AVL's Reimagine Mobility Podcast

Global EV Trends w/ Nick Ancell

• AVL, North America

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Join us as we dive into the future of mobility with Nick Ancell, publisher of E-Mobility Engineering magazine. In this episode, we explore the latest trends in electric vehicle (EV) technology, the role of different regions like China in setting global EV standards, and the challenges in EV adoption. Nick shares insights on emerging technologies, from battery innovation to material engineering, and explains why mobility is more than just cars – from mining excavators to electric snow groomers, mobility is being transformed across industries.

 

Nick Ancell is the Publisher of E-Mobility Engineering, the renowned technical magazine for engineers at the forefront of vehicle electrification. Bringing 20 years of experience working in B2C and B2B media, he focusses on delivering unparalleled and engaging content. In 2018, Nick launched E-Mobility Engineering to serve as the trusted source of technical information for engineers whilst providing an effective commercial platform for solution providers. 
 
 Since a young age he’s always had a passion for everything and anything on wheels, it was inevitable he would find a way of turning his dreams of working in the automotive industry into a reality. Understanding the worlds need for green and sustainable transport solutions, Nick combines his enthusiasm for a better, cleaner, and safer world with his knowledge and experience of creating innovative and effective media platforms to play his part in sustaining the transport industries for future generations.

 

Company description 

 

E-Mobility Engineering is the world’s leading independent magazine for EV engineers. Reporting independently on the engineering at the heart of electric vehicles providing unbiased commentary on full vehicles, components and other innovations via interviews with leading EV engineers. No vehicle is too big or too small for us to cover, and working across all vehicle categories – from the road through to the sea and sky – enables our team of industry experts to consider every aspect of designing and building an electric vehicle. Why choose E-Mobility Engineering? Our readers come to www.emobility-engineering.com for many reasons, ranging from a cover story on a particular vehicle or a deep dive into the latest technological developments but over and above the articles it’s the way we write them. Clean, clear and concise and unbiased, we never run any sponsored content, enabling our readers to learn and explore the nuances of vehicle electrification.

