Changing gear: the road ahead for auto | Fast Forward podcast season 2, episode 2 transcript

You can read the full transcript of our interview between Fastmarkets’ own Andrea Hotter and Will Adams, including an interview between Andrea and Quentin Wilson, a presenter and leading advocate for electric vehicles.

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Full episode transcript

Fast Forward, season 2, episode 2 transcript  

Andrea Hotter [AH]: Welcome back to Fast Forward, a podcast by Fastmarkets. I’m Andrea Hotter, special correspondent at Fastmarkets, and this is episode two of our second series on the key issues impacting critical minerals and the energy transition. William Adams, head of battery and base metals research at Fastmarkets, is in the studio with me today to chat about the theme of today’s episode, which is electric vehicles. 

Hey Will, how you doing? 

William Adams [WA]: Good, thank you, Andrea. And yourself? 

AH: Yeah, not too bad, not too bad. Well, seeing as we’re talking about cars, it got me thinking about my early days of driving. And I was thinking about, oh my gosh, this is a terrible story. After I passed my driving test as a teenager, I remember borrowing my parents’ car the first day after I passed, which was an Audi, and I managed to scratch it whilst I was parking it the very first time I took it out on a Friday night, which was completely mortifying. 

And then I think my first car I actually owned was a Vauxhall Nova, a second-hand one, which was. General Motors, and then later in my twenties, I had a racing car, red Honda ST1000. I don’t know if you remember that. It was a very sporty little car that I leased for a few years, and I absolutely loved it. 

How about you? What was your first car? 

WA: Yeah, so I learned in a little old, probably 10^th-hand Wolsey Hornet, and then my first car after that was a Mazda 323 hatchback, but it did have an electric sunroof, which made all the difference. And then I moved up into an Audi Quattro, one of the original ones, which was an absolutely superb car. 

AH: Fantastic. Very good. What’s a Wolsey Hornet? I’ve never heard of that. 

WA: It’s an old British car, it looks very similar to an old Mini, but it just had a bit of a boot on it rather than the flat end. 

AH: I was trying to imagine you in a Mini with your height, I don’t, I can’t, I can’t.  

WA: Yeah, no, well, I couldn’t wear any shoes, they had to be the thinnest shoes I could get, otherwise I used to get my foot stuck underneath the brake if I was using the accelerator, so yeah, lots of things to combat. 

AH: Yeah, safety first, hey? 

WA: Yeah, exactly. 

AH: Well, the guest of today’s podcast is very familiar to car lovers because he was in almost 200 episodes of the original format of BBC motoring show Top Gear from 1991 to 2000. I’m sure you remember Top Gear, Will, did you watch it? 

WA: Yeah, yes, I certainly have watched numerous episodes. 

I wouldn’t say I watch every week, but I certainly have seen lots of them over the years, yes. 

AH: Yeah, well, this guest, he also presented a spinoff show called The Cars the Star, the sixth series. And he joined several other former Top Gear presenters to produce Fifth Gear from 2002 as well. 

So, he’s actually been driving electric vehicles, however, for quite some time. 

And he’s now a huge advocate for them, having given evidence on transport electrification to UK government select committees and the House of Lords round tables. He set up Lobby Agency Fair Charge. and has lobbied transport ministers and MPs for greater electric vehicle incentives and infrastructure. 

He is the one and only motoring journalist, TV presenter, and transport campaigner Quentin Wilson. 

Quentin Wilson. It’s great to have you on the podcast. 

Quentin Wilson [QW]: It’s a pleasure to be here, Andrea. 

AH: Great stuff. So, look now, there’s something I need to ask you. You were part of the Top Gear franchise, which was an incredibly popular award award-winning BBC TV series about motor cars. When I think of Top Gear, I think of petrol cars, diesel engines, gas guzzlers, whatever you want to call them. I don’t think about electric vehicles. 

So, how did you go from being a bit of a petrol head to campaigning for electric vehicles and becoming an EV influencer? 

QW: So, yeah, I mean, I did 15 years with Top Gear and Clarkson in the pre-James May and Richard Hammond era. And we were very pro-petrol cars and V8s and V12s and did nothing else. 

And then I remember I got a call from our executive producer saying, how do you fancy going to LA to drive this newfangled GM EV1 electric car? And Clarkson didn’t want to do it, and he hated electric cars, still does. And I said, yeah, come on, let’s go and do this. I need to know about this new emerging technology. 

So, we went to LA, and I remember the moment vividly, Andrea, I’m driving down Sunset Boulevard, this, this GM EV1, which we just picked up. And there’s a Volvo T5 estate next to me with this smug bloke with Oakley sunglasses on, looking at me, and I’m looking at him, it’s the traffic light Grand Prix thing. And then the lights changed, and I nailed it, and I could not believe how quickly this thing just shot off the line and, you know, the turbocharged Volvo was in my dust. 

And that was the moment when I thought, whoa, this is some technology here. And they showed us how we charged it with little paddles and things. And I mean, we smoked the battery, and I think you don’t hear about some 30, 40 miles range, but it was so quick, so elegant, and the technology was so good, and this was, what, back in ‘94, ‘95. 

AH: Wow. 

QW: And I did a thing, the report I’m talking about, which I think is still out there. And you can hear me saying, look, this is the future. This is the new Volkswagen. And it was amazing, but so amazing that GM, if you’ve watched A Hooker Killed an Electric Car, they crushed them all. They called them all back. 

