Imagine you're in the market for a full size pickup truck. And you like the F-150, America's best-selling vehicle for the past 40 years. But, wait, there's a new twist in the decision-making process. Should you get a gasoline-powered F-150 or the electric F-150 Lightning? To get answers, we turn to our guest today, Darren Palmer. Darren is the Vice President of Electric Vehicles in Ford's Model e division. Darren reports to Doug Field, recently recruited from Apple, and Field reports to CEO Jim ...
Dec 08, 2022•46 min
When she was an engineering student at MIT, Kristin Slanina led her team to victory in a solar car race through five states in America's northeast. That early achievement inspired Kristin, decades later, to launch Charge Across America, a contest featuring teams driving from New York to Los Angeles in five different electric cars. The main purpose of the competition was to assess the readiness of America's charging networks. How reliable, how fast, how convenient? In this episode Kristin recount...
Dec 01, 2022•46 min
In Part I of this conversation, Reilly Brennan described how the days of late October, 2022 will go down in history as some of the most important in the history of autonomous vehicles. In the space of just a few days, one company (Argo AI) went out of business, Tesla was taken to court for its Autopilot system and Reilly Brennan experienced a transcendent "before and after" moment when taking the Cruise robotaxi on a flawless 40 minute trip through the street of San Francisco. In this week's Par...
Nov 24, 2022•32 min
Scour the planet and you are unlikely to find anyone who knows the business of autonomous vehicles (AVs & ADAS) better than Reilly Brennan, Co-Founder, Trucks Venture Capital. Over the past ten years, Brennan has taken rides in more than 100 autonomous vehicles. He and his partners at Trucks Venture Capital have also invested in dozens of startups in the AV ecosystem, including leading innovators like Gatik, May Mobility, AEye and NuTonomy. In this week's Driving With Dunne conversation, Bre...
Nov 17, 2022•30 min
Almost half of all humans now live in cities. By 2300 that number will climb to 75%. With so much population density, how will people get around? Horace Dediu and Roman Meliska have some powerful ideas. The future of transportation in cities is smaller, lighter, quicker and smarter. There is a shift underway to new modes of transportation that they call Micromobility. It is not the end of the car. But perhaps the end of an era in which cities are built to accommodate cars exclusively. What are t...
Nov 10, 2022•32 min
StoreDot is an Israeli-based technology startup with deep expertise in charging batteries. The company is focused on extreme fast charging for electric cars. How extreme? StoreDot aims to deliver 100 miles of charge to your car battery in only five minutes. Among his financial backers: Samsung, Daimler, British Petroleum and VinFast. Doron and his team will demonstrate the "100 in 5" charge breakthrough in November 2022 at the high profile Web Summit in Lisbon, Portugal. In today's conversation,...
Nov 03, 2022•41 min
Reuters has just published a blockbuster forecast: Global automakers plan to invest $1.2 trillion in electric vehicles, batteries and supply chains between now and 2030. That is a massive, unprecedented number in the 130-year history of the auto industry. Just how big is 1.2 trillion? It is the equivalent to the GDP of Spain. It is also the same as Apple's market cap. Which companies are investing the most? Where are their investments concentrated? Is it in new vehicles, batteries, mining or som...
Oct 27, 2022•36 min
Li-Cycle is a lithium-ion battery recycling company co-founded in 2016 by Tim Johnston and Ajay Kochhar, engineers with deep experience in minerals and mining. By 2025, there will be 900,000 tons of end of life batteries that need processing in North America and Europe. Li-Cycle is ramping up capacity to meet that future demand with operations in Arizona, Alabama, New York and Ohio.There are also new headquarters opening in Switzerland and Singapore. In this episode, Austrlaian-native Tim Johnst...
Oct 20, 2022•36 min
Metis Engineering founder Joe Holdwarth got his start working on nuclear submarines. Today, he spends his days and nights finding ways to prevent thermal runaway events in electric cars. EV battery fires are rare. According to experts, fires occur just 5 times for every billion miles traveled. For internal combustion engine-powered vehicles, the number is 55. But when there is a thermal runaway event, the results can be catastrophic. A fire in one battery cell spreads quickly to hundreds of othe...
Oct 13, 2022•30 min
What does living in a surveillance state look like? Well, now we know, thanks to a brilliant new book, Surveillance State, by Wall Street Journal veteran correspondents Josh Chin and Liza Lin. With more than 25 years on the ground in the People's Republic between them, Josh and Liza give us a firsthand look into how the Chinese government controls the behavior of 1.3 billion people around the clock. There is extensive and invasive policing using all forms of advanced technologies from millions o...
