $7,500 individual tax credits for new electric vehicles.

“Today’s actions will accelerate our ongoing transition to a clean vehicle future, tackle the climate crisis head-on, and improve air quality for communities all across the country,” said EPA administrator Michael Regan at a press conference unveiling the new rules

Charging up

Supporting all those new electric vehicles will require a lot of chargers—far more than the US has right now. There are only about 130,000 public chargers currently installed across the country, and just a small fraction of them are fast chargers. That’s a 40% increase since 2020, according to the EPA press release, but it’s still not enough. We’ll need to build millions of new chargers within a decade. 

A lack of available charging infrastructure is one of the top barriers to EV adoption, according to the International Energy Agency. Public chargers allow drivers to travel longer distances and provide a crucial level of reliability. 

In 2021, the Biden administration set a target of 500,000 publicly available EV chargers by 2030 and designated $5 billion in funding to build the national charging network. With that investment, “we will see a rapid increase of DC fast chargers along national highways,” said Leilani Gonzalez, policy director of the Zero Emissions Transportation Association, in an email. 

Some analysts think those targets won’t be enough to support all the EVs that could be on the roads by the end of the decade. If EVs make up just 40% of new vehicle sales in 2030—less than the expected boost from the new EPA rules—the country would need over 2 million public chargers installed by that date, according to a January report from S&P Global. That figure includes units that have restricted access, like those available to employees at certain workplaces.

“We need strong investment at the state and federal level in charging networks,” says Robbie Orvis, senior director of modeling and analysis at Energy Innovation. “And there’s a lot of work to be done there.”

Between 70% and 80% of EV charging occurs at home, according to research from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory. So in addition to public chargers, supporting a growing EV fleet will require millions of new home chargers. In total, if EVs make up just over a third of new sales in 2030, 17 million home chargers will be needed, according to a 2021 report from the International Council on Clean Transportation

It won’t be cheap: building all the required workplace and public chargers alone will require a total investment of $28 billion between 2021 and 2030, according to the ICCT report. 

EV owners would shoulder the cost of installing at-home charging equipment, but there could be additional barriers. Most homes require some electrical work to support EV charging, which can be expensive if it involves retrofitting. “The building stack generally isn’t ready for charging,” says Dan O’Brien, a modeling analyst at Energy Innovation.

Compounding the charging problem, there’s also a shortage of electricians.  But even though the logistics are daunting, the government isn’t alone in trying to build out charging infrastructure: businesses like Walmart are also jostling to keep up with demand. The company plans to add chargers to thousands of store parking lots in the next few years.

The rising EV tide

There’s no question we will need more chargers; the only uncertainty is how many will need to be plugged in, and how quickly. The new EPA guidelines join a host of other federal and state policies that are already bending the curve of EV adoption upwards. 

Last year, California announced new vehicle standards that require manufacturers to sell an increasing share of low-emission vehicles, including EVs, plug-in hybrids, and fuel-cell vehicles. The rule effectively bans new sales of gas-powered vehicles in the state after 2035. And the mandate could have nationwide impact: 17 states have signed on to previous California vehicle standards, and several have already announced plans to adopt the new rules. 

The EPA announcement will essentially align federal regulations with the new California rules, Jonas Nahm, an assistant professor of energy, resources, and environment at Johns Hopkins, said in an email. 

It will also help make sure that EVs continue to sell after the tax credits from the IRA expire in the early 2030s. The individual tax credits and other incentives in the IRA were already expected to boost projected EV sales from less than 40% in 2030 to nearly 60%, according to modeling from Energy Innovation. That means those incentives would put EV sales on track to meet the proposed EPA guidelines. But some experts worry that if they expire, there might be a rebound back to gas-powered cars in the early 2030s, Orvis says. 

Mandates like the new federal rules could be key in cementing the future of EVs. “In order to meet these targets, carmakers will have to commit to EVs to a degree that will make it harder to change course later on,” Nahm says. 

There’s a lot of work left on charging, battery technology, and public acceptance for EVs to reach the levels they’ll need to in order for us to reach climate goals, but the new EPA rules and other policy shifts suggest that the tide is turning. “This is the future: the consumer demand is there, the markets are enabling it, and the technologies are enabling it,” Regan said in the press conference. “We’re rolling in the same direction.”

These aircraft could change how we fly

This article is from The Spark, MIT Technology Review’s weekly climate newsletter. To receive it in your inbox every Wednesday, sign up here.

This week I fell down a bit of a rabbit hole and developed a mild obsession with flying cars—or the version of them that’s hot right now in Silicon Valley, at least. 

Some companies think it’s time the aviation industry got a makeover, and many are betting it’ll come in the form of eVTOLs: electric vertical take-off and landing vehicles. It’s a horrible acronym for small aircraft that take off and land like a helicopter and fly like a plane. (Typically, it’s pronounced ee-vee-toll, in case you were wondering.)

If eVTOLs can get off the ground and gain regulatory approval, they could change how we think about flight. But that’s a big “if,” and there are other questions for the industry to answer before these new flying vehicles become a reality. So let’s take a look at eVTOLs: what they are, how close they are to taking off, and whether any of this is a good idea for the climate. 

What are eVTOLs, and why are so many companies building them?