They were on lease, but people couldn’t buy them. And they knew that it was so good that it would disrupt their European internal combustion engine and global strategies. So that’s why we didn’t have an electric car until, what, 2009, 2010 with the Leaf. But that moment for me, that was my Damascene moment. 

And you couldn’t buy electric cars then until 2009, 2010. And the first one I bought was a Mitsubishi Yamaha, the hateful, miserable little thing that would do 50 miles to one charge. And if you put the heater on, it’d be 30 miles. And we had this as a family car for a couple of years and the kids would drive around in it with me going to school. 

We couldn’t have the heater on it, had their coats and hats on, and it was terrible. But as a journo, I just felt that I had to test this technology and know whether it worked, whether it was reliable and it was. And then I bought another one, a Citroen, a Citroen C0, then a Vauxhall Ampera, which is the Chevrolet Volt equivalent. 

Then and Renault Zoe, and then a Leaf and then onto Tesla. So, my electric car experience is probably a couple of hundred thousand miles and several EVs, none of which have caused any problems. So, you know, I sit here as the car guy who tried the technology years and years ago and said, look, this is great. 

This works. And here we are now with the electric car I got outside, which would do 320,330 miles to one charge and accelerate faster than most Lamborghinis and Ferraris. So, it’s a technology that is successful. It’s reliable. It works. And people say this to me all the time. Are they fun? Well, yes. 

Look, if you’re in a Tesla Model 3 performance, you’ll be doing 60 in 3.1 seconds and smoking everybody. 

AH: I’m getting the impression here that drag race down the strip there out in Sunset Boulevard was the a-ha moment when you realized the speed of it as well, which sounds like. 

QW: Yeah, it was. And you know, back then I think it was doing 60 in five or six seconds, which was hysterically fast. 

AH: Yeah, so when did you actually first own one and what was your first car? I have to ask you that as well. What was your first car, Quentin? 

QW: So, my first car was a, uh, a little Mini, uh, that I bought for 50 pounds and did up and sold for profit and then bought an Austin-Healy, Fog Eyes Bright and did that up and sold it for a profit, and then on to crazy things like E types and Sunbeam Tigers and Jensen Interceptors. 

So, I was buying and selling cars between school and university. I remember buying an E type for 495 pounds and the clutch had gone and I repaired that at home, put the new clutch in it and drove around in it and, you know, they were happy days. So, the first electric car would be 2009, I think. Which would be the Mitsubishi i-MiEV. 

AH: And what do you drive now? What’s your car now? 

QW: So look, I’ve got two Teslas, a Model 3 and a Model Y. And that’s it. That’s what the Wilson family drives. 

AH: All right. 

QW: I’ve got a 1964 and a half Mustang convertible V8 in the garage, which I’m hanging on to. Its carbon debt has been paid off 60 years old, but I still love combustion cars, and I think you’ve got to say, Andrea, that we will always have combustion cars and people always drive them and that’s fine. 

And you don’t have to drive an EV if you don’t want to. And somebody said to me the other day, freedom is the sound of one man’s combustion engine and the silence of another man’s electric car. So, you can have both. 

AH: Very smart. Well, look, I want to get into some of that work that you’re doing around electric vehicles today, because you founded lobby agency, FairCharge, with the goal of increasing awareness of electric vehicles, because let’s face it, not everybody loves electric vehicles as much as you do. 

In fact, there are so many opinions around electric vehicles, which I know you don’t agree with. And I know that because you published a book called the little book of EV myths, in which you’re very clear you don’t agree with a lot of what you call misinformation around electric vehicles. So, let’s run through some of the things in this book. 

One thing I think our listeners would be very interested in is the idea that there aren’t enough critical minerals in the world for EV batteries. Why is that wrong? 

QW: Well, look, a lot of this stuff has been around on social media for a long time, five, six years. And back then there wasn’t the data, there wasn’t the information, people couldn’t look at it. 

So, you think we’re going to run out of lithium. Do you know, actually, we will run out of iron ore before we run out of lithium, because there’s so much of it in the world. It’s one of the most prolific elements. Cobalt, 50% of all testers no longer have cobalt in their batteries. So, the amount of cobalt in lithium ion batteries has reduced from about sort of 8% to 5 to 10% now, and there’ll come a time when we won’t have cobalt in batteries at all. 

And graphite’s an issue. The Chinese have tied up the graphite supply. 85% of it is refined in China, but we’re finding other things to use as anodes in batteries, like silicon and stuff like that. So, the whole kind of argument about critical minerals is going to change massively as we find alternatives to them. 

And this battery chemistry development is so, so important. And it won’t be that long, maybe a decade before it’s fully productionized, but we will have solid state batteries. The thing here, Andrea, is if we don’t have the investment in electric cars, as the OEMs are doing and have done, then we won’t get these developments in battery chemistries. 

And I work a lot with an organization called UKBIC, which is the UK battery industrialization center. And they work really closely on batteries and battery recycling and battery chemistry. So, they’ll come a stage where we don’t need to make lithium. We don’t need to mine this stuff and get the cobalt out of the ground. 

And that’s what we need to work towards. So, we have a complete closed loop of battery supply. 

AH: We will get on to recycling, I hope, a little bit later. So, let’s just run through a few more of those myths. Another one in the book, in which I have heard quite frequently, as you say, in the broader cultural media, is the idea that mining materials for EV batteries is actually worse for the environment than if you drive a car that is based on fossil fuels. 