Oct 06, 2022•44 min
Henry Sanderson witnessed the explosion in demand for cars in China while living in Shanghai and Beijing from 2007 to 2014. He found the pace and magnitude of growth alarming. Then he returned to London where he began covering minerals and commodities for the Financial Times. Soon, he realized the world was stepping to a global super cycle around the minerals that feed into batteries. Demand for critical minerals like lithium, cobalt, copper and nickel were on track to explode in line with the w...
Sep 29, 2022•36 min
Lars Carlstrom is a Swedish-born entrepreneur with a gift for identifying the next big opportunity. In 2019, he co-founded Britshvolt and quickly persuaded industrialists and politicians in the UK to endorse the idea of a national champion British battery company. In 2021, Carlstrom founded Milan-based Italvolt. Earlier this year, Carlstrom announced the formation of Statevolt in Imperial Valley, California. Lars tells us he was motivated by the opportunity to introduce new technologies that wil...
Sep 22, 2022•32 min
Meet Emily Hersch, founder and CEO of Luna Lithium, a mineral exploration company. Emily is leading a new wave of American entrepreneurs exploring and mining the essential ingredient for battery electric vehicles: Lithium. Emily is one of the most impressive, spontaneous and colorful guests we have ever had on the Driving With Dunne podcast. In our conversation, Emily delivers a direct and concise picture of the global lithium mining industry. She shares her point of view on why the Inflation Re...
Aug 25, 2022•35 min
Are you struggling to find an affordable electric vehicle? You are not alone. The average price of a new electric vehicle sold in America in 2022 is a stunning $66,000. That’s more than a house in Detroit or Topeka. But if you look long and hard enough, you can still tease out some bargains. So says Matt DeLorenzo, author of a timely and practical new book called How to Buy An Affordable Electric Vehicle. DeLorenzo parks a small electric car in the driveway that cost him less than $20,000 after ...
Aug 18, 2022•38 min
Have you been searching for an expert go-to source for knowledge on batteries? Look no further, Battery Brunch is here. In 2019, MIT graduates and Silicon valley battery scientists Yen Yeh (Voltaiq), Linda Jing (Tesla) hosted the first ever Battery Brunch, a small gathering of a dozen battery minds in the Bay Area. Today, Battery Brunch has blossomed into a hugely valuable meeting point for thousands of people in the battery industry: founders, engineers, investors, policy makers and more. Yen Y...
Aug 04, 2022•24 min
David Welch, the highly regarded veteran Bloomberg reporter, has written a timely and important book about how Mary Barra is leading a total makeover of General Motors. Barra's mission has been to transform GM from large and cumbersome and arrogant to a company that is lean, quick and profitable. The path to a flourishing GM, Barra believes, is total commitment to electric and autonomous vehicles, the two most transformative technologies of our era. Getting there means killing sacred cows and ma...
Jul 28, 2022•40 min
In early July, 2002 Michael Dunne traveled to Vietnam to take a closer look at VinFast, the remarkably young and ambitious manufacturer of electric vehicles. VinFast is a subsidiary of Vingroup, the largest private company in Vietnam. Chairman and Founder Pham Nhat Vuong and VinFast CEO Madame Thuy are determined to make VinFast a global success. An standard VinFast company mantra is "making the impossible possible." VinFast will start delivering their all electric vehicles to markets in America...
Jul 21, 2022•33 min
Envisics is a UK-based technology company with deep expertise in holography. So, what are holograms? Those are the three dimensional images we see in sci-fi movies that originally appeared in the Star Wars series. Envisics projects informational holograms outside of the vehicle in the line of vision, about three feet in front of the driver's eyes. Think of it as a colorful head up display in three dimensions. The single biggest advantage of holography is safety. The driver does not need to look ...
Jun 22, 2022•36 min
Octillion Power Systems supplies lithium-ion battery systems to car, truck and bus makers worldwide. The company has delivered more than 650,000 electric vehicle batteries to automaker,, including to the wildly successful made-in-China Wuling Mini EV. Octillion's new offices in Richmond, California serve as headquarters for company operations in North and South America. Mr Paul Beach, President of Octillion, has been at the forefront of the battery business since the late 1990s. In this episode,...
Jun 15, 2022•38 min
Gene Berdichevsky's life could come straight out of a James Bond movie. Born in the Ukraine, raised in Russia, he and his family immigrated to America when he turned nine years old. Along the way, he had lived for five years north of the arctic circle. Berdichevsky studied engineering at Stanford and convinced Tesla founders to make him employee No. 7. Today, Berdichevsky is the Co-Founder and CEO of Sila Nanotechnologies. In 2022, Sila won a landmark contract to supply batteries to the exclusiv...
