By Steve Schaefer

For an EV enthusiast—or any American car shopper—the Ford Mustang Mach-E is one of the most intriguing and important auto debuts in years. As an all-electric SUV, it’s as revolutionary as the original 1965 Mustang was in 1964 and points the way to the future, while intimately linking to Ford’s most iconic brand.

Origins

The original Ford Mustang, a low-slung sport coupe and convertible based on the compact Falcon platform, offered excitement and affordability, and was the right car at the right time. Hundreds of thousands were sold from the starting gun, invigorating Ford and creating the “pony car” segment.

Over the years, the Mustang has had its great and not so great moments, growing hulking in the early 1970s and shrinking down to Pinto size as a reaction to mid 70’s fuel shortages. It found its footing in 1979 with the form it would hold onto for decades, rounding out in the 1990s and surviving to this day. You can still get a reasonable model with a 2.3-liter EcoBoost Turbo or grab a V8-powered Shelby or other supercar variant.

The Mach-E is Different

But the Mustang Mach-E is different. It’s got four doors, for one thing (although the “E-latch” handles are hidden). It’s all-electric. While its length and width are comparable to the regular Mustang, it stands nearly 10 inches taller, and boasts 101 cubic feet (cf) of interior volume versus 83 cf for the coupe. Sitting in the spacious rear seat, I looked up through the panoramic glass roof and thought of how fun the Mustang would be for four people to take on a long trip.

Ford’s EV history is not impressive so far. They sold the competitive Fusion plug-in hybrid for years (particularly nice in the later design) with the Europe-designed C-Max minivan sharing the drivetrain. Ford offered a 76-mile-range Focus with a $40K price tag that was a California compliance car. The new hybrid version of the F-150 pickup has just arrived and I spent a week with it recently. But the Mustang Mach-E is a new milestone in the company’s movement into the electric vehicle future.

So, what makes the Mach-E a Mustang, and not just Ford’s first serious all-electric car? It’s styling and performance.

Surely there were prolonged and heated discussions in the Ford boardroom about “diluting the brand” but I believe that in the end, they decided to spend a little of their amassed brand equity in order to bless this car with everything they could muster to make it successful. People love SUVs these days and have no problem thinking of them as desirable, sporty vehicles. They are not the truck-based Jeep and International Harvester wagons that were around when the original Mustang debuted at the 1964 New York World’s Fair.

Mustang styling cues include a long and curvaceous hood, muscular sides with rear haunches, a Mustang face with piercing eyes (and a big filled-in grille) and, of course, those tri-bar taillights. There is the running horse logo, of course, seen on the nose and tail, inside on graphics and the screens, and as puddle lamps at night.

Unlike with the coupe and convertible, with the Mach-E you step right in, not down. The sporty bucket seats are covered in “Activex” – an animal-free “leather.” You sit in a typical crossover position, riding high. Legroom front and rear is generous, and headroom is amazing. Just a side note—the Mustang coupe is one of the very few cars that will not hold an upright bass. With the Mach-E, you could just drop the second-row seats and slide that bass right in, with nearly 60 cubic feet of cargo space. With the seats up, I filled the cargo hold (29.7 cf), with groceries on a rare venture out.

Electric Power

The Mach-E’s motor puts out 346 horsepower (428 lb.-ft. of torque) in the standard form and 480 hp (634 lb.-ft.) for the upcoming GT version, due this summer. With the silent powertrain, instant electric torque, and responsive steering through a fat leather-wrapped wheel, I had a blast taking the car on back roads as well as cruising through town. It feels strong and grounded, with the heavy battery pack providing the 64-inch-tall Mach-E with a low center of gravity for road-hugging stability.

Electric cars are rated by the EPA in miles per gallon equivalent—MPGe. The Mach-E gets 105 City, 93 highway, and 105 Combined. Compare these numbers to other EVs’s stats.  Weighing between 4,400 and 4,900 pounds, depending on battery size and rear- or all-wheel drive configuration, the new Mustang is not the most efficient EV, but it’s comparable to others of its size and purpose. Of course, the EPA Green scores are a pair of perfect 10’s for Smog and Greenhouse Gas.

The range between charges varies depending on battery size and the number of drive wheels. The rear-wheel-drive car with the standard 66 kWh lithium-ion battery gets 230 miles per the EPA. The 88-kWh extended range battery brings it up to 300 miles. Add all-wheel drive and those numbers drop to 211 and 270 respectively.

The liquid-cooled lithium-ion battery pack sits below the floor and between the axles in a waterproof case with crash absorption protection. That location, preferred for cars designed specifically as EVs, means interior volume is uncompromised.

One of the benefits of EVs is the ability to use one-pedal driving. This means you press on the accelerator to go forward and lift off to slow down using regenerative braking—even coming to a complete stop in some cars, including this Mustang. You can choose not to use it if you wish. I enjoyed one-pedal driving during my three years with my Bolt EV, and with a gearless car, it approximates downshifting with a manual