Put me straight on that one. 

QW: Okay, so if you mine battery materials, obviously there is a carbon footprint, but then if you look at the whole lifetime of that EV, and there’s multiple studies on this, particularly one from an organization called Carbon Brief, you can work it out that it pays back its carbon in 13,000 miles on a green grid. 

So, after that point it becomes carbon neutral, and it doesn’t make any emissions apart from emissions from tires and a tiny little bit from regen brakes. So, compared to the combustion car, which is polluting for the whole of its life, that impact is tiny.   

AH: Alright, you also mentioned the fear that EVs regularly catch fire. 

I mean, that’s definitely very publicized when it happens to bikes, that’s when we hear it. What’s the truth here with regards to cars in your view?  

QW: So, we’ve got lots of data now, we’ve been driving literally billions of miles in electric cars. We’re not guessing at this. So, we’ve got the data from fire services all around the world that says that you are 20 times more likely to be in a fire in a combustion car than you are in an EV. 

It is a fact that if an EV catches fire, it’s pretty, pretty big. And it takes a long time to put it out. And there’s toxic gases and all that. But the idea that EVs are more likely to catch fire than combustion cars is completely nonsense. And then you’ve got to say, look, how many EVs do you see on fire? 

You see hundreds and hundreds of combustion cars and lorries on fire by the side of the road, but the amount of EVs, no. And I think a lot of the data gets confused with, you’ve got lots of e-bike fires, so the fire services bundle all these lithium-ion battery fires together. And then you’ve also got arson, so we don’t have the absolute last word, but it’s between 20, I’ve seen some estimates saying 80 times more likely to be a combustion fire than an EV fire. 

So, it’s a busted myth. Definitely. 

AH: Yeah. Okay. Now you also address something that I do want to dig into a little bit. That big fear in many parts of the world is that the electric vehicle you’re driving won’t make it to its destination because it’s going to run out of juice and there won’t be a charger nearby. 

In other words, range anxiety. Ranges have improved. I’m sure you’ve seen that from the first car that you were driving out in LA to now. What kind of ranges do EVs have now? How likely is it you’ll find charging infrastructure? What do you say about that range anxiety? 

QW: So, in my hundreds of thousands of miles in an EV, I’ve never, ever run out. 

In the early days, you’d cut it fine and the kids would be looking at the flashing turtle on the Nissan Leaf dashboard saying, “Dad, are we gonna make it home?” But the average still in the UK is about 250 miles to one charge. But Mercedes do one with 400 miles to one charge. Jaguar, the new, new Jaguars are coming out. 

They’re telling me that they’re seeing real life range of 400 miles, 420 miles to one charge. So, it really is significant. And the latest Tesla model three, the Highland that’s about on a long range, 350. So, we get into the stage, we’re almost at that kind of parity with range. And as for running out, look, we need more infrastructure. 

Absolutely. Governments think, okay, we’ve done very well. We’re up 34% in the UK this year, and we’ve got 74,000 public charges, which comes out at about 100,000 connections. But we need probably another 200,000 of those. So, it’s really important that we don’t get complacent, that we carry on investing and making charge point operators, you know, taking away the blockages, all the grid connections and the planning stuff, which is just nuts and put more of these charges into the ground because we’re going to need them. 

And simple things like destination charges, Andrea, you know, hotels, leisure centers, supermarkets where you graze charge, you go to a meeting, you go shopping, you can plug your EV in and you can top it up by another 40 miles or whatever. So, that’s a really important thing. But the real obstacle to that right now is grid connection and the fact that you’ve got stupid planning permissions. 

AH: Well, also, I live in the US. I’m just playing devil’s advocate here. It’s a massive country. And you know, there are some places. There is very little charging availability and capacity, which does contribute to this range anxiety. Once you get outside of those big cities, distribution can be really uneven. 

So, how do we get around this barrier to adoption? Not everyone, even in a city, has off road parking to charge at home either. So, regionally, the UK is much smaller. You can get around more easily, but US and obviously other parts of the world, how do you compare those regions and what do they need to do? 

QW: Well, in the US, they really do need to say, and sadly, that’s not happening right now with Trump. They need to say, look, we’ve got to really build more and electrify America was a great idea. And they just needed to put more and more of these charges in the ground, but it’s not happening so much. But then if you look at somewhere like France, they’re great. 

I mean, they’re doing better in terms of charges than we are in the UK. Just because there was a political will, Andrea. China, nearly 50% of their car output is now electrified and they’ve got millions and millions of charges. And it’s all about a political will and a dedication to do this and to make it happen and to treat it like critical infrastructure. 

We need this. We need it in the ground. We need it happening faster than it is at the moment. And that’s the way you change people’s perceptions. One of the big problems for me is that not enough MPs, not enough ministers actually drive these electric cars, and you’ve got to be behind the wheel charging, understanding what’s involved, what consumers want, how easy it is, how difficult it is, and that whole experience. 

AH: Yeah, politics and psychology, two very important things. We will come back to the politics aspect a little bit later. I do want to ask you, though, about cost, because that’s a really important factor when you’re choosing a car. And it is certainly true that Electric vehicles have been, or are, more expensive outside China and much cheaper in. 

So, how close do you think we are in terms of getting to that point of cost parity with internal combustion engines, or at least having more affordable models more widely available? Or do you think we’ve passed that tipping point? 

