⚡Where are the German OEMs’ EV Platforms heading?

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• 1 Video 🎥

• 3 Links 🔗

• Meme of the week 🤡

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1 Video

Tom Moloughney over at State of Charge got the opportunity to get down & nerdy(TM) with Ford CEO Jim Farley. They went behind-the-scenes on what was the initial motivation for Ford to switch to Tesla’s NACS connector. Here are the cliff notes:

• #1 Anecdotal trigger: Jim went on an EV roadtrip with his kids. They asked him why their Ford EV cannot charge at Tesla’s Superchargers - even though they are everywhere!

• #2 Data trigger: Jim talks about Ford doing their own data analysis on “First-time-plugin-sucess” as a KPI. The Ford team realized it was a shockingly low 70%.

• The negotiation: Jim had to call Elon Musk personally to get Tesla’s attention. In the end, a deal was struck: Ford would commit to switching to the NACS connector by 2025, as long as its vehicles would get Tesla Supercharger access via an adapter in the meantime.

• Why Ford made the adapters free: In the end Jim decided that free adapters were a loyalty investment. Ford treated the adapter as a product launch, including a personal note from the CEO in the packaging.

Takeaway: Personal experience with EV charging is critical for CEOs, Product Managers, Engineers, and other critical functions to make good decisions. The fact that Jim had his road trip experience sensitized him for the actual fleet charging data that showed how widespread the problem really was. In the end, you gotta eat your own dogfood to make a good product!

Where are the German OEMs’ EV Platforms heading?

We at Electric Avenue are not big fans of press releases and concepts to showcase theoretical ideas and future intentions. We like it when actions follow ideas. Some time ago, the Premium Platform Electric (PPE), was announced by Volkswagen. Porsche and Audi share the platform, and within the last weeks, both companies have shown their series production vehicle. To save you some time, we summarized the key stats of the first PPE-based vehicles. On top of that, we also benchmarked EV charging specs of the upcoming platforms from BMW and Mercedes-Benz to get an idea of where the German premium OEMs are heading.

Porsche & AUDI’s Premium Platform Electric (PPE):

Short and sweet, here are the key facts for all EV nerds 🤓:

• ↘️ much more efficient electric powertrain → -30% vehicle energy consumption → more range with the same battery size

• 🔋 100 kWh battery with a 30% increase in energy density and -15% weight → more usable energy capacity 94.9 kWh (100 kWh gross capacity with 800 Volt architecture)

• 🛣️ 614 km (WLTP) / 300 miles (preliminary EPA test results) of range with a top speed of 210 km/h (130 mph)

• 🚀 3,3 Sekunden from 0-100 km/h

Charging Stats ⚡️:

• ⏱️ -30% charging time with new battery technology

• ⚡️ up to 270 kW DC fast charging with 10-80% state of charge in 21 minutes (charging curve in the image below) on 800V chargers

• ⚡️ 135 kW via bank charging on 400-volt charging stations (e.g. v.3 / 3.5 Tesla Superchargers)

• 🔌 two charge ports (like the original 2018 Audi e-tron) with a DC capable port on the driver-side

• ❌ no bidirectional charging capability was announced for the launch

EV Platform Benchmark

In the table below, we compare the upcoming electric vehicle platforms by three German premium automakers: BMW, Mercedes-Benz, and Porsche/Audi. Our key takeaways when it comes to electric charging technology development:

1. 800 Volt → >200 kW Charging: All platforms seem to emphasize high-voltage systems for efficient energy management and rapid charging.

2. Efficiency to unlock range: To enable a comfortable range (>600 km according to WLTP) without increasing the battery size, all OEMs have improved the efficiency of their platforms.

3. Bidirectional Charging is coming: Both BMW and Mercedes-Benz have announced bidirectional charging support for their upcoming platforms. Both companies announced custom DC-wallboxes, that need to take care of home or grid integration. Even though there was no announcement yet, we expect the PPE platform to receive the same DC bidirectional charging support that it’s sibling MEB platform in the VW group recently received.

3 Links 🔗

• 1st Supercharger in operation at EG Group with upcoming OCPP support 🔌: ev point, the charge point operator of EG Group, has put the first Superchargers into operation. According to an EG Group employee’s comment, the Superchargers are managed through the backend of Tesla but support OCPP from November 2024. Through that, Tesla drivers can use the proprietary Tesla Autocharge experience for authentication. Notably, Tesla passed the OCA’s OCPP 2.0.1 certification test in February this year already.

• Cybertruck goes wireless?🛜: By now we’ve established that the Cybertruck is Tesla’s newest “technology carrier” platform. It brings innovations like 800V architecture, bidirectional charging, and the world’s largest windshield wiper! But internet sleuths have now found hints that the Cybertruck could even receive a wireless home charging option in the future (Link)

• Tesla AC B2B insights🕵️: Tesla had a booth at the EV Charging Summit & Expo in Las Vegas last week, and Loren McDonald over at EVAdoption shared some interesting insights from his conversation with the Level 2 AC wall connector team doing B2B sales. Could we see Tesla become a major player in semi-public AC charging in North America now that it is opening up it’s NACS charging stations to anyone? (Link)

Most-clicked link last week: was Webasto’s announcement that it will sell a majority stake in it’s EV charging division (Link).

Meme of the Week 🤡

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That's a wrap for this week! Let us know how you feel and leave some feedback (We read every single one of these 🙂 ):

Reader Review of the Week

Selected ⚡️⚡️⚡️⚡️⚡️ Freakin’ awesome on ⚡Electra's Blueprint for Urban Fast Charging and wrote:

“Interesting to see which off-the-shelf tools these companies use to enable their business (eg Sitetracker for CPO sites).”

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DISCLAIMER: None of this is financial or tax advice. This newsletter is strictly educational and is not investment advice or a solicitation to buy or sell any assets or to make any financial decisions. The Electric Avenue team may hold investments in or may otherwise be affiliated with the companies discussed.