Day: October 11, 2022

• Batteries are key to automakers as they electrify their lineups over the next several years.
• The battery industry is full of opportunities, from new technologies to supply to recycling.
• Here’s a look at the many startups racing to lead in the battery space.

The future of the auto industry hinges, now more than ever, on batteries. 

Batteries are critical to automakers’ multi-billion-dollar plans to create electric vehicle lineups over the next several years. They’re important as automakers seek to differentiate themselves and their offerings from one another. And they’re crucial as the industry seeks to put its gas-guzzling, carbon-emitting past behind — but only if batteries can be developed in efficient, cost-effective, and environmentally sustainable ways. 

There’s also money to be made: The EV battery market could hit $340 billion by 2030, according to Benchmark Mineral Intelligence. 

At Insider, we’ve looked at white-hot EV battery technologies that give automakers the EV performance they need at the price their customers want. We’ve investigated how automakers are securing enough battery supply, especially amid the call for domestic sourcing brought on by requirements in President Joe Biden’s climate bill. And we’ve talked to startups working to recycle these batteries well after they’re spent. 

Below, you can read more about battery startups to watch, the battery metal shortages the industry is facing, and how automakers are navigating this important part of their business. You can also read more on the types of battery technologies that are winning in the industry. 

Key players to watch 

Automakers and nascent EV manufacturers are relying on dozens of outfits in the battery space to help them out.

As a result, new startups are emerging to tackle various bits of the battery chain, from supply to new chemistries. Established companies are also pivoting their business strategies to prepare for the upcoming demand.  

Read more: 

Automakers’ need for EV tech has flipped a long-standing power dynamic — and these 18 battery outfits are reaping the benefits

Automakers are betting on range and performance to win the electric vehicle wars. These 17 battery startups could reap the rewards by delivering an energy breakthrough.

4 startups that investors and the auto industry are betting on to help the electric-vehicle-battery industry navigate a massive supply shortage

The booming electric car battery business saw $3.6 billion in VC last year. Meet 14 of the industry’s best-funded startups — and how they plan to juice players like Rivian and GM.

Investors bet big on 11 electric-car companies in 2021. Here’s what those deals signal for 2022.

Slow charge times are driving away potential electric car buyers. These 5 startups are creating the fast charging batteries that could win them over.

6 top startups propelling the electric car boom with new alternatives to expensive lithium-ion batteries

5 EV battery startups poised to challenge Panasonic and LG Chem for dominance of a $129 billion market

Shortages 

The crisis in Ukraine shed a light on the impact that a shortage of a key battery metal — nickel — could have on the auto business. Cobalt and lithium are starting to be a crisis for the industry, too. 

Securing enough supply of these materials is a huge problem standing in the way of the industry’s electrification plans. Automotive execs need massive amounts of materials at the right price that can be secured in an environmentally- and financially-responsible way. 

It’s not easy, and getting this part of the EV supply chain right is perhaps the toughest challenge facing battery execs today.  

Read more: 

The supply-chain crisis is slamming EV startups, such as Rivian and Lucid, and giving big automakers an edge in the race to go electric

3 ways EV startups can overcome the supply-chain crisis and win over consumers, according to a former Tesla Gigafactory exec

Tesla, GM, Rivian, and more are dependent on the $360 billion battery business for their ambitious EV plans — but battery makers are struggling to churn out enough supply

Spiking nickel prices could add $2,000 to the cost of every electric car — and the pain may hit Rivian and Lucid way harder than Ford and GM

Elon Musk said he isn’t working on the $25,000 electric car right now. That means rival Lucid might beat Tesla to it.

Lucid’s CEO reveals how his startup walloped Tesla in the EV range wars: ‘It’s almost nothing to do with the battery’

How automakers are navigating the lithium problem

Automakers across the globe are betting their entire futures on electric products. But those bets look riskier with a looming EV battery supply shortage, particularly in lithium.

Some are pursuing partnerships to secure enough supply of lithium. Some are making huge investments in the space. Some think their approach to batteries could help them surpass range records to date. And some worry the impact of these shortages will only get worse.

Read more: 

Elon Musk says the soon-to-be $34 billion lithium business needs new players to rein in ‘insane’ costs. Here’s how top startups are tackling the industry’s nastiest challenges.