If you would like to be a guest on the show contact: namarketing@avl.com

The reimagined mobility podcast series I'm Here with Nick Ancell from E-mobility engineering magazine. So we've had a lot of different guests on this show so far, from a lot of different technical areas and e-mobility and mobility space in general, that we're really talking here about the future or again, as we call it, how do we reimagine mobility? I'm excited to have you on the show, Nick, because I think from a from the perspective of what you're looking at from a magazine's perspective, you certainly get the trends, you get the different technologies, you get the different players, and you probably also see it how it plays in different regions of the world and how currently the state is just in a small little section of e-mobility, which is obviously the EV vehicles. Sales are not always the greatest everywhere. So I'm super excited to talk about and what you guys and specifically you see from your perspective as we see, reimagining mobility as a as a big topic, going not only today but certainly into the future. Sonic, give our listeners and viewers a little bit of a background of who you are, where you come from, what you currently do and learn. Let's dive in together and reimagine the future here. Excellent. So, Stephan, well, as you said, my name is Nick Ancell. I am the publisher of the E-Mobility Engineering at. Very pleased to be here. Thanks for the invitation. And that's taken a while for us to connect on this. But yeah, it's great to be here. So, e-mobility engineering for those of you don't know, is a monthly technical magazine specifically for engineers working on e-mobility projects globally through the industry verticals. So we don't just cover automotive, we cover the whole ecosystem from a technical points of view. So part of the basis of our company is helping engineers learn from other engineers, no matter which space they read the aviation guys and learnings from automotive the same in marine across heavy duty and off highway so, I think one of the easy things is for people to just focus on cars. You know, where e-mobility is a lot bigger than that. Electrification is a lot bigger than that. So we started in 2018. We've been publishing racing magazines for the good old combustion engines for, for 20 years now. We also do autonomous, so it's a natural progression for us to move into e-mobility. Start off as a quarterly magazine, but with the growth of the industry, we've gone to a bi monthly magazine with supporting website, and we're publishing articles that, you know, we just there's too much content to cover sometimes. And as I mentioned, you know, the focus is on the technical side of everything, but we do, so we focus on battery materials. We can write the way into the chemistry, the materials, the ceiling, the ... and then straight into, you know, some of the motors, and everything, including the powertrain as well. So there's so many considerations, you know, the engineers have to sort of understand and learn from their parts, but so then when we when we dive in directly, then Nick and oh, let's talk about what is everybody's mind. Right now. Is it. EVs are sort of stuck, right. We've we've come a very long way, not only on the technology but also on the number of EVs we're selling now. We're sort of reached a plateau, is what I believe as a relates to sales numbers. How do you guys from from your perspective in your business again magazine, are you are you feeling this sort of plateauing as it relates to the engineering piece related to e-mobility across the board, or are you actually seeing the exact opposite that everybody says, okay, we got a little bit of a breather now we can really catch up? Or do you see? No, we have not really seen anything slowing down since 2021. Whenever that exactly time frame is, when EVs really on a global basis, not just China and Europe and also the US really started to take off. Share a little bit from that perspective. Yeah, I think so that the the the industry slowing down is it's it's across the board. People are saying about how the sales are slowing that, I think from a consumer point of view, we might hit a plateau. And there's various different reasons we see behind that. But when you look at the technology, when you look at the OEM, when you look at the solution providers, there's so much going on. I would say, you know, there's more content when we can publish. So, you know, looking at the solution providers themselves. But your shop shelves, all the others in the industry, we're seeing new products come along, almost like, we're seeing new innovations in research and development is just steaming ahead. But you're correct, you know, sort of across the board, apart from places like China, the, the sales for consumers has slowed down. And that's that's got nothing to do with the technology. You know, that's got nothing to do with the cars which are available. I think a lot of it comes from misinformation. You know, partly from journalists and mainstream media who, really sort of, you know, talking about issues but unknown issues for most consumers. You know, obviously, we've been through range anxiety. We're going through charging anxiety. You know, we see articles daily in the UK about how the EVS are creating damage to the roads. You know, car ownership, it should be wearing. You know, these cars are a lot heavier, but they're really non-issues, you know, it's I think that's a big part where a lot of the OEM is can help with a lot more education towards the consumers, not just about what