QW: The difference between petrol and electric, or petrol and diesel and electric, was always quite significant. 

If you bought it, it could be as much as 10 grand, sometimes 20 grand. But that difference has shrunk now, as manufacturers have managed to make electric cars for less money and battery prices have come down from massive highs to much less than a hundred dollars a kilowatt hour. We’re seeing prices of used EVs now less sometimes than petrol or diesel. 

So, in the UK, there’s a massive market in used EVs. It’s one of the fastest-selling fuel types and has beaten petrol. They also get hung up about, look, the list price is 10, 12,000 pounds more, but nobody is really buying these cars outright, what they’re doing is they’re doing them high purchase or lease or PCP. 

So if you look at those prices, sometimes it’s only 10, 20 pounds more a month. So, it’s a bit of a misnomer where everybody says, well, they’re very expensive. I can’t afford one. You get it on a PCP or a lease or HP and you won’t notice the difference. Then the other thing about cost is that it’s far less expensive to run an electric car in terms of maintenance, 20 moving parts in the drive team compared to 200, no exhaust, no fluids, really no oil filters, cam belts, that sort of thing to change. 

So, in my 45,000 miles of owning a Tesla and four years, all I’d done is a set of tires. So, it would have had to have four services maybe in that time with the equivalent combustion car. The cost of driving electric is significantly less if you can charge at home. 

AH: Now, absolutely. Going back to that politics piece as well, as you said, electric vehicles have become incredibly politicized. 

I mean, I live in the US, but I’m from the UK, and in both countries, there seems to be a bit of a culture war over electric cars. There were tax credits for electric vehicles under the Biden administration, but those are ending under the Trump administration. I did see there’s actually legislation in the US to charge electric vehicle buyers 1,000 at the point of sale due to the belief that the cars are heavier and cause more wear and tear on the roads. 

Quentin, I know that’s in your book of myths, and I can see the steam coming out of your eyes as we speak, but we’re not going to go there. I guess it all comes back to, do we need incentives like the Biden era tax credits or similar? You talked about France and government support. Is policy support from the government essential? 

Do you think? 

QW: At this stage, nascent technology, Andrea, it’s hard. When you’re asking people to do this big, big shift in behaviours and perception, they’re not going to do it unless it’s absolutely instantly going to make their lives cheaper and better. You can tell them all the environmental reasons why they should do it, but they won’t, will it make my life easier and better? 

And right now, it is a more difficult thing to do. You have to plan your journeys and stuff like that. So, of course we need incentives. We saw in Germany, as soon as the intensity disappears, the amount of EVs being sold slows down and they’re reinstating those. So, yes, you need incentives, but you also need these policy decisions. 

In the UK, we’ve got this great thing called the zero-emission vehicle mandate, which means that the carmakers have to make a certain proportion of EVs every year. So, in 2024, it’s at 20%, 2025, it’s going to be 28%. And that’s really driven EV sales. EV production prices have come down. Second-hand prices have come down. 

So, there’s policy things are probably as important, if not more important than incentives. Trump, if you forgive me here, I’m going to politicize this. Trump, if he’s not careful and he’s trying this protectionism for US auto industry to say, look, we’re going to keep these Chinese cars out, we’re going to reduce the dependence on EVs, we’re going to carry on building pickup trucks and big V8s, but he’s going to isolate the American auto industry when you’ve got what we would call a global mega trend happening. 

So, we’ve got lots of EVs in Europe, lots of EVs in the UK, lots of EVs in China, and other countries also developing these strategies. Now, if America is just trying to defend its legacy auto like this, there’s going to come a time when they become uncompetitive. 

So, to block out that change and cheaper driving and more reliable driving for consumers is wrong, I think. And he’s ideological about this and he’s bought into the whole, we hate electric cars and they’re a threat to legacy auto, when they should be saying. Yes, actually we need to do this. And okay, it breaks a dealership model where you have to keep going in and get the car service and paying all this money for repairs, but then you’ll start up other industries and this whole thing about a green transition, which brings more income, more GDP, more economic activity because of that and replaces oil, is the way forward. 

But America seems to be really putting his head in the sand here. 

AH: A lot of this is part of this move to reshore supply chains, reduce reliance on China. A lot of, as you say, protectionist measures there. Are you suggesting we should open the market up, let everyone compete on a level playing field, and help drive competition as a result? 

It sounds like you’re saying car companies would then be forced to find a way to produce better cars at a lower cost because it’s a much more competitive environment. Is that the case? 

QW: You shouldn’t allow unfettered access to your market. So, we can’t have lots and lots of Chinese companies coming into America or Europe or the UK and building lots of cars and undercutting the incumbents. 

What you can do is you can get them to onshore, as you say, factories and battery factories and contribute to GDP and to jobs and to economic activity. And to transfer their skills as well, ‘cause the Chinese are 10 years ahead of us in batteries. So yes, we need to open the market out. But we need to be reasonable about this and tariffs help nobody, but you’ve got to make sure that those cars are not shipped on diesel boats all the way to America from China. 

That’s not a green car, is it? That the cars are made in America and the UK and Europe, and that’s really important. 

AH: What do you think of Chinese electric vehicles? I’m curious. Have you ever driven one? Have you seen them? Have you been around them? 

QW: Loads. 

AH: What’s your view?  