Jun 08, 2022•55 min
GM's has ambitious plans when it comes to electric vehicles. CEO Mary Barra says the company will be selling 1 million EVs a year by 2026, surpassing Tesla. That projected 2026 number will include everything from the just-launched $100,000 all-electric Hummers to $60,000 Cadillacs to sub-$30,000 offerings co-developed with Honda. How likely is the 114 year-old company to achieve its lofty goals? Much depends on the success of the Ultium battery platform. "Before GM got too far down the road in E...
Jun 01, 2022•33 min
San Francisco resident Ruth Wilcox decided to buy her first pure electric vehicle in 2020. She looked at a few different brands, including Tesla, but eventually decided to purchase an Audi e-tron. What made her elect the Audi over the others? And two years later, what have been the highs and lows of ownership? What about charging? And what are some of the quality issues Audi engineers need to address? Joining the conversation is Ken Wilcox, Ruth's husband. Ken loves his gasoline-powered Audi TTs...
May 25, 2022•47 min
In June, 2021, Ted Cannis was appointed CEO of Ford Pro, the vitally-important division focused on commercial vehicles like the Ford F-Series trucks and Transit vans. Ford sees enormous opportunity to grow this division in terms of revenues and profits in the next three years. In our conversation, Ted Cannis shares examples of how small to medium sized businesses can get a lot more efficient and profitable in a short space of time through connected car software applications. Ford is also rolling...
May 18, 2022•46 min
Roger Atkins is, without a doubt, one of the most knowledgeable and influential voices in the world of electric vehicles. He has a following of several hundred thousand people on LinkedIn. What people like about Roger is his deep knowledge, his self-deprecating sense of humor and his candor. In this episode of Driving With Dunne, I ask Roger about his 18 months of experience driving a Jaguar I-PACE. Why did he choose the Jaguar over other electric models? What have been the highs and lows? And, ...
May 11, 2022•47 min
In the early 2000s, a small group of friends in Palo-Alto, California started a movement to transform the way products are designed and developed. It came to be known as Design Thinking. Early pioneers included David M. Kelley, founder of IDEO and Diego Rodriguez, one of his star team leaders. The central idea of design thinking is to center all development not around the product or service but around how human beings feel when they experience them. It may sound simple or obvious. But if the pro...
May 04, 2022•48 min
What does China want? What is Xi Jinping's endgame? Elizabeth Economy, a highly-respected scholar, keynote speaker and best-selling author, has clear ideas. Her new book, The World According to China, lays out China's ambitions to become the world's pre-eminent superpower, replacing the United States. China is already hard at work to realize Xi's dream. The country projects influence globally through three kinds of power: Hard Power (military expansion in the South China Sea), Soft Power (cultur...
Apr 27, 2022•41 min
You can count on one hand the number of people in the world who know as much about batteries as Mujeeb Ijaz, In early 2020 Mujeeb took the monumental decision to found Our Next Energy (ONE), an advanced technology battery company with headquarters in Novi, Michigan. Mujeeb understood that range was a major limiting factor for customers considering a switch to electric vehicles. To reduce that purchase "friction", Mujeeb set an extraordinarily audacious goal: His company, Our Next Energy, would d...
Apr 20, 2022•49 min
Gas prices are going through the roof. Shell and Chevron now command more than $6 a gallon in California. People are asking themselves: Is it time to go electric? Up until now, consumers have been hesitant. Going electric has understandably felt like a big gamble because cars are such a big ticket item. What about range? Will charging be convenient? Is the battery safe from fires? Will I be able to sell my electric vehicle in three years at a decent price? Today, thanks to a new study from JD Po...
Apr 13, 2022•45 min
In February 2022, Consumer Reports named the Mustang Mach-E the best electric car on the market, knocking Tesla from the number one position for the first time. The sporty SUV seems to be everything customers want in a Mustang: good-looking, modern - and very fast. People in America bought almost 30,000 of them in the first year, blowing past even the most optimistic projections by the team at Ford. But what most people are not aware of is that the Mach-E product development program was actually...
Mar 30, 2022•45 min
Gas prices are surging, prompting a record number of people to think about their first electric car. LA-based tech consultant Mark Concannon took that first leap into electrics just over one year ago. In this episode of Driving With Dunne, Mark shares what he likes about his Polestar 2 -- and where the vehicle comes up short. Mark recounts the full spectrum of his premium EV ownership, from the Google Android infotainment to acceleration off the line to charging to the very real emotion of range...
Mar 16, 2022•42 min