Booming electric-car production is creating a mad dash for lithium. Meet 13 startups angling to cash in on a supply-chain weak link that may soon be worth $34.3 billion.

Rivian, Ford, and GM are desperate to lock up vanishing lithium supplies as they shift to electric cars. Experts say these 4 moves can win them a race being led by their Chinese rivals.

Electric car makers are racing to secure a vanishing supply of lithium as prices spike. Experts say players that execute these 4 strategies will win — and those who don’t may never catch up.

Rivian CEO warns the looming EV battery shortage will make the chip shortage feel like ‘a small appetizer’ for what’s to come

Specific battery technologies

Range anxiety is just one of the reasons customers are hesitant to go electric. But a battery’s chemistry and technology can help bolster range, performance, and even vehicle safety. So startups in the space are experimenting with the best tech that can give their product — and their customers — a leg up. 

Energy-dense solid-state batteries, hot-swapping batteries on the go, and technology that claims to double a Tesla’s range are all on the table as startups pursue every way to get a competitive advantage in the business.   

Read more:

Rivian, GM, and Ford are desperate for batteries that set their electric cars apart. Here’s how their ‘secret sauce’ recipes stack up.

A startup that says it cracked the code on electric car batteries is poised to help automakers master a nasty challenge: a snarled supply chain

A Michigan startup doubled a Tesla’s range by customizing it with a special battery

How solid-state batteries can unseat lithium-ion, according to an exec at a startup backed by Ford and BMW

A top battery startup just tapped a Tesla veteran to lead manufacturing. Here’s her plan to dominate EVs.

Startup cofounders reveal their plan to solve the EV industry’s crucial cost problem by remaking the lithium-ion battery

Startups raising rounds

The uncertain macroeconomic environment over the past year has been challenging for startups in every sector as they look to raise funds at a critical time for their businesses.  

But companies in the world of batteries are still bringing in a ton of capital these days, and the industry expects that to continue. That’s because automakers are going to need a variety of solutions for their battery needs in the coming years. Startups are raising across battery chemistry, mining, and even swapping. 

Read more: 

Here’s the 13-page pitch deck that the mining startup claiming it can solve a crisis for electric-car makers used to raise a $16 million Series A from Playground Global

Bill Gates already poured millions into this startup racing to figure out how to get more lithium for the EV industry. Now he’s in for a second round of investment as lithium scarcity becomes critical.

Porsche’s plan to go electric hinges on delivering the performance its buyers expect. It just led a $400 million investment into the little-known EV battery startup that could make it work.

Read the 11-slide pitch deck startup Liminal used to scoop up $8 million to help electric car makers avoid costly battery recalls — and get ahead of Tesla

Uber’s biggest electric car problem could be solved by the startup that’s gotten $50 million from Blackstone this year

Battery makers are crucial to automakers transitioning to electric vehicles. Check out the 10-page pitch deck that persuaded Renault to back one startup’s $119 million round.

 

Battery recycling

Battery materials, chemistry, and technologies are crucial — but so is figuring out what to do with these batteries once they can’t be used in a vehicle any longer. 

Recycling is taking off, and companies are working hard to ensure the materials put into an EV battery get returned to the auto supply chain. 

But that’s not the only option. Various stakeholders are experimenting with repurposing or refurbishing these batteries for second-life use cases, like energy storage.

Read more:

Automaker needs for EV materials mean battery refurbishment is taking off. Meet 10 outfits poised to cash in on the alternative to battery recycling.

Automakers desperate for EV materials have made battery recycling a booming business. Now the battery-refurbishment industry is taking off, too.

Bill Gates just poured more money into a car-metal-recycling startup. Here’s an exclusive look at the 12-slide pitch deck that won over him and investors at Assembly Ventures.

Giants like Tesla, GM, and Ford are going to be desperate for EV materials in the next decade. The 4 startups are betting they can cash in by recycling old batteries into new ones.

Inside a Berlin neuroscience lab one day last year, Subject 1 sat on a chair with their arms up and their bare toes pointed down. Hiding behind them, with full access to the soles of their feet, was Subject 2, waiting with fingers curled. At a moment of their choosing, Subject 2 was instructed to take the open shot: Tickle the hell out of their partner.