QW: I’ve just come back from Dubai, actually, and they’re everywhere. 

They really are. You get an Uber and it’s a BYD or an X Peng or a jet tour. And you sit in the back, and you’re surrounded by quilted leather and you’re looking at the screen in the front and it’s really just, you know, whoa, there’s some tech in this car. And you talk to the taxi driver and they just all, they love them. 

So, the idea that Chinese EVs are rubbish is again, a very old kind of thing. It’s outdated now. I drove a thing called a Skywell BE11 to Paris, which is an SUV, 30,000, 35,000 maybe. And I mean, it was great. It really was. It worked very well. It’s perhaps not the most exciting or the most dynamic of cars and wouldn’t tickle your heart with delicate fingers, but it got us to Paris and back and it was absolutely fun and we drove it to the Arc de Triomphe and said, hey, you know, we got here. 

So, you look at BYDs, the Dolphins, the Atto, I’ve driven them all. And they are surprisingly good, Andrea. That’s why we should never underestimate them as well. They are very good. They know what they’re doing. They’ve learned from all those JV projects that Mercedes and BMW did in China. They’ve managed to really sort their production quality out, their build quality, so they’re very competitive now. 

And with the price, even with tariffs, they’re going to still make the other cars, the OEMs in Europe look very expensive. 

AH: Obviously, the Chinese auto sector has committed to electric vehicles. What about the rest of the west, because as you’ve said before, that political will was pushing those mandates to certain percentages of vehicles required to be electric vehicles. 

Do you think that’s still going to be the case now that those mandates may have eased back? Have they still committed to the EV story in your experience? 

QW: So, things have changed over the last, what, a couple of months, really. If you’d asked me that beforehand, I would have said, you know, we’re on a glide path, a straight line to global electrification, but net zero has become a highly charged political issue and electric cars are part of it at net zero. 

So, they’ve been identified as an unnecessary evil, if you like. So, it depends on pressure from the right.  So, if reform were to be elected, say, tomorrow in the UK, I could see them try to unpick all this electric vehicle strategy or the, not that we have any incentives, but certainly the Zed mandate as Trump is doing in America. 

And we know that in Germany, they’re unhappy about this AFD and German automakers are saying, please don’t come pick this because it’s really important. So, the answer to that is, I don’t know. And the next 24 months, we’ll see what happens. But most car makers have committed billions to electric vehicle strategy, and the Europeans are getting really quite good. 

I wonder what Musk is going to do, because we know that his traditional customer base is saying, what are you doing? And some people have said to me, I’m not going to buy a Tesla anymore, simple as that, because I don’t like his ideology. And Musk and Tesla have led the market. They’ve been the real poster boys of electrification. 

I think it’s fair to say without Musk, without Tesla, we wouldn’t be as far down the road as we are because they made electric cars sexy and they proved that they’re incredibly reliable. You know, 500,000 miles on a Tesla Model S 75 battery is really quite usual now. And I’ve driven a Model S with 250,000 miles. 

And they really are the gold standard in terms of build quality, in terms of reliability and in terms of the supercharger network. So, if for any reason Tesla were to stumble, that would be a big shadow over the whole EV progress, I think. So, it’s really very difficult right now and it shouldn’t be. And it’s that lack of political will and lack of people in government saying, no matter what, this is the way we should be going because it means better air quality. 

It means less dependence on foreign oil, and it means that we can ultimately get cheaper energy for consumers through renewables. 

AH: And you know, the statistics bear this out to a certain extent as well. It’s interesting. I was looking back through the data before we spoke and there were just over 17 million EVs sold globally last year, which was up 25%, which is great, as you say, on the right path. 

And China was obviously that biggest market. Sales there were 40% last year to around 11 million. So, what are they getting right and why are they getting it right all the time? What is it about the Chinese vehicles? Is it that they started a long time ago. What is it? 

QW: They have a lead on us. And it was amazing. 

While we were sleeping and saying that Musk was stupid and laughing at him, they were quietly working on supply chains, working on battery chemistries and making sure that they created this supply network that they basically controlled. Then they were very good at all their STEM or their science and technology and maths and got all these graduates working on batteries and created these big companies like Cattle who have been doing so much R&D on batteries. 

So, they’re far advanced and you saw Northvolt which had 15 billion euros worth of support and they couldn’t get it right. They couldn’t make the batteries. Because they bought equipment from China and then tried to kind of modify it and change it and do it for different applications. And the scrappage rate on all those batteries was so high that they’d become uneconomical, couldn’t make their targets, couldn’t make their deadlines. 

BMW pulled a 2-billion-pound battery contract, and then the writing was on the wall. So, that Chinese knowledge is really awesome. And that’s why they’re so ahead. That, and I think Andrea, that their operating systems and their screens, the Chinese like lots of gadgets and things that they really do want the very latest tech. 

So that’s why Tesla sales in China have begun to fall because the operating systems there, they’re very good, but they’re not as twinkly and sparky as some of the Chinese ones. So, they really do have an advance in terms of battery chemistry, of range, of cost of battery, and also the operating systems in the car. 

AH: And then when you compare that to the US and Canada, the stats there was around 1.3 million EVs sold last year. So, it was up around just 7% or so, around 8% of total auto sales, which is still not great. And Europe as well, sales were down 3% to 3 million. So, what are they not doing right, I guess is the question, or are they doing it right, it’s just taking longer? 

