Jaguar Land Rover
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Jaguar Land Rover to develop a Defender-like hydrogen fuel cell EV
Jaguar Land Rover is developing a hydrogen fuel cell vehicle based on the new Defender SUV, and plans to begin testing the prototype next year.
The prototype program, known as Project Zeus, is part of JLR’s larger aim to only produce zero-tailpipe emissions vehicles by 2036. JLR has also made a commitment to have zero carbon emissions across its supply chain, products and operations by 2039.
Project Zeus is partially funded by the U.K. government-backed Advanced Propulsion Center. The automaker has also tapped AVL, Delta Motorsport, Marelli Automotive Systems and the U.K. Battery Industrialization Center to help develop the prototype. The testing program is designed to help engineers understand how a hydrogen powertrain can be developed that would meet the performance and capability (like towing and off-roading) standards that Land Rover customers expect.
Fuel cells combine hydrogen and oxygen to produce electricity without combustion. The electricity generated from hydrogen is used to power an electric motor. Some automakers, researchers and policymakers have advocated for the technology because hydrogen-powered FCEVs can be refueled quickly, have a high-energy density and don’t lose as much range in cold temperatures. The combination means EVs that can travel longer distances.
Few fuel cell EVs, otherwise known as FCEVs, are on the market today in part because of a lack of refueling stations. The Toyota Mirai is one example.
Data from the International Energy Agency and recent commitments by automakers suggests that might be changing. Last month, BMW Chairman Oliver Zipse said the automaker plans to produce a small number of hydrogen fuel-cell powered X5 SUVs next year.
The number of FCEVs in the world nearly doubled to 25,210 units in 2019 from the previous year, the latest data from the IEA shows. The United States has been the leader in sales, although there was a dip in 2019, followed by China, Japan and Korea.
Japan has been a leader on the infrastructure end as it aims to have 200,000 FCEVs on the road by 2025. The country had installed 113 stations as of 2019, nearly twice as many as the United States.
“We know hydrogen has a role to play in the future powertrain mix across the whole transport industry, and alongside battery electric vehicles, it offers another zero tailpipe emission solution for the specific capabilities and requirements of Jaguar Land Rover’s world class line-up of vehicles,” Ralph Clague, the head of hydrogen and fuel cells for Jaguar Land Rover said in a statement.
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Battery Resourcers raises $20M to commercialize its recycling-plus-manufacturing operations
Equipment at Battery Resourcers’ new cathode sintering and analysis facility in Novi, Michigan. (Photo: Battery Resourcers)
As a greater share of the transportation market becomes electrified, companies have started to grapple with how to dispose of the thousands of tons of used electric vehicle batteries that are expected to come off the roads by the end of the decade.
Battery Resourcers proposes a seemingly simple solution: recycle them. But the company doesn’t stop there. It’s engineered a “closed loop” process to turn that recycled material into nickel-manganese-cobalt cathodes to sell back to battery manufacturers. It is also developing a process to recover and purify graphite, a material used in anodes, to battery-grade.
Battery Resourcers’ business model has attracted another round of investor attention, this time with a $20 million Series B equity round led by Orbia Ventures, with injections from At One Ventures, TDK Ventures, TRUMPF Venture, Doral Energy-Tech Ventures and InMotion Ventures. Battery Resourcers CEO Mike O’Kronley declined to disclose the company’s new valuation.
The cathode and anode, along with the electrolyzer, are major components of battery architecture, and O’Kronley told TechCrunch it is this recycling-plus-manufacturing process that distinguishes the company from other recyclers.
“When we say that we’re on the verge of revolutionizing this industry, what we are doing is we are making the cathode active material — we’re not just recovering the metals that are in the battery, which a lot of other recyclers are doing,” he said. “We’re recovering those materials, and formulating brand new cathode active material, and also recovering and purifying the graphite active material. So those two active materials will be sold to a battery manufacturer and go right back into the new battery.”
“Other recycling companies, they’re focused on recovering just the metals that are in [batteries]: there’s copper, there’s aluminum, there’s nickel, there’s cobalt. They’re focused on recovering those metals and selling them back as commodities into whatever industry needs those metals,” he added. “And they may or may not go back into a battery.”
The company says its approach could reduce the battery industry’s reliance on mined metals — a reliance that’s only anticipated to grow in the coming decades. A study published last December found that demand for cobalt could increase by a factor of 17 and nickel by a factor of 28, depending on the size of EV uptake and advances in battery chemistries.
Thus far, the company’s been operating a demonstration-scale facility in Worcester, Massachusetts, and has expanded into a facility in Novi, Michigan, where it does analytical testing and material characterization. Between the two sites, the company can make around 15 tons of cathode materials a year. This latest funding round will help facilitate the development of a commercial-scale facility, which Battery Resourcers said in a statement will boost its capacity to process 10,000 tons of batteries per year, or batteries from around 20,000 EVs.
Another major piece of its proprietary recycling process is the ability to take in both old and new EV batteries, process them and formulate the newest kind of cathodes used in today’s batteries. “So they can take in 10-year-old batteries from a Chevy Volt and reformulate the metals to make the high-Ni cathode active materials in use today,” a company spokesman explained to TechCrunch.
Battery Resourcers is already receiving inquiries from automakers and consumer electronics companies, O’Kronley said, though he did not provide additional details. But InMotion Ventures, the venture capital arm of Jaguar Land Rover, said in a statement its participation in the round as a “significant investment.”