In order to capture the moment, a high-speed GoPro was pointed at Subject 1’s face and body. Another at their feet. A microphone hung nearby. As planned, Subject 1 couldn’t help but laugh. The fact that they couldn’t help it is what has drawn Michael Brecht, leader of the research group from Humboldt University, to the neuroscience of tickling and play. It’s funny, but it’s also deeply mysterious—and understudied. “It’s been a bit of a stepchild of scientific investigation,” Brecht says. After all, brain and behavior research typically skew toward gloom, topics like depression, pain, and fear. “But,” he says, “I think there are also more deep prejudices against play—it’s something for children.”

The prevailing wisdom holds that laughter is a social behavior among certain mammals. It’s a way of disarming others, easing social tensions, and bonding. Chimps do it. Dogs and dolphins too. Rats are the usual subjects in tickling studies. If you flip ’em over and go to town on their bellies, they’ll squeak at a pitch more than twice as high as the limit of human ears. But there are plenty of lingering mysteries about tickling, whether among rats or people. The biggest one of all: why we can’t tickle ourselves.

“If you read the ancient Greeks, Aristotle was wondering about ticklishness. Also Socrates, Galileo Galilei, and Francis Bacon,” says Konstantina Kilteni, a cognitive neuroscientist who studies touch and tickling at Sweden’s Karolinska Institutet, and who is not involved in Brecht’s work. We don’t know why touch can be ticklish, nor what happens in the brain. We don’t know why some people—or some body parts—are more ticklish than others. “These questions are very old,” she continues, “and after almost 2,000 years, we still really don’t have the answer.”

Part of the trouble is that it’s hard to collect objective measures of how humans respond to tickling and correlate them with perceived ticklishness. That’s why Brecht’s group lured 12 people into a study that—albeit with a small sample size—was designed to observe the phenomenon with non-Aristotelian toys like GoPros and mics. The footage his team collected would help them unpack what happens when people get tickled, and what changes when they tickle themselves. Writing in Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B in September, the team reports observations on reaction times, laughter, and breathing, and for the first time in a human study, they show that tickling oneself while being tickled suppresses ticklishness. “It’s rare. Studies typically don’t do that,” says Kilteni. “It really contributes to the state of the art.”

Tickling, says Brecht, is “a very strange kind of touch and reaction to touch.” He is fascinated by how fundamental these complex behaviors are. In a 1897 paper called “The Psychology of Tickling, Laughing, and the Comic,” the authors noted that all people generally have the same ticklish spots. Feet rank the highest. Armpits, necks, and chins follow. We instinctively tickle and play as kids, and though some of that predilection toward play fades with age, we always understand this mysterious language. Brecht believes it’s a form of social signaling in the context of play fighting: “You signal with your giggles that it’s okay to touch, when normally would be inappropriate to touch.” (Your laugh-signals can even come before the touch. Think of a kid about to get tickled by a parent: “They giggle like hell before you actually get there.”)

Hi, everyone. So now Elon wants to buy Twitter, allegedly to help him build X, “the everything” app. Sweet of him to name it after his kid.

The Plain View

For a couple days in late September, no one seemed clear on who owned Bruce Willis. The British newspaper The Telegraph claimed that the actor, who has retired because he suffers from aphasia, had digitally reincarnated his career by selling performance rights to a company called Deepcake, which used artificial intelligence technology to map Willis’ face onto another actor. Not long after, representatives of Willis said that the star of Die Hard had done no such thing and had no relationship with Deepcake, even though the company’s website had a complimentary quote from the star.

The episode raises a lot of questions, not least the meaning of identity at a time when one’s image can be so easily faked. So I went to the source and spoke to Deepcake’s founders. The two-year-old startup from the former Soviet state of Georgia is the project of Ukrainian-born CEO Maria Chmir, a marketing executive, and head of machine learning Alex Notchenko, who has a doctorate in AI. Chmir told me that the company never claimed to own Willis’ future rights, but had a previous and mutually satisfying arrangement where Deepcake digitized his appearance in a 2021 ad for Megafon, a Russian cell network. The Willis ad is part of Deepcake’s game plan to serve customers who want to digitally clone humans. “We are one of the first on the market to be commercially successful in the field of legal deepfakes,” says Chmir. “But we don’t like this word. These are sort of replicas, or digital twins.” (I wondered why, if she wasn’t fond of the word, she named her company on a variation of it, but whatever.)