QW: It’s taking longer. As I said, the Chinese have had this long lead time. We have only just started on this, and don’t forget the European OEM said, all right, let’s make really expensive electric SUVs, and we can sell those for 80, 90, 000 pounds. And actually, that’s not what the market wanted. To me, it was an obvious thing that a small price range EV with a range of a couple hundred miles on the battery, like the new Renault 5, would be a global seller. 

And the OEMs, legacy OEMs, didn’t do that. Their strategies were all wrong. And they went for high margin, low volume cars, and they should have been going for this sort of global thing. So, China really have done some very clever things and beaten us both in terms of tech, batteries, and product strategy too. 

AH: And we’re talking there, we’ve focused mostly on the US, Europe. How do we broaden that uptake in the rest of the world where we’ve got large populations in Africa and India and so on? I mean, sales to the rest of the world outside the regions we’ve discussed was just 1.3 million, so the same as America. 

How do we do that? 

QW: It’s going to take time. And look, the automobile has had 130, 140 years to mature, and we’ve only been making electric cars, what, for 15? So, it will take time, and those developing nations have a right for clean air and cheap energy, just as we do. But it’s up to them to be able to put in infrastructure, and that may have to rely on battery storage. 

So instead of having grid connections, you take somewhere like Dubai, where I’ve just been. I mean, the solar there is massive. So, why would you necessarily have to rely on a grid connection when you could have one of those mega pack batteries fed by solar or renewables to generate the power to charge the car? 

So, we need to look at lots of different ways of how we deploy that charging infrastructure. And if you can’t get electric cables across the desert, then you have a look at what you use in terms of static energy storage. That’s how this whole battery industry is going to grow and grow. And when I listened to Trump, you just think he’s going to miss out on this historic once-in-a-generation opportunity to build these green industries. 

And we know that all the Biden Iris stuff has really landed well. And a lot of it has landed very well in Republican states where they’re making solar and they’re making batteries and they’re making battery management systems and doing it very well. 

And if he’s going to pull the rug under that. Then it seems very bizarre that you’re losing an opportunity that the rest of the world is looking at and seeing as a mega trend.  

AH: Quentin, you know what happened at British Vault. You were part of that there. You just mentioned batteries, obviously. You’ve seen what happened with North Vault. 

You just mentioned that earlier as well. What do you think of this relative inability in the west? And I’m not saying everywhere, but compared to China, this relative inability to construct a battery gigafactory, because that’s a huge vulnerability to this whole ecosystem, isn’t it? 

QW: We should have been doing this a long time ago and British Volt had its faults and maybe it could have been run better, but there was political things behind that where, you know, a funding application sat. 

Or ping pong between Boris Johnson, number 10, and Rishi Sunak, number 11. And it delayed and delayed it. And eventually, the thing just didn’t happen. And that was due to a political will. We should have a battery factory now because Boris was really up for it, and Sunak wasn’t. So, it was kind of ideological friction between the two. 

That simplifies it, but we should have a massive battery factory churning out batteries to OEMs, built in the UK, but we don’t. And the same with Northvolt. There were lots of other problems there. And it’s the fact that we just don’t see it as important. Ministers should say, this is an important thing, and you should treat it like nuclear reactors and things like that, build them, make sure we’ve got this for the future. 

And I remember a politician who must be named as saying to me, well, look, when is this factory ever going to make a profit? And the thing is, it might never make a profit, but it’s part of our infrastructure. It’s part of our energy independence. So, you should be building these things and learning from the Chinese and making sure we have that infrastructure so we could have our own battery supply and our own critical minerals and that whole kind of closed loop thing. 

And. The answer, I think, quickly to your question is, we haven’t had the political will to be able to say, we have to build these factories. It’s as simple as that. Because if we don’t, we will always be reliant on other countries. So, we’ve replaced one kind of energy independence issue with another kind of energy independence issue. 

AH: Yeah. I’m hearing lots of politics coming through in this in terms of that’s an essential backup for everything. Talking there about batteries, I do want to touch briefly on battery chemistries. What are your views on the whole lithium-ion-phosphate versus nickel-cobalt-manganese battery battle that we’re seeing at the moment? 

QW: Well, look, LFP batteries, they work really well and there’s less of a risk of fire with them. You can charge them up to 100%. The range is slightly less, but they are cheaper to produce. They’re easy to produce. So, ultimately, we’ll get to a stage where. The battery chemistry will be such that you get a significantly improved range with these new chemistries, and you get better density. 

So it’s changing. And I think LFPs is going to come up as a really cheaper, easier option for most electric cars. And then you’ve got the debate between cylindrical cells. or pouch cells. The cylindrical cell is the little battery 2170 is the one they use in the Tesla. And they’re jelly rolls. They’ve got all the components inside. 

They’re simple to make, they last a long time, whereas pouch cells can be difficult, less reliable, and just not the gold standard. So, I think we’re going to see lots more cylindrical batteries. The 4680 that Tesla has done, this big capacity battery, it’s still got some teething problems, but it’s increased range. 

And with the heat pump, it’s just a better proposition. My Model Y’s got those, and you know, on a good warm day, we’re hitting 370 miles to one charge, which is just great. So that whole kind of which battery is best thing, there are some applications where it’s different, but in the main, I would put money on cylindrical cells, and I would say the LFP is going to really come to its own, along with blade batteries like BYD have done. 