“[Battery Resourcers’] proprietary end-to-end recycling process supports Jaguar Land Rover’s journey to become a net zero carbon business by 2039,” InMotion managing director Sebastian Peck said.
Battery Resourcers was founded in 2015 after being spun out from Massachusetts’ Worcester Polytechnic Institute. The company has previously received support from the National Science Foundation and the U.S. Advanced Battery Consortium, a collaboration between General Motors, Ford Motor Company and Fiat Chrysler Automobiles.
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From electric charging to supply chain management, InMotion Ventures preps Jaguar for a sustainable future
Since InMotion Ventures, the independent investment and incubation initiative set up by Jaguar Land Rover, launched in 2016 the firm has focused on backing companies across the mobility space broadly. Its 15 active investments run the gamut from autonomous vehicles, to car insurance tech, to ride-sharing, and travel planning, but increasingly the firm is focusing its efforts on vehicle electrification and sustainable supply chains.
As the mobility market moves to embrace electrification, InMotion wants to make sure its portfolio is in the mix.
That’s evident from its most recent investment in Circulor, a company that monitors supply chains from raw material inputs to finished outputs with an eye toward sustainable sourcing.
“As an OEM nowadays it’s increasingly important to have increasing transparency and visibility into how all of those materials have been sourced,” said the firm’s managing director, Sebastian Peck. Circulor already has a strong footprint in the automotive industry, Peck said, and is working with a major oil company on tracing the share of recycled plastics that have come from that provider. “It has applications across any industry.”
Jaguar Land Rover is also using Circulor’s technology to track a material that’s being used in the interior of one of the company’s vehicles, Peck said. The stealthy project hasn’t been publicly revealed yet, but the company has worked with a university and supplier to trace the material from its point of origin to the finished product.
Sustainable supply chains aren’t the only priorities Peck laid out in a recent interview with TechCrunch.
As the mobility market moves to embrace electrification, InMotion wants to make sure its portfolio is in the mix and Peck said it would be looking to make investments in a number of different areas around electric vehicles and batteries.
“We have looked at a number of companies who are developing new battery chemistries. We haven’t made an investment yet,” Peck said. “We don’t have a deep enough insight into the IP portfolios of the big battery suppliers to really be able to reliably benchmark those new chemistries. We have not had enough conviction to make an investment or back a particular company. From a value chain it is two or three steps away from us. It’s a space we’re looking at.”
Image Credits: Jaguar Land Rover
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Automakers invest in Transit, the app that helps people get around without a car
Transit, a company that built a mobile app designed to help people in cities live without cars, has raised $17.5 million from two automakers in a Series B round.
The round was led by RenaultNissan-Mitsubishi’s joint investment arm Alliance Ventures. InMotion Ventures, Jaguar Land Rover’s venture capital fund, also joined the round, as well as two past investors, Accel and Real Ventures.
RenaultNissan-Mitsubishi and Jaguar Land Rover’s investment would have seemed counterintuitive five years ago. But this is 2018. It’s the year of the scooter wars and micro-mobility; it’s also a time of transition for automakers that are looking to diversify their traditional business of building and selling cars.
Founded in 2012, Transit started as an app to help people check departure times for buses and trains. It’s grown into a mobile app platform that enables multi-modal transportation, integrating public transit, ride hailing, bike sharing and scooter sharing. The mobile app, which provides real-time data from transit agencies with user crowdsourcing, gives users notifications from their ride. The app then tracks the real-time location of the vehicle and notifies the user when to leave for their stop, when to disembark. and sends adjusted ETAs. Transit is now used by transit agencies, including Boston’s MBTA, Baltimore’s MDOT MTA, Silicon Valley’s VTA, Tampa Bay’s PSTA and Montreal’s STM.
The company wants to be transit and company agnostic, so, it’s a big proponent of open APIs. Montreal, where the company is based, is a model of what Transit wants to be everywhere. In Montreal, people can use the app for car sharing, bike sharing, to order an Uber or use public transit, COO Jake Sion explained.
Transit, which operates in 175 cities globally, will use the injection of capital to scale operations and improve the platform by integrating various services and payment methods on the app.
“This investment, which will advance Transit’s efforts to make mobility seamless and accessible in cities, fits with the Alliance 2022 strategy to become a leader in robo-vehicle ride-hailing mobility services and a provider of vehicles for public transit use and car-sharing,” François Dossa, Alliance Global vice president of ventures and open innovation, said in a statement.
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LISNR and PILOT join Jaguar Land Rover incubator
Jaguar Land Rover has brought two new startups into its Portland Tech Incubator: LISNR and PILOT Automotive Labs. Previous cohorts at the incubator have ranged from parking apps to drones; these two continue to build on JLR’s creative approach to the automotive future. LISNR uses ultrasonic audio to transmit data. That’s right — it transmits and receives sounds we… Read More
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Jaguar partners with Tile to make sure drivers never leave without their wallets
Automaker Jaguar Land Rover Ltd. today announced a partnership with Silicon Valley startup Tile Inc. to prevent drivers from leaving home, or any other place, without their essential personal items.
Tile, which has raised $16 million in total venture funding to-date, makes small, waterproof tags that employ Bluetooth low-energy radio and GPS technology to locate objects to which they are… Read More
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