How good is that technology? Let’s go to the tape. In the Megafon commercial, a person who is unmistakably Willis, even if you know it really is not, is among two hostages tied to a ship mast, next to a digital clock ticking down seconds before a bomb goes off. While the figure has Willis’ face, it doesn’t quite convey his trademark insouciance. And for some reason, this Willis has a different voice—a gruff bark that speaks Russian. Still, it looks like Willis—digitized and generated, Chmir says, by algorithms trained on 34,000 images from his earlier films.

Chmir says that Willis was deepfaked because he wasn’t available to travel, but the process makes economic sense as well. While leasing an actor’s rights might be about 30 percent less than the usual appearance fee, she says, still bigger savings come from the lower costs of filming a cheap actor-double instead of a superstar, who requires first-class travel, a big trailer, and ridiculous demands in contract riders.

But Deepcake isn’t just faking superstars. They recently did a job for an agricultural firm that wanted to make educational videos starring its in-house expert, a busy person not comfortable in front of a camera. With the subject’s permission, Deepcake converted video of an understudy in an exact duplicate. “We also cloned the voice for full similarity, of course,” Chmir says.

NASA’s Dragonfly mission to Saturn’s largest moon will touch down on a terrain of dunes and shattered, icy bedrock, according to a new analysis of radar imagery from the Cassini spacecraft.

Launching in 2027, Dragonfly is a rotorcraft that will arrive in 2034 and explore Titan from the air. Its range will be far greater than that of a wheeled rover, with Dragonfly capable of covering around 10 miles (16 kilometers) in each half-hour flight, according to NASA. Over the span of its two-year mission it will explore an area hundreds of miles or kilometers across. However, before taking to the sky on its own, Dragonfly must first arrive on Titan under a parachute, soft-landing on frozen terrain that is hidden from easy viewing by the dense hydrocarbon smog that fills the moon’s atmosphere.

Dragonfly’s landing site will be the Shangri-La dune field, close to the 50-mile-wide (80 kilometers) crater, Selk. This region was imaged by NASA’s Cassini spacecraft during its mission to Saturn between 2004 and 2017, and a team of scientists led by planetary scientist Léa Bonnefoy of Cornell University has taken a new look at that data to produce the most accurate assessment of Dragonfly’s proposed landing site so far.

“Dragonfly … is going to a scientifically remarkable area,” Bonnefoy said in a statement (opens in new tab). “Dragonfly will land in an equatorial, dry region of Titan. It rains liquid methane sometimes, but it is more like a desert on Earth where you have dunes, some little mountains and an impact crater.”

Related: Soar over the desert in footage from drone practicing for mission to Saturn’s strangest moon

Selk is an interesting location. Estimated to be geologically young, perhaps a couple hundred million years old, the impact that carved it out would have melted the local ice, prompting interactions between the fresh liquid water and organic molecules present in the hydrocarbon soup on Titan’s surface. Astrobiologists are particularly interested in the prebiotic chemistry — chemistry involving carbon-rich molecules but not mediated by living things — that would have resulted.

Yet Cassini’s radar images of the area are limited, with the resolution at best being 1,000 feet (300 meters) per pixel. “There are probably a lot of small rivers and landscapes that we couldn’t see,” Bonnefoy said. 

Scientists know that such rivers do exist on Titan, thanks to the European Space Agency’s Huygens lander, which piggybacked on board Cassini before parachuting down to the surface of Titan in January 2005. These rivers, however, are not full of liquid water — the temperature of minus 290 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 179 degrees Celsius) is far too cold for that. Instead, liquid methane and ethane rain from the frigid sky and wash off the water-ice bedrock and into river tributaries that feed large lakes.

What Cassini’s imagery did provide, however, is multiple viewing angles. Each time it flew past Titan — it enjoyed 127 close approaches of the moon during its mission — it viewed landmarks in the region of Dragonfly’s landing site from different angles, ranging from inclinations of 5 degrees to 72 degrees. 

