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Driving into Tomorrow: How New Technologies are Enhancing EV Experiences

This episode of MTE's Plugged In podcast dives deep into the latest innovations in electric vehicles (EVs), focusing on advancements in battery technology and driving experience. Hosts Amy Byers and Brandon Wagoner discuss the emergence of solid-state batteries, which promise higher energy density, faster charging times and improved safety. They also explore new materials enhancing EV performance, including lightweight composites and bio-based polymers, highlighting the importance of sustainability in the industry. The conversation shifts to exciting features that enhance the driving experience, such as advanced infotainment systems, over-the-air updates and the integration of autonomous driving technology. As the EV industry continues to evolve, the hosts emphasize the potential for a safer and more efficient future on the roads. 

Takeaways: 

• This episode of MTE's Plugged In podcast delves deeper into the innovations in electric vehicles. 
• Solid state batteries show great promise for increasing energy density and reducing fire risks. 
• Sustainability in EV batteries is emphasized through recycling and repurposing old batteries effectively. 
• New materials like lightweight composites and bio-based polymers are enhancing EV efficiency significantly. 
• The integration of AI in EVs is set to improve safety and driving experiences. 
• Parental controls in autonomous vehicles could offer peace of mind for parents of new drivers. 

MTE's Electric Vehicle Programs & Educational Resources

• https://mte.com/DriveEV — Hub for all things electric vehicles at MTE
• https://mte.com/EVCarClub — MTE-sponsored car club for EV owners and enthusiasts interested in building a community in Middle Tennessee
• https://mte.com/EVReady — $50 incentive for MTE members or homebuilders installing level 2 chargers at their homes

Copyright 2024 Middle Tennessee Electric

Welcome to season three of MTE's Plugged in podcast.

This season we will continue to explore the world of electric vehicles.

Whether you're a seasoned EV driver or you're just beginning your journey into electric vehicles, this podcast is for you.

For a more enhanced experience, be sure to watch the video version of this podcast that will be linked in the show Notes.

Hello, everyone and welcome to MTE's Plugged in podcast.

I'm Amy Byers and as always, I'm here with Brandon Wagner.

Hello, Brandon.

Hello, everybody.

Today Amy and I are going to talk about some of the latest innovations in the electric vehicle realm.

That's right.

And so I've been doing a little research myself, so I think I have some good questions for you.

So I hope you're ready.

What is the latest technological advancement in EV batteries?

Well, a lot of this is over my head, Amy, so I'm kind of trying to learn and share what I'm learning at the same time.

So bear with me a little bit.

But there are some advancements with solid state batteries, and what this allows for is higher density of energy in a smaller footprint, which would allow us to have more range.

Obviously, you can have more battery and a smaller footprint.

This also allows for faster charging time compared to lithium ion.

We'll get into a little bit more about that and then this one is really over my head.

But graphene based electrodes, okay, those apparently have a potential to improve battery performance as well.

So we've seen range and everything affected recently.

And this curvature of technology, we're now in the part where it's hard to get a little bit more.

So all these advancements are just going to incrementally improve what we've been building on in the last few years in the industry.

I'm glad you're the engineer and having to be the one answering these questions because I think a lot of this is going to be over my head.

But what are some of the new materials that are improving EV efficiency and performance?

So I mentioned the solid state batteries.

So what I've got to refer to my notes here, so apologies for that.

But with these solid state batteries, they have a solid electrolyte versus a liquid electrolyte in the lithium ion batteries.

Well, what does that mean?

Well, it means we can increase the energy density, obviously impacting range, but also there's a safety factor.

This reduces the risk of overheating and fires because that liquid is now solid.

Lightweight materials are starting to be included in the battery technologies like carbon fiber and other advanced composites.

Obviously much lighter than metal.

And if we can reduce the weight of the vehicle, that's going to also impact range for the better.

So there's these high strength steel and aluminum alloys that are being used to build the ev.

Maybe not necessarily the battery, but the structure of the EV to keep them lighter as well, to sort of incrementally remember, just incremental improvements.

And then these biopolymer, bio based polymers, this is, I did not do well in chemistry, so.

But these bio based polymers, apparently they come from renewable sources such as plants.

And what's great is they don't use as much of the petroleum based plastics to build.

So one of the things we've talked about in other podcasts is the holistic life of a battery.

Obviously there are emission advantages with EVs, but we're starting to realize the holistic impact to our earth by building EVs.

You have to consider mining some of these materials.

So if we can use some of these bio based polymers and rely less on some of that petroleum based, all of these things are going to combine to make it a better EV experience.