There’s a range of possibilities for new electric aircraft, but the eVTOL category basically includes anything that takes off and lands vertically. Most of them look like robotic bugs to me, or something a villain might fly in a James Bond movie. 

Trying to compare eVTOLs to existing aircraft is tricky. Some call them flying cars, though they typically aren’t really designed to move around on the ground. They’re probably closest to an electric version of helicopters, though they fly using different mechanics.

Whatever you call them, there are literally hundreds of companies working to bring eVTOLs to the skies. 

A lot of the excitement centers on the fact that the vehicles could open up new uses for flight: completing last-mile delivery to rural places, transporting people or organs to hospitals, or avoiding the traffic in big metropolitan areas.

I will say that some of these needs could probably be filled by a robust public transit system. (We shouldn’t have to fly to get easily from Newark Airport to downtown Manhattan, a service one eVTOL company plans to offer.) But given the current state of our infrastructure, especially in the US, eVTOL companies see an opening to get people around faster. 

What’s the status of these things? 

There are some really well-funded eVTOL startups working to build the next big thing in flight. Two of the biggest, Joby Aviation and Archer Aviation, are based in the US. There are also some late-stage startups based in Europe, including Lilium in Germany. 

So far, no eVTOLs have launched commercially, though several companies have announced plans to enter commercial service in 2025. 

Right now, companies are testing prototypes and showing off what they can do—a company called Autoflight broke the world record for the longest eVTOL flight just last month. The aircraft covered just over 155 miles (250 kilometers)—about a mile longer than the previous record, held by Joby. 

But despite impressive test flights, questions remain about how close we really are to seeing commercial eVTOLs hit the skies. 

Getting regulatory approval could be a sticking point. Agencies in the US and EU both plan to classify eVTOLs as a special class of aircraft, meaning they’ll be subject to a different set of requirements from conventional aircraft. There’s still some uncertainty about how that whole process will go down, especially in the US.

Still, some companies are charging ahead. Archer began construction on a manufacturing facility in Georgia earlier this year, which could begin production as soon as 2024 and make up to 650 aircraft per year. 

What would eVTOLs mean for climate? 

Swapping out fossil-fuel-powered aircraft for electric ones could be a climate win.

When it comes to more conventional aircraft, an electric plane charged using an average grid could cut emissions by about 50% compared with a fossil-fuel-powered plane. If electric planes are instead charged using all renewables, emissions cuts jump to a maximum of 88%. Most of those remaining emissions come from battery production—because they’ll probably be flying and charging a lot, batteries might need replacing every year or so. 

But when it comes to eVTOLs’ impact on climate, it’s important to consider that the vehicles might not be replacing fossil-fuel-powered airplanes. The idea is to expand flight, so eVTOLs might need to be compared with ground-based vehicles like trains or cars. 

There’s not a ton of analysis out there yet, but one study found that an eVTOL traveling 60 miles (100 kilometers) would produce about 30% less in emissions than a gas-powered car. But the eVTOL would be about 30% worse than an electric vehicle. 

Related reading

  • For more on eVTOLs, including a look at one company that’s decided to start out with a more conventional plane, check out this story.

Another thing

Daylight saving time is trash, and I’m not afraid to say it. (Okay, the time change might be impacting my mood a little bit.) 

Setting the clocks back an hour in the fall and forward an hour in the spring started as an energy-saving measure. But in addition to being bad for our health, it doesn’t even really work very well. 

Artificially changing the time doesn’t seem to affect behavior all that much. And most analyses tracking electricity have found a minimal effect on electricity use. One 2017 analysis found about a 0.34% reduction, and a 2008 Department of Energy report to Congress put the effect at about 0.5%. 

We all need to just agree on an alternative and stop this madness. All right, I’ll get off my soapbox now.

Keeping up with climate

New policies could drive a boom in US mining and mineral processing. My colleague James Temple sat down with David Turk, deputy secretary of the Department of Energy, to talk about what the future of critical minerals looks like for the US. (MIT Technology Review

The Biden administration approved a major new oil drilling project in Alaska. Activists point out that increasing fossil-fuel production doesn’t align with climate goals. (Associated Press)

Silicon Valley Bank melted down on Friday, raising concerns for many tech startups. Sunday night, the government said insurance would cover all deposits, so everyone’s getting their money back. Crisis averted … for now. (Axios

The US Department of Energy announced a $6 billion program to cut emissions from heavy industry. The funding could offer key help for an industry that accounts for about a quarter of the US’s emissions. (Canary Media)

→ Last year, I wrote about a startup trying to reinvent steel production with electricity. (MIT Technology Review

Mmmmm … microbe milk. Some companies hope products made by engineered yeasts or fungi can compete with cow and plant milks. (Washington Post)

The Great Salt Lake in Utah is in trouble, with climate change and increased water demand threatening to turn it into a “toxic dust bomb.” But a lake in California could provide a blueprint to avoiding catastrophe. (Grid News)

I loved these photos of floatovoltaics, or solar panels that float on bodies of water. That’s one way to solve possible concerns about land use. (Bloomberg)

Apple added a new setting on iPhones to align charging with availability of renewable energy. The feature is a small but interesting case of demand response, which could be useful for bigger energy consumers like electric vehicles. (Washington Post)