Trevor Milton on Batteries, recycling, and new innovative battery technology coming to Nikola $NKLA — Transcript

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1. 0:00in that way our so in that way our
2. 0:04the excitement around zero missions is
3. 0:05even greater and that's why you see
4. 0:06everyone joining in on spacks now
5. 0:09so these battery modules this is a
6. 0:10there's a um
7. 0:13i think this one's a uh a
8. 0:22i think this one's a seven and a half it
9. 0:23might be it might be i think it's a
10. 0:24seven half there's a seven half kilowatt
11. 0:26hour module here
12. 0:27this modules would be completely
13. 0:28submerged in fluid the fluid flows in
14. 0:30and out you can see these channels
15. 0:32and these are your batteries these are
16. 0:33our badges totally designed in-house and
17. 0:34nikola
18. 0:35um along with our own bms asld rated bms
19. 0:38but the 2170s
20. 0:39these are all 2170s all we've ever put
21. 0:41on all of our vehicles is 2170s except
22. 0:43for our first truck
23. 0:44which had 18 650s um the fluid actually
24. 0:47comes in
25. 0:48you can see all the little holes the
26. 0:50fluid goes in and it transfers that heat
27. 0:52better than
28. 0:52any other method by doing that there's a
29. 0:54couple really cool things that happen
30. 0:56one is
31. 0:56you can heat and cool a battery about
32. 0:58three times faster than a
33. 1:00then a cold plate or a or something that
34. 1:02goes in and out of the cells
35. 1:04so you get rapid cooling and heating you
36. 1:05don't get in it because when you cool it
37. 1:07when you have like a ribbon like tesla's
38. 1:09between cells
39. 1:10you only cover about 20 of the cell
40. 1:11that's it so you're sucking energy
41. 1:13away on only 20 of the side so it has to
42. 1:15go through material to get to that
43. 1:18to the cooling area to get into the
44. 1:20fluid so it's like five layers of of
45. 1:21heat
46. 1:22that has to get through to get to
47. 1:23finally get to the cold with this the
48. 1:25fluid is touching the battery
49. 1:26every part of the whole battery so
50. 1:29pretty cool that you have
51. 1:30that's one reason why i love the fluid
52. 1:32is one is dielectric so it does not
53. 1:33transfer electricity
54. 1:35number two is in thermal propagation if
55. 1:38one were to go off
56. 1:39all that heat is absorbed instantly by
57. 1:41that fluid
58. 1:42and so it actually prevents the cell
59. 1:44from propagating to the cells around it
60. 1:45because it keeps the cells around it
61. 1:46cold enough
62. 1:47that they won't propagate also the third
63. 1:50um
64. 1:50the the third one would be is that is um
65. 1:55the cell longevity the the if you can
66. 1:58keep every cell in there within one
67. 1:59degree c
68. 2:00you know your your longevity your cell
69. 2:02will last almost a million miles
70. 2:04and so for every one degree c you're
71. 2:06seeing you're going to see about 100 000
72. 2:07degradation
73. 2:08so if you're five degrees c you know six
74. 2:11degrees c difference in your cells you
75. 2:12could see almost a half a million miles
76. 2:14of of cell
77. 2:14life lost that's how bad it is over the
78. 2:16life of that whole vehicle
79. 2:17is that why you're not a fan of the fast
80. 2:20like this
81. 2:26are you recycling your batteries well we
82. 2:27do we send them to recycling places so
83. 2:29we don't do it ourselves we send them
84. 2:30out
85. 2:30um i i still don't know what to do about
86. 2:33batteries it's kind of a
87. 2:34yeah kind of almost things that haunts
88. 2:35me a little bit i'm not really sure how
89. 2:38i'm hoping they get rid of all these
90. 2:40exotic materials in them
91. 2:42the cobalt's one of them but even the
92. 2:44other stuff too like the nickel
93. 2:45magnesium all these other ones that are
94. 2:46in there that
95. 2:47the problem is those are all have to be
96. 2:48mined right right so you're tearing down
97. 2:50mountains to power a car i'm not sure
98. 2:51how
99. 2:52i have a i'm not against batteries and
100. 2:54we all know about it
101. 2:55but i also i'm trying to figure out a
102. 2:56way in my head we've been working on
103. 2:57cell development that were
104. 2:58that is that gets rid of all those
105. 3:00materials and
106. 3:02we've essentially worked with some
107. 3:03battery companies to to bring that cells
108. 3:05to market and whether they come to
109. 3:06market or not we don't know
110. 3:08we've we've now essentially developed it
111. 3:10to a cell level and we've told them take
112. 3:11it to market
113. 3:12and if they can it would get rid of a
114. 3:13lot of that um
115. 3:15almost all those materials tied to that
116. 3:17company you acquired and announced
117. 3:18earlier this year it was a new company
118. 3:21with new technology
119. 3:22technology no it's not actually it's
120. 3:24tied to a university that had developed
121. 3:26that
122. 3:26technology and we had we essentially
123. 3:29ended up licensing all of it and helping
124. 3:31them fund it all the way through
125. 3:32so it came from a it came from a bunch
126. 3:34of professors actually there was
127. 3:36multiple professors and they were
128. 3:37working on it and they approached us and
129. 3:39said hey we got this
130. 3:40we think there's some merit to it would
131. 3:41you be willing to look at it we looked
132. 3:43at it look good
133. 3:44i hate cell development the likelihood
134. 3:48of success is like
135. 3:49it's like hitting a lottery you know so
136. 3:51it's very unlikely you're gonna
137. 3:53develop a cell that'll work so they did
138. 3:56really good work they had showed that
139. 3:57they had thousands of cells already
140. 3:58being cycled that we're not failing
141. 4:00so we came in we helped fund them we
142. 4:02helped provide them funding for
143. 4:03equipment that they needed
144. 4:05they furthered the development and now
145. 4:06we're going to be showing off sales in
146. 4:07equal world we hope
147. 4:08and at nikola world you know we're going
148. 4:11to pass it over that's one area where
149. 4:12you guys asked about licensing
150. 4:14we're going to give it to the battery
151. 4:14company let them sell it to everyone in
152. 4:15the world because if you can get rid of
153. 4:17these expensive materials and you can
154. 4:18drive that cost down by half
155. 4:20everyone wins then you can replace the
156. 4:22battery
157. 4:23you know you can replace the battery and
158. 4:25you don't feel so bad about it so
159. 4:28there's a little bit about the battery i
160. 4:29thought you guys would like that that's
161. 4:30the module there's a there's essentially
162. 4:31three of these in one of these modules
163. 4:33and this is slightly different than the
164. 4:35truck module truck module's a little bit
165. 4:37different laid out
166. 4:38but that goes on the nzt and the
167. 4:41semi-truck you drove today
168. 4:42so all right come on in here we'll give
169. 4:44you the helmets