So that kind of leads in a little bit to my next question when you're talking about using those type of materials.

But so what about the sustainability of these EV batteries?

I know that's been a lot of talk and when you hear people kind of on the negative side of EVs, they all want to bring up well, where are all these batteries going to go?

And you know, those type of things.

So anyway, innovation out there for that.

So we're seeing that some of these batteries that they may run into the end of their useful life in a car application, but there's other applications, they still have a lot of useful life, which is great news because we're not even necessarily talking about recycling and we're talking about repackaging them and reusing them, redeploying them in a different way.

And some of those ways could be to reduce demand on the grid, which has a major impact for our carbon footprint as a utility.

Just a little behind the scenes on why that would be important when we're having really high usage.

TVA has what they call peaker plants, and these are plants that are traditional fossil fuel plants that can turn on and off quickly, relatively quickly, and, and serve that additional peaking load.

Well, if we could use some of these batteries in a second life application and reduce those peaker plants, obviously that's going to have an emissions advantage for our community.

But there are some recycling, at least research that's going on.

There's an idea that if we can recycle these, the cobalt and the lithium and the nickel of the old batteries, that keeps us from having to go out and mine new batteries which there's a carbon footprint associated with mining those as well.

Plus it's a dangerous operation to do that.

So the more we can recycle those materials.

And then on top of that we talked a little bit about the biopolymer, bio based polymers.

Like I said, it's a little over my head but it's a sustainable circular economy that they're, they're starting to map out.

And we're still probably years away from seeing it, but it's at least promising that there's people looking at it closely.

Okay, so let's move on from batteries.

Enough about batteries.

What are some new features enhancing the driving experience of EVs?

Well, there are some new ones I'm excited to share.

One that I had thought up the other day.

I want to take a look.

Now I'm not going to take credit for it but I wish I could but my phone may have been listening in.

We'll see.

But there's some interesting things happening as far as the infotainment systems.

Actually I saw an EV the other day that is a mobile Dolby Lab.

That was kind of an interesting thing.

But the immersive sound is pretty fascinating.

My kids, my daughters, they like to sit in my car and listen to Bluey because it's like 3D surround.

So it's very interesting what they're doing as far as making the driving experience better.

Obviously the over the air connectivity is huge for EVs.

I wake up sometimes and I'm alerted that I got an update over the night and I have new features that I didn't have before.

So it's pretty cool that your car can actually continue to have new features.

You're not really getting an out of date vehicle and the charging speed is changing quite a bit.

This is one that I think people are really excited about.

I have to refer to my notes again, sorry.

But the battery packs of these cars, some of them are going up to 800 volts now.

So a lot of vehicles were a 400 volt battery pack before.

But what you can do, if you can get your battery voltage up higher, you can have more KW without having to increase the wire size to serve that.

It's kind of like having a 240 service for your, for your dryer.

You can run it a little bit higher, push more power to it without having to have a big conductor to it.

So same thing here.

800 volt system battery.

I have a couple notes that are really interesting.

Many EVs can recharge up to 80% in 20 minutes.

The Tesla Supercharger version 3 can add 75 miles of range in just 5 minutes.

The Porsche Taycan can increase their charge of 80% in 22 minutes using an 800 volt charger.

So what we're gonna see going forward is reduced time at the superchargers.

I still think most people are gonna charge at home when they're asleep so that their car is.

They have a full tank when they get in.

But when they do have to make those stops, it's going to be really quick.

And then this is one that I think is really interesting and I just want to camp out on this one for just a moment.

The other day I had seen that the Tesla Model Y got the highest ever safety rating in Europe of any car that they've ever tested.

And I was telling my wife we have a 13 year old and I thought, man, when he turns 16, I wish I could find a cheap used Tesla Model Y because I would know he's safe in it.

And she said, well, but you know, it's so fast, I don't like that.

And I said, well it is fast, but you can turn that down.

Of course he could turn it back up on his own.

I said I wish there was a thing called parental controls where I could set it and it would have to be stated it would stay there literally within a couple of days.

I got a notice that I had an over the air update of parental controls on my Tesla Model Y.

And so here's some cool features about this.

You can set speed limits with this.

My children would only be able to drive so many miles per hour.

I can set up a GEO fence.

So if I tell them you have to stay within, you know, 20 miles of the house, if they go out, I can get an alert, I can set the acceleration to chill mode and they can't change it so they're not flying down the road.

The other thing I thought that was really interesting is curfew mode.

So curfew mode, if somebody's driving the vehicle after a certain time, it's going to give me an alert and let me know about that.