the vehicle is, but how it can benefit their lives, how they need to move forward and change mobility because they just can't go on as it's, I mean, obviously you mentioned China. That's obviously a very hot topic for a lot of people at the moment apps, but they set the standards. Let's be honest. You know, and they talk about their EVs before anyone else. But the way they brought them to market, the way they bought the volumes from the consumer was completely different. You know, in some cities, the taxis turned to EVs. So people who were catching taxis got to experience an EV without going and test driving, one without having to purchase one. They just saw the benefits straightaway. And obviously there are other cities in in Europe and the US which do that. Amsterdam is great. So that's you know, it's it's also same as you get off with Chip with Apple. There's the Tesla waiting for you next. So it's there's a lot lacking in education and awareness. I use taxes as well. So I think the stage of the early adopters is that, you know, we're starting to see them become more mainstream. But when people are told that they need X amounts of right, you know, you've got to look at how many, how far people actually drive in a day. I mean, the US is in different news, because you've got a great expanse. People drive a lot longer than they do here in the UK. In Europe, you know, most people are making short sermons. Most guys were taking their kids to the schools, running to the shops, maybe commuting to work. So they don't really need more than 2 to 300 miles. Obviously there's exceptions to the case. You know, you've got sales reps who are covering hundreds of miles, almost thousands of miles away. But when you break it down to what people actually need, there's a lot of misinformation. I think that's probably the biggest problem with the adoption of EVs at the moment. When we look at the adoption of EVs as well, charging infrastructure, it's a huge problem. But we can overcome this, and everyone needs to sort of group together and think of it as one, you know, I think one of the biggest problems with the charging infrastructure, again, is the education, you know, but you don't need to stop for 40 minutes to an hour to charge. Yeah. We see a lot of technologies coming through and a lot of changes in strategies as well. You know, everyone always starts talking about we need to take us back to the previous. Right. But there are some OEMs out there who are starting to rethink. And they're producing smaller batches with fast charging capabilities, you know, so you can go to 80% with some batteries coming through five minutes worth of charging. We covered, that was a game changer for most people. And, you know, I've talked about it before. It's right when people say, oh, I need a huge range. I go on these long journey threads. I am one of city people who has done an 850 mile, drive in one go. And it's horrendous, you know, three points. Like what if you take that. So these little restaurants, what people need, you know, to have to keep these going. So I think there's a lot of lessons to be learned from China. But that's one of the so that ethos you do is looking at how people can learn from one another from different countries to different industries as well. And when you talk about Europe, obviously we've got a lot for this in Europe. It's it's an open place. But, you know, when you look at things like vehicle to grid coming through, you know, bidirectional charging in Europe, we want the end of the early adopters of that, because we, we have to roll out the smart meters. When you're traveling from, say, Switzerland to France or to Germany, let's that becomes a lot more of an issue. When you hear stories of people with charging carts, you know, trunks of different charging cars for all the different applications. So we need that sort of interoperability. And, focus of moving the industry forward. So why China again, you know, it's such an interesting case at the moment. Some of the vehicles coming out of that, I mean, if you go back to sort of my history in automotive from where I come from, was from a young child with the hot hatches, it was all about the German by the through. The Frenchman was back to his, you know, I was slightly off the the great British automotive scene. Yeah. Life itself and it's just hardware. It's changed and the innovation coming out of China is unbelievable. I mean, we've got the BYD Yang Yang, which has a flood prevention system which could drive through a flood. It could actually, you know, navigate itself through water for 30 minutes. You know, we're all selling to some recycling so you can escape if you need to. So I think everyone's just sort of needs to get on board with EV adoption and, and look at their own use case itself. Let me, for us here in the UK, I mean, find something for us as a family, but can tow horses, you know, week in week out go just not really a vehicle can do that in the EV space. So it doesn't everyone but I think yeah. Looking forward we will get to that point. And it's still the early stages. You know we've had test this for a while. We've had a few other different EVs for a while. But it's still the early days you know, when we look five, ten years down the line, it's going to be a whole different situation. An interesting point about, charging infrastructure, right? As I mentioned, I was in Switzerland for two weeks just recently, and that was blown away by the by the fast charging infrastructure they have on the highways. I mean, there were special places where you can pull to the