By analyzing how the terrain produced different-shaped shadows based on the viewing angle, Bonnefoy’s team were able to determine the topography of the region within the limits of the image resolution, finding no major show-stopping obstacles that Dragonfly would need to avoid. 

The scientists also calculated the height of the rim of Selk crater, finding it to vary from less than 650 feet (200 m) tall in some parts up to 2,000 feet (600 m), which is higher than expected, indicating a less eroded crater rim.

The research was published Aug. 30 in The Planetary Science Journal (opens in new tab).

Follow Keith Cooper on Twitter @21stCenturySETI. Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom and on Facebook. 

Join our Space Forums to keep talking space on the latest missions, night sky and more! And if you have a news tip, correction or comment, let us know at: community@space.com.

Why do I still carry a wallet? My iPhone does just about anything a traditional wallet can do. Most (if not all) of my purchases are via Apple Pay or QR code, my phone holds all of my pictures, and most of my receipts also go to my email. Basically the only I keep my wallet around is to carry my ID. Once my state starts supporting Apple’s digital ID feature, however, things will change between me and my wallet.

Since iOS 15.4, Apple has supported adding a driver’s license or other state ID to your iPhone’s digital wallet. That doesn’t mean you’ve been needlessly carrying your ID around since then—states have been slow to roll out the feature, and most haven’t yet signed on at all. As of this writing, only two states actively allow you to add your ID to your iPhone, while 10 more (plus Puerto Rico) have confirmed plans to offer the option eventually, on a loose timeline of “soon.”

Here’s the full list as it stands in October 2022:

• Arizona (March 2022)
• Maryland (May 2022)
• Colorado (coming soon)
• Connecticut (coming soon)
• Georgia (coming soon)
• Hawaii (coming soon)
• Iowa (coming soon)
• Kentucky (coming soon)
• Mississippi (coming soon)
• Ohio (coming soon)
• Oklahoma (coming soon)
• Puerto Rico (coming soon)
• Utah (coming soon)

If you live in Arizona and Maryland, be warned: You can’t simply hand a cop your iPhone when you get pulled over. There are specific, limited use cases for this feature. Right now, that means identifying yourself at the airport. Apple worked with the TSA to make this happen, and it currently works at the following airports:

• Baltimore/Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport (BWI)
• Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport (DCA)
• Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport (PHX)

Soon, though, participating apps will be able to check your digital ID for age authentication, so you won’t need to worry about presenting your driver’s license the next time you order booze. Apple has confirmed Uber Eats and Turo as among the first apps to support the option, though the feature doesn’t seem to be live as of yet. Seeing as the feature is technically a part of iOS 16, however, it’s likely it will arrive in the near future.

How to add a digital ID to your iPhone

If you do live in a supported state, setting up the feature is simple. Open Wallet, then, tap the (+) in the top right, then choose “Driver’s License or State ID.” Choose your state, then choose whether to add the ID to your iPhone 8 or newer, as well as your Apple Watch Series 4 or newer. Either way, you’ll need to scan your ID with your iPhone’s camera, then scan your face to prove your identity. Once complete, send all information to your state to confirm.

The next time you fly from a participating airport, you can unlock your iPhone and place it next to the ID scanner. You’ll see your digital ID appear, complete with all information you will be sharing with the TSA if you approve (name, date of birth, sex, ID number, state, issue and expiration dates, real ID status, and ID photo).

[MacRumors]

NASA’s Juno spacecraft took images of Jupiter’s icy moon Europa during a recent flyby. One of the photos—released this week by NASA—offers an intimate view of Europa’s surface features.

Juno has orbited the gas giant Jupiter since 2016, but only recently has NASA diverted the spacecraft’s attention to the planet’s moons. Europa is of particular scientific interest because scientists believe a salty ocean lies beneath the moon’s frozen surface.

If such an ocean is there—something the upcoming Europa Clipper mission will investigate using surface-penetrating radar—it could host ingredients for life, if not life itself.