But only if we keep doing this, Andrea, and we keep this research and development and we keep pushing it and testing it to make sure that we get that battery, that one day we’ll hit that kind of 450, 500-mile range in real-life driving. And if we’ve achieved this progress in 15 years, from my little Mitsubishi with 50 miles to now. 

Just imagine what we’ll do in the next 15 and the 15 after that, just wait and see, because there’s some really clever people working on batteries right now. And the chief technical officer of UK BIC said to me the other day, we will unlock the mysteries of this battery technology because we still don’t know a lot about it, what you can do, how you can make them run cooler for longer with greater density, better charging times and better longevity. 

So, you know, watch this space. 

AH: Are you a fan of sodium ion or solid state as a future technology? 

QW: Yeah, look, solid state, bring it on. The thousand-mile battery, that would be wonderful. That would be the game changer. And we know that some of the Chinese companies have got semi solid-state batteries actually running around in cars now. 

So, it’s not going to be that long. I mean, the problem is you get the technology. And it takes a long time to put it in the cars. So, you can get it in the lab and make it work and do it on the little tab cells, but then to actually get it into the car that you and I would drive, Andrea, it might take five, might take seven years to productionize, but it’s coming definitely. 

And so do mine is coming as well too. So, all these things where your minerals for these are abundant and plentiful, it’s not that far away, but we’ve got to keep pushing forward. And if we abandon it now and tear it all up, I mean, what a loss. 

AH: Quentin, I could chat for ages, but I know we have to come to a close soon, but before we do, I wanted to just ask you, in a decade, where do you think the EV market’s going to be, based on everything that you know now? 

QW: It’s very silly to try and predict the future, and wiser men than me have tried to do that. But I think, given what we’ve seen over the last 15 years, unless there’s any kind of serious political, ideological upsets, we could be seeing a situation where the greater part of the car park of cars in the world is electrified and we have these strong supply chains and we have these strong batteries that last forever and give huge ranges and people will look back on combustion cars and say, wow, did we really do that? 

You know, so, it’s very important because I keep saying this and I know I sound misty-eyed and evangelical about it, it is just important. We can clean our air. We can make energy independent, cheap, renewable. Why would you not do this? And the vested interests that are pushing back on this, Andrea, and they are considerable. 

We need to somehow contain them. because they’re pushing back really hard now. I mean, we thought it was bad in 2023, 2024. 2025 is going to be the year of pushback against EVs. And hopefully, we’ve got to a stage where most people, and you look at all the surveys, 95% of people who have an EV would never go back to combustion. 

As long as we’re kind of at the stage where they are going to power that S curve right up to the top, then it’ll carry on. 

AH: A pivot point indeed. Okay, well, Quentin Wilson, thank you so much for joining me today. This has been such a fun conversation. 

QW: Absolute pleasure, Andrea. 

AH: So, that was a lot of fun, wasn’t it? He is certainly a character, Will. 

WA: Yeah, absolutely. And what an experience driving an EV back in those days. And what’s amazing is some of those are having a lead-acid battery. So really heavy car as well, but even then, it looks like they had a lot of performance, maybe just not the range as well, but yeah, fascinating. 

And also really fascinating that it was then after that time, the whole EV market seemed to go to sleep for 10 years or so, or maybe slightly under 10 years. The fact that that was happening in the west rather than in China, what a lost 10 years that was.  

AH: Yeah. And as he said, it was because there was just this move to squash EV sales because they didn’t want them to detract from internal combustion engines. 

WA: Yeah, absolutely. But we’re now making up for that lost ground. 

AH: Something that really stuck out to me were Quentin’s comments on political will, and I really do think it’s important how a government approaches the energy transition, how much policy they enact to achieve it, and even whether they believe in the adoption of electric vehicles or not, obviously makes the world of difference, right? 

WA: Yeah, absolutely. And I think, again, China has taken that advantage of the EVs over the last 10 to 15 years, and I think we are in the West trying to catch up now, and I think there’s an awful lot that we can learn from China. We’ve seen how difficult it has been. We’ve seen in Europe how difficult it has been to build up the battery supply chain. 

And with China having such a head start and having all the economies of scale and everything, governments need to do an awful lot to help European countries and US companies be able to catch up. I mean, the barriers of entry are very large at the moment. So yeah, I certainly think the government can play a huge role in helping that. 

I think at the end of the day, we all need to go down to reduce our carbon footprint. It’s going to happen anyway. In China, it’s been much more coordinated from government all the way down to mining companies and all the way down the supply chain. And I think that’s what we’re not really seeing in Europe. 

We need to see a much more coordinated and much more partnerships with more vertical integration as well, because there’s no question about it. These are extremely complicated and high-cost businesses and supply chains to set up. And therefore, if we need to do it in a hurry, I think it needs to be well managed. 

AH: Yeah. And it’s really interesting what it’s been doing to sales of electric vehicles as well. And you mentioned being all joined up through the supply chain, EV sales in Europe and the region more broadly, including the UK as well, were down 3% last year. It’s still 3 million, still more than the US and Canada, but down. 

Where do you think we might see sales this year? I know it’s hard to look into a crystal ball, but what do you think the trend is at the moment? So last year, I think in Europe you had the subsidy cuts, which were a surprise in somewhere like Germany and Norway. And I think that did dent consumer confidence. And also, you saw various policy changes from government and OEMs, changing their plans of what they were going to do. And I think all that provided a bit of negative headwind for people or gave them the excuse to say, okay, well, maybe our next car purchase won’t be an EV. Maybe it will be the one after that. 