side on the highway there. There wasn't even a rest area, was literally just a fast charging station. And, I drove from the north of Switzerland all the way down to the south, and it was throughout on that major highway. I mean, every I would say every 20, if not 30km. That was one of those things. I was very impressed. They weren't very busy, which was interesting at the same time. But the infrastructure is there. So great point on the infrastructure. It's a it's a challenge everywhere to one degree or another. Right. But let's let's jump into one thing that you mentioned a little bit, the technology coming out of China and, and just generally staying with technology for a moment. Nick, what do you guys see from a magazine? I know everybody's talking about, you know, how important a battery is for, for an e-mobility, vehicle, whatever. Heavy duty truck, medium duty truck, a passenger vehicle. Everybody talks about either an E axle or just stick to E-Motor. Right. There's a lot of everybody knows, and everybody talks about this. But from your perspective, from a publisher's perspective, what are some other technologies that maybe not too many people are talking about? But you see as much activity and maybe as much criticality for engineering people working on it than than batteries, E motors and E axis materials. source materials is probably the most important topic that we talk about outside of batteries, outside of motors. You know, when you're talking about increasing range and talking efficiency, lightweighting is a huge issue. You know, it's, making these vehicles lightweight so they can grow that much. But then incorporating the same safety standards, you know, so I think then that trickles down into every area that you just previously mentioned. You know, it's about materials. It's about safety as well. I think sort of everyone's focused on the batteries at the moment. You know, that's where the dollar is. It's where the pound is. It's where the euro is. Everyone's focused on the battery, and sometimes we lose that focus on the other side of things. But, you know, it's very easy to talk about it, but it's it's the interior, you know, the interior of the vehicle with the materials, but the seats are made out of the interior. Yeah. So I even the wheels come out, you know. So I think the materials is probably the strongest points in terms of technology development at the moment. And that comes down from the raw materials to the intense material that goes into the car. So, yeah, I think that's probably the key area that people need to focus on and what we see as well. But then comes down into it into a thesis, you know, it's, it's every single consideration that the engineer has to have when they're producing these vehicles, you know, how are they going to bomb the battery? You know, we've seen huge underfloor batteries and now we're moving to, you know, batteries actually being adapted to, to be installed in the body. You know, not talking about the battery technology It's the statements that we make that happen. So yeah, we see a lot of movement in that material point of view. You know, whether it's silicones, whether it's carbon fiber, the list is endless, you know, and this is what's an exciting thing about motility at the moment. You know, it's it's it's not a done deal. There's there's so many different areas of innovation and so many people are coming through with great ideas, each that, funding is obviously a huge issue when we come into these points, you know, it's you can have a fantastic idea, some of the solutions that are coming through, it's just far too expensive, you know, which is yeah, go back to the cost point of these vehicles. It's stopping the adoption, you know, so we have to get the costs of the manufacturing that. But to make these vehicles happen, we have to use these special materials which are driving the cost stop, which, you know, two thirds, they say the vehicle cost is the battery outside. I'm not saying that corners are being cut, but there are, you know, areas where the actual climates into that area of technology gets reduced. So yeah, I mean, we we enjoy our articles on materials. If you look back over our publications, every article, what we produce, it goes down to the materials, you know, whether it's about modes or whether it's about battery, whereas about axles or the vehicle construction or any interesting, interesting difference between. So if you if we go back to the, the, the true purpose of this podcast on reimagining mobility, and you said your magazine or this particular magazine has been it's being published since 2018. So you've seen, let's say, six years of progression in e-mobility. If we leave passenger vehicles alone for a moment and leave it up to medium duty trucks, heavy duty trucks, er, aerospace, agricultural, mining, whatever it might be. One of the most exciting areas you look towards again, besides passenger vehicles as we talk e-mobility, is it, is it in areas like forestry that very few people are talking about? Oh, I need an electric. I don't know what we got to do. You know, a machine that cuts wood. We need more electric, machines for working in the mountains or whatever it is. Interesting your perspective. And again, from the demand, probably from your customers, from the engineering field and what they want to see published, as well as what you mentioned at the very beginning, which I thought was interesting. The purpose of your magazine is to try and bring e-mobility engineers from different segments of the e-mobility space together and teach things. So