The recent image was taken during Juno’s flyby on September 29, during which the spacecraft came within about 220 miles of the moon’s surface. The image covers a roughly 11,600-square-mile swath of Europa, a region dominated with grooves and ridges in the ice. It’s a black-and-white photo taken from about 256 miles above the surface and is the highest-resolution image taken of a specific portion of the moon.

The new pic builds on the first images released from the flyby. Darker splotches on the ice could indicate something beneath the moon’s crust erupting onto the surface, according to a recent NASA release. White flecks dotting the image are signatures of high-energy particles from the radiation in the moon’s surrounding environment.

“These features are so intriguing,” said Heidi Becker, the lead co-investigator for the camera used to take the image, in the release. “Understanding how they formed – and how they connect to Europa’s history – informs us about internal and external processes shaping the icy crust.”

Though Juno began its focus on Jupiter, its investigation has expanded to that of four Galilean satellites and the gas giant’s rings—not so easily seen, but recently captured in images by the Webb Space Telescope.

Juno flew by Ganymede (the largest moon in the solar system) in June 2021, and in 2023 Io will get its own flyby. Juno is significantly expanding its observational targets and will be supplanted in the early 2030s by NASA’s Europa Clipper, which will investigate Europa’s ability to foster life with state-of-the-art instruments.

Europa’s surface may look pretty hostile in black and white and from 200 miles up, but beneath the ice, it could be an entirely different story.

More: Check Out Juno’s First Up-Close Images of Icy Europa

Chinese government officials thanked Elon Musk over the weekend for his ideas about Taiwan which were shared in a new interview with the Financial Times. Musk said that Taiwan, which is currently independent as a self-governing democracy, should be controlled by China, something that hasn’t happened since 1949.

“My recommendation…  would be to figure out a special administrative zone for Taiwan that is reasonably palatable, probably won’t make everyone happy. And it’s possible, and I think probably, in fact, that they could have an arrangement that’s more lenient than Hong Kong,” Musk is quoted as saying in the Financial Times.

Musk, who’s simply not very bright, was quick to note that any arrangement should be “more lenient than Hong Kong” probably because the world saw in 2019 what it means when the Chinese government comes to throw its weight around. Hong Kong, which was previously autonomous like Taiwan until Beijing started to exert control in the city, used to have a thriving movie scene, as just one example. Today, the government of China now decides what movies people can watch in Hong Kong.

But Musk’s idea of a special administrative zone was celebrated by Chinese officials like Qin Gang, the Chinese ambassador to the U.S.

“I would like to thank @elonmusk for his call for peace across the Taiwan Strait and his idea about establishing a special administrative zone for Taiwan. Actually, Peaceful reunification and One Country, Two Systems are our basic principles for resolving the Taiwan question and the best approach to realizing national reunification,” the ambassador tweeted.

China’s Foreign Minstry also acknowledged Musk’s comments over the weekend, echoing the billionaire’s idea that Taiwan was part of China and should be governed at least in part by the Chinese Communist Party.

“The Taiwan question is China’s internal affair. China’s position on resolving the Taiwan question is consistent and clear. We remain committed to the basic principle of peaceful reunification and One Country, Two Systems and aim to work with the greatest sincerity and effort to achieve peaceful reunification,” spokesperson Mao Ning said, according to an official readout of her press conference.

“At the same time, we will resolutely defeat attempts to pursue the ‘Taiwan independence’ separatist agenda, push back interference by external forces, and safeguard our sovereignty and territorial integrity,” she continued.

While Chinese always lead with the idea that “peaceful reunification” is the priority, Beijing has not been shy about saying it will use force to take Taiwan.

Why would Musk offer up the freedoms of the 23 million people in Taiwan on a platter? It likely all comes down to money. As plenty of people have noted, Musk’s company Tesla opened a huge factory in Shanghai in 2018. And while Tesla is struggling in the U.S., it’s business is reportedly thriving in China. The people of Taiwan have taken notice and aren’t too happy with Musk, to say the least.

“Taiwan sells many products, but our freedom and democracy are not for sale,” Hsiao Bi-khim, Taiwan’s ambassador to the U.S., tweeted over the weekend.

“Any lasting proposal for our future must be determined peacefully, free from coercion, and respectful of the democratic wishes of the people of Taiwan,” Hsiao continued.