Battery Metals

Hyundai will lead local carmakers in the zero-emission car race with three vehicles on sale by the end of the year.

The B.C. Utilities Commission has launched an independent inquiry to look into whether or not charging stations for electric vehicles should be provincially regulated.

The commission says it’s seeking input from both stakeholders and the public and will be holding community input sessions in March and April.

“The focus is on whether charging stations should be regulated and if so how they should be regulated,” said David Morton, B.C. Utilities Commission CEO.

The deadline to register to become an intervenor in the process is Friday.

According to BC Hydro, there are one-thousand public charging stations across the province. Most of these operate for free, but many require the driver to join a service to access the network of stations. They then use a station by scanning a membership card.

Other charging stations are operated by strata buildings that typically cover the cost of electricity through either incorporating it in to strata fees or by charging a parking fee.

One thing the commission will look at is where there is a need for more stations and how municipalities can work to get the infrastructure.

“I think it’s frustrating for some municipalities. They don’t necessarily want to build the infrastructure themselves but they want to support the building of the infrastructure so they need some clarity on what the regulatory regime is,” Morton explained to Stephen Quinn on The Early Edition.

For the most part, charging stations are in urban areas, with the heaviest concentrations in Metro Vancouver.

But Morton is quick to mention that regulation may not be the answer.

“Technically if someone builds a charging infrastructure and sells somebody the electricity then they are a public utility,” he said.

“The issue that we see is that there’s elements of the charging station market that are competitive and we need to take a look at whether it’s efficient for us to be regulating.”

‘VHS versus beta situation’

What type of charging stations would be built and how much a charge at one of them would cost remain outstanding issues.

Currently, charging stations aren’t standardized, meaning not all cars are compatible with all stations. Morton explains that Tesla models require different charging stations than other electric cars.

“It’s a bit of a VHS versus a beta situation right now,” he said.

And there are also different rates at which the cars can charge.

“There’s the quick charge stations which will charge a typical vehicle in roughly 20 minutes and then the slower charges which is typically what you’d find in a home or in the parkade of a strata or in an office building.”

Most of the stations now operate free of charge. But, Morton warns that’ll quickly become unsustainable should British Columbians embrace the electric car.

Regardless, Morton admits the free-of-charge stations can entice people to switch to an electric vehicle.

“In order to get to a serious enough infrastructure to support the kind of electric vehicle adoption rates that the federal government has targeted … they need to be as ubiquitous as gas stations currently are so it’s not an impediment at all for people.”

In November 2016, our analysis shows that a Tesla Powerwall and a 5kW rooftop solar system could deliver electricity around the same price as grid power. Our latest estimate shows solar and storage is now significantly cheaper.

In late 2016 Tesla launched the Powerwall 2, halving the price of storage relative to Powerwall 1.

In a note in November 2016 we analysed the economics of one of these batteries plus 5kW of rooftop solar plus grid for back-up and exports, relative to grid-only supply for a household with north facing roof in Adelaide that consumes 4800 kWh per year.

The comparison worked out the annual bill with and without PV and battery.

Nissan Motor Co. may get a boost from a deepening relationship with Japan’s biggest trading house as access to battery materials becomes a priority amid the industry’s push into electric vehicles.

Mitsubishi Corp. on Tuesday said it plans to double its stake in Mitsubishi Motors Corp., of which Nissan is the biggest shareholder. The trading company, which also owns mining assets, could be able to secure the lithium, cobalt, rare earths and other battery metals necessary for the expanding EV business being developed by Nissan and its partners, according to Seiji Sugiura, an analyst at Tokai Tokyo Research Center in Tokyo.

“Via Mitsubishi Motors, it’s likely Mitsubishi Corp. will boost its business relationship with the Nissan alliance,” Sugiura said by email, referring to the partnership between the two Japanese automakers and Renault SA that was fostered under Carlos Ghosn, chairman of all three. “Mitsubishi Corp. could invest in lithium, rare earths and other metals and become a supplier” for the alliance, he said.

The Mitsubishi-Nissan connection may reap benefits similar to other Japanese companies like Toyota Motor Corp., whose trading arm — Toyota Tsusho Corp. — recently took a stake in an Australian lithium miner. Since 2010 until the end of last year, Nissan has sold about 300,000 of its Leaf EVs. That compares with Tesla Inc.’s sales surpassing 250,000 last year since its first Roadster rolled out in 2008.

Neither Mitsubishi Corp. nor Nissan were immediately able to comment Wednesday.

Mitsubishi Corp. said in a filing Tuesday, which laid out the rationale for doubling its stake in Mitsubishi Motors, that it’s considering deeper involvement in the automotive industry in light of the “rapid and significant changes,” specifically electric vehicles and autonomous cars.

Only two automakers have built and sold more than 300,000 battery-electric cars to date.

One is from Japan, the other from Silicon Valley.

And each can claim a specific distinction within those totals.

We know that the 300,000th Nissan Leaf was sold in January, almost surely an early model of the second-generation car introduced for the 2018 model year.

The first Leaf was delivered in December 2010, so it took the company just over seven years to reach that benchmark.

It’s also worth pointing out that Nissan sells a second electric vehicle as well, the e-NV200 small commercial van, though only in Asia and Europe, not North America.

We don’t know how many of those Nissan has sold—perhaps 15,000?—but adding that estimate to rising numbers of the second-generation Leaf now rolling off assembly lines in Japan, England, and Tennessee makes it possible that Nissan is ahead of Tesla at this point in time.

The Silicon Valley electric-car maker, meanwhile, confirmed to Electrek last Wednesday that it had delivered its 300,000th electric car this month.

And Tesla gets its laurels for having started volume production later than Nissan, in June 2012.

Sure, its subcontractor Lotus built the low-volume, $100,000 Roadster all-electric two-seat sports car from 2008 through 2012, but total production of 2,500 cars over more than four years doesn’t really count as “volume production.”

Unlike Nissan, Tesla’s total production of 300,000 electric cars spans four models: the Roadster, then the Model S, the Model X utility vehicle, and now the Model 3 smaller sedan.

The last three all remain in production, with the electric-car world watching intently to see whether the company gets through its “production hell” and gets the Model 3 to its goal of 5,000 cars a week by June 30.

While it’s not surprising that Nissan is at the top of the electric-car production ranks, Tesla’s presence alongside it would have been very hard to predict just 10 years ago.

At that point, Tesla was struggling to deliver its first Roadsters, Nissan was the sole global automaker that had even hinted at plans for a mass-market battery-electric vehicle, and the auto industry was heading rapidly off a cliff due to the global recession.

While Nissan’s then-CEO Carlos Ghosn expected far more rapid public adoption of electric vehicles than has occurred thus far, the fact that in seven years, the world has added almost 2 million vehicles that plug in for power shouldn’t be underestimated.