So these are just kind of cool things because as a parent of someone who's going to be driving in a few years, I love the ability to know that my children can maybe be safe with some of these features.

Yeah, that is good.

And definitely might have been listening to you.

So your house may be bugged or listening to you over the bus.

I wish I get a little, you know, share interest in that.

Right.

They took your idea and took them two days though to get that out.

That's pretty good.

So what about the next generation of electric vehicles?

Well, we talked a little bit about the solid state batteries.

I think that's something we're going to see become more of an industry standard because, you know, you mentioned, Amy, people ask us about the life cycle of battery.

They also ask us about battery fires.

I hear that all the time.

And with these solid state batteries, if we can reduce that, I think that's, there's going to be some people that are just really not going to, they're not going to be ready to make that transition until we get to that point.

Amy, we've talked a little bit about how AI is impacting our day to day jobs and we're using it more and more.

Well, AI is going to play a role in the EVs going forward as well and that could be from a variety of ways.

One would be obviously giving good directions on the gps, which is wonderful predictive maintenance.

Identifying when you need this isn't a problem yet, but it might be.

So that's awesome.

Obviously autonomous vehicle driving.

Tesla actually took, when they did their month free of full self driving to Tesla owners earlier this year there was a note that said that they had taken out, I think it was 300,000 lines of code and replaced it with end to end neural network training.

Which is from what I understand is another way of saying we showed AI a whole lot of clips on how to drive and that's what's now making this a better driving experience.

And the leap forward in full self driving was absolutely measurable.

And then I think just overall energy efficiency.

We've talked in the past about how different EVs are looking and I think from the body shape, style, the aerodynamics to understanding how to operate some of the electronics on the vehicle in a more efficient way, I think we're going to see more efficiency which is going to translate to more range.

So you talked a little bit about this in the last question, but for this final, this is my final question for you.

Let's talk a little bit about the integration of autonomous driving technology with EVs.

And I will tell you this scares me a little bit.

I think I've watched too many sci fi movies, you know, where the car turns on you so I don't know how I feel about this.

Also being kind of a control freak.

I don't know how I feel about this, but let's hear your take on it.

Well, I relate to that.

I'm a control freak as well.

And I think part of being an engineer kind of makes you cynical by nature.

So I'm a little nervous to just let the computer drive or be prone to hacking.

I mean, there's some great plots for some movies that can come out of this for sure.

But I will say from my own experience, I did that month of full self driving for free when Tesla provided it, and I was amazed how quickly I got used to it.

In fact, I woke up one morning and I was driving to work and I was so frustrated because I'm in the right lane and this person's going slow.

And I'm like, why isn't this, why isn't it passing and going around?

And I realized my trial is up, I have to do it myself.

And it's amazing to me how much you start relying on it.

Now, if I'm going to play devil's advocate to the part of me where I'm a little nervous, there's also part of me that feels a little more confident that driving could be a safer option.

And as I think about in the next 10 years, I'm gonna have kids going to college, I would love to know that they're gonna be safe on the road if that.

My vehicle is all the time looking and telling me I'm too far to the right, I'm too far to the left.

Yesterday, literally driving home, I did not see a motorcycle and I was about to get over and it alerted me and he was just in the, you know, a spot where I just didn't see.

So I love those features.

And autonomous vehicles, if it is widespread, I think what we'll see is right now it's a very independent deployment of autonomous vehicles.

My car just does, and it tries to understand what's going on around it.

But what we probably need to get to is more of a quantum computing reality.

And some of our local power companies that we have partnerships with and stuff, they have started looking at quantum computing.

But what that would allow us to do is say, okay, now all these cars around me are autonomous and I can talk to them and I can know where they're going.

And if they're going to come over this into my lane, I can give them space.

If this streetlight's going to turn green instead of a car driving and then I wait for a gap in another car driving.

We can be almost like a virtual train and know that that light's going to turn green and we're going to slide all together.

It's a very strange future.

It's way out there.

It can't happen unless these cars can talk to each other and be able to have processing power to calculate millions of decisions at the same time.

So it's way out there, but it's not impossible and it could create a safer future.

Well, it's all very interesting to ponder and you know that the EV industry, they're going to always be evolving.

They're always going to be kind of leading the charge on latest innovations and staying cutting edge.

So it's going to be interesting to see where we are in a few years.

So great topic today, Brandon.

Thanks.

And thanks to everyone who's listening today.

If you have any questions about MTE's EV Ready program, KnightFlex Rate, or the EV Car Club or anything EV related, you can go to DriveV.com or email us at EV Car Clubte.com until next time, plug in, power up and drive safe.