again, reimagining mobility. What excites you the most outside of passenger vehicles when we talk e-mobility and why? Well, that's a fantastic point. It's a great question and I get excited about this because whenever someone sees the magazine, they understand we working in e-mobility or EVs they just think cars they think the automotive industry. But it it's so much bigger. But you know, it's it starts with my partner, you know, let's look at the scooters. Let's look at that sort of publications on your personal watercraft. Looking at some of the vehicles we've covered, we've gone from snowmobiles, you know, going up to see the Northern Lights, which covered excavators with the first issue we ever published had the fifth show out for a lecture, which is, a battery powered, you know, light aircraft. To give you a little snapshot in one of the later editions this year, we're actually having the Fortescue Liebherr Excavator mining thing, which is. Yeah, the size of people's houses. You know, this this is unbelievable engineering. That's where our readers get cited, you know, as we talk about off of highway, heavy duty, large construction machinery, people are excited because it goes back to, you know, creating vehicles that have to endure rugged and harsh environments. You know, I mean, we've just that actually covered a snow groomer of all things, you know, that there were electrified snow groomers up on the ski slopes day in, day out to the moments part project. So I think this is what a lot of people need to understand is every area of vehicles is getting electrified. You know, it doesn't stop with the passenger car as we stop with the excavators, the medium duty lorries, it's absolutely everywhere. And each industry, each vertical, has its own challenge. Yeah. No, it's, I mean, you look at today whose return to bet batteries are fantastic solution for that. But then you look at certain aspects, you know, as soon as you talk about aviation, as soon as you start getting some light aircraft up to larger aircraft, weight is your biggest issue. You know, which it always has been, you know, so the innovation there's a lot talk about hydrogen fuel cell. So I think, you know, when we look at the different areas of electrification, the bigger and the heavier. I mean, to shift big shifts, you can you can put a lot you can weigh those down and they keep on going. But again, as we evolve mobility but gets electrified, it has a direct impact on everyone's lives. You know, people are living next to construction sites. I mean, cities are still getting expand, is still getting built. You know, if you're living next to one of those construction sites, you don’t want to diggers going on, you don't want to hear the lorries coming in and out. So I think, yeah, that's one of the biggest areas of education from a consumer point of view, is to understand it's not just about your cars. You know, they're not just trying to get you into your passenger vehicles, your battery vehicles to save the world. It's it trickles down into absolutely every area. I mean, marine, you know, you just have to watch the demonstrations of how much combustion engines pollute the lakes You know, there are so many lakes again, which have banned combustion engines. It's just making the whole world an experience better for everyone. You know, when you take the here, the motors going. And people still love the sound of combustion. You know, you can't get like this. You just have to look at the racing world. You know, people are boating. I mean, takes take Formula One, for example. Just moving off topic slightly. You know, people moan the fans, but we're not having the screaming 3-10s. You know, the V8 anymore, we've got the hybrid vehicles because it goes faster. It faster lap times when they ever done. Isn't that sort of the sole purpose of the pinnacle of motorsport is, is to push the boundaries, you know? And that's exactly what engineers are doing at the moment. That's really getting hold of how they can push the boundaries. And making everything more efficient. So yeah, it's a great topic looking outside of automotive, and we get really excited about it. The readers get really excited about it. The manufacturers do as well. So gives you some insight into, you know, I hate to use the phrase exciting time to go live, but where we are so still at the beginning of this, you know, it's forestry is a huge area. I mean, these machines that we've been using for years and years and years have been pumping out noxious gases. They've been damaging areas and now they can move slightly silently. They could, you know, go into areas, but they haven't been able to before. Yeah. We're trying to conserve the world. So why not do it in this way? So yeah, big heavy duty is massive. Massive part is for OEM and engineers and suppliers and that's as you know it's there. So you just touched upon your last sentence here engineering. That's where I want to go next, at least for the next couple of minutes until we wrap up. Your magazine is for engineers. I would like you to go to 2018 or 2019, right, and share a little bit very, very shortly because again, we're about reimagining things, but what we're engineers mainly concerned about in 2018, 2019, when it comes to e-mobility, what are they today and what is it going to be as we reimagining mobility going forward? And I'll give you an example. I would say up until about 3 or 4 years ago, systems engineering was nowhere near as big as it is today. Today, I think more and more companies recognize that you can get more. All the things we talked about today, you