And we’ve got a bit more time to think these things through, and for more models to come through, and for subsidies potentially to come through, and for some of the economics of scale to come through so EVs are more affordable as well. But this year already in some of the early data for January is showing some strong rebounds in Europe, EV sales. 

And I think we will continue to see that going forward. 

AH: Actually, it was really interesting what you said there, Will, about people deciding when they might buy an EV. It might not be this car. It might be the next one. That’s been a real driver behind the growth in hybrid vehicles as a way to keep growing market share. 

It might be worth taking a bit of a pause for the listener almost just to explain what a hybrid is as well, actually. 

WA: Yeah, sure. Let’s go from the other end. You’ve got your battery only electric vehicle, which is only driven on the battery. You’ve then got your plug-in hybrid, which is an EV which you do charge the battery from plugging it into a source. 

And that also will have a petrol or diesel engine as well. So, the car can be run either on the engine, the petrol or diesel engine, or by the electric motors. And then you’ve got a hybrid, which you don’t plug in, which will recharge the battery when you’re going downhill or you’re putting the brakes on. 

And there’s another one now, which I think will also be popular, and that is the extended-range electric vehicle. So, the advantages of plug-in hybrid and extended-range vehicles, and also hybrids, is that you are not gonna run out of electricity because if you do, your petrol or your diesel will kick in and will drive the vehicle. 

So, the plug-in hybrids were initially seen as an intermediate vehicle as people got used to battery-only electric, but also as the charging infrastructures picked up. But over the last 18 months or so, even some of the Chinese manufacturers where there’s charging infrastructure and everything is much better, they still have said, well, plug-in hybrids could be around for a long time as some of the more distant, more sort of rural uses and things like that might still prefer a plug-in hybrid rather than a battery if the charging infrastructure isn’t so strong. 

And I think that’s the same as well, we’ll see, in Europe and in the US, there will be the range anxiety issues will still play a part for quite a long time until the charging infrastructure is built out. So, a lot of options. 

AH: A hundred percent. That seems to be the biggest issue. 

I think I was with you when you had your first experience, or it was mine as well, of a Chinese electric vehicle. Do you remember we were at the Fastmarkets conference in Amsterdam? 

WA: Yeah, that’s right. We were in a BYD, didn’t we? 

AH: Yeah, exactly. 

WA: Yeah, it was good. 

AH: I guess the one other question with all of this is, what is the potential for slowing EV demand and sales potential? What is that going to do to lithium demand as well?  

WA: Okay. So that’s really interesting. I mean, it’s not slowing. All that’s happening is the growth rates have slowed, but I think that’s also fairly temporary. As the sort of the whole pool of EVs gets bigger and then say you see a 10% growth the next year, that still means an awful lot more lithium is going to be needed. 

On our long-term forecasts, we see potential deficits for lithium going forward after about 2027. So, the moment the lithium market say just over a million tons, so if you saw 10% that means you’re going to need another 100, 000 tons of lithium. Most lithium mines say around 25, 000 tons, so that means you need four new mines that come on each year. 

And then the following year, when the market’s 1.1 million and then you see another 10% growth. So, you can see that snowball effect and it takes such a long time generally to bring on new mine supply that as the whole market gets bigger, it’s going to be increasingly hard, I think, for producers to keep up. I think it’ll be a challenge to bring on enough lithium, certainly as the market gets bigger and bigger, rather than slower demand growth for EVs, having a negative impact on lithium demand. 

You should also remember it’s not just about EVs. It’s about energy storage systems as well. 

AH: Right. And I think you just gave a late Christmas present to many lithium producers who are going to be cheering around the world when they hear that forecast. 

So, Will, I think we have to wrap this up now, but before we go, I wanted to remind our listeners that they can catch up on previous podcasts and discover more about our products on Fastmarkets.com/podcast, including a set that we have on the automotive sector. 

WA: Yeah. And that’s really useful, actually, because in that product, you’ve got data for all the different metals involved in the automotive markets or for OEMs. 

You’ve got news as well about what’s happening to the markets and to the prices. You’ve got the research side as well. So, looking at short-term and long-term forecasts for base metals and battery raw materials. On top of that, we also have a consultancy arm as well, which can do a deeper dive into those. 

AH: I also wanted to see what you’ve got coming up in April, Will. 

WA: Well, we’ve got various conferences. We’ve got another conference in South Korea coming up, and then we have a conference later on in the year in June in Las Vegas as well. 

AH: As you mentioned, the Asian Battery Raw Materials and Recycling Conference is in Seoul, South Korea. 

I think that’s April the 7th to the 9th. I looked at the agenda. I don’t know if you’ve checked it out. We’re also running a couple of workshops ahead of the main sessions, including one focused on navigating US and European policy, including all of the incentives and trade and tariffs that we’ve been talking about today, so I think that sounds really interesting. 

WA: Well, hopefully between now and then we’ll know a little bit more as well. So, it’ll be easier to see what lies ahead. 

AH: Exactly. Great. Well, this has been really fun, Will, as always. I look forward to catching up with you next time. 

WA: Yeah, well, thank you very much once again, Andrea. Thank you. 

Fast Forward is a Bearded Fellows production for Fastmarkets. Your host was Andrea Hotter with William Adams featuring Quentin Wilson.