get more weight out of this vehicle. You can get more range out of the vehicle, get more cost out of the vehicle. When you look at a vehicle, instead of a bunch of Lego blocks that you bring together and then put together and say, okay, here I go. Mass produced this thing. When you look at it from the beginning, from a complete systems perspective, which means systems engineering, system integration, system design, all the stuff system and then some engineering discipline is becoming critical. So but again, it's not my show right now. It's yours. What do you see in 18. What do you see today? And then most importantly, what do you see as we reimagining what what's the next big topic engineers need to focus on? So back in 2018, I think the overarching topic, as I've mentioned, is back to, you know, every everyone's focusing on batteries. So back in 2018, it was very much about the battery. It's very much about the motors. And again, the materials. So over the past few years we've moved into safety. You know, everyone's concerned about safety. We've had a lot of success stories, whether they're false, whether they're true. You know, there are a lot of stories out there about EVs spontaneously catching fire. So we'll run away. Those issues will never go away. So over the past few years, we've seen from developing, using the best battery cells, which you can never go away, but it's, you know, we're getting there, we're getting towards solid state, we're getting towards fast charger. We've then focused a lot on, as I say, safety. You know, the biggest, topic that is thermal runaway, you know, is that battery safety. But we're now in software defined vehicles. You know, we're now talking about cyber security. You know, you've got to think about how these vehicles are. You know, if we move away from the battery, the motors that the powertrain, the whole experience of a driver, for an EV is very much about the infotainment system, the accessibility. You know, we've got a lot more distractions there. But then we've got connect in vehicles, you know, so there is a lot more going on where we talk about cyber security. When we talk about software on vehicles, I think that's going to be the big focus for the next few years. You know, and this is one of the reasons why people said they think people are going to hack into their vehicles, you know, as they're driving down the freeway. It's there have been a few examples of that in the past you know, so that's probably the biggest thing is making vehicles safer, not from a crash point of view. You know, we've got fantastic in terms of producing vehicles with that. But it's that accessibility from the outside, you know, making sure everyone is safe. And I think, you know, we're going to start to see people move away from the infotainment system because there's a lot of talk about distraction. Like, you know, there is these huge, huge screens people are leaning over. It's the whole, you know, used to be putting your CD in. Now people are using their massive screens, access windscreen wipers and stuff. But, you know, we sort of two expect it to be distracted when they're in charge of a two tone vehicle. Let's be honest about that. So but yeah, cyber security is probably one of the biggest issues when people talk about, you know, vehicles comes from China. I mean, they are software defined vehicles that very much riding on software that is, you know, one of the biggest issues at the moment for engineers. I've spoken. Okay, okay. Great point. And I agree software defined vehicle definitely is is the up and coming thing. Domain controllers, essential compute platforms, all the stuff associated I think at the end still a major systems challenge. But to your point, the focus is shifting to to the software defined vehicles. Great. Great ending. So then the last question for you, Nick, nothing to do with with your magazine or maybe what you're seeing, but what is going to be the next vehicle you buy and why? I don't know, to be honest. That's that's a really hard questions that far out. I mean possibly, you know, the, the way the, the frankly the magazine or the, the industry, the for EV become mainstream. There's a few vehicles I've got to check out, you know, before that are available. There's let's hear Porsches out there. There's a few Mercedes. But yeah, there's some of the hot hatches when I was young, 12, maybe three. If I can convince my wife, we'll have one in the driveway again one day. Yeah. And it's. Yeah, it's very. I think that's a great point as well because we, you know, the used car industry at the moment is booming. You know, people are holding on to their vehicles, because they don't know what's happening. And they won't enjoy that combustion vehicle. They want to hear that especially in the US, they want a roaring V8 just for their charge, you know, so I just for me, it's very tricky, because we have a specialized use case with I mentioned, you know, retiring horses around for our daughters to compete with. So finding the right vehicle is hard. For me, I would love it to be one of the overarching mindsets for converted 911's. You know, the what? It probably doesn't agree. Or below all of that. But yeah, I think that's a very difficult question to answer. So I do have to say TV right now, but yeah, there's a few cars to to cross. Minister. Perfect answer, I appreciate it. Thank you so much, Nick, for your insight from from the magazine's perspective, which is a unique perspective. And also what you see not only in the UK but in Europe and globally. So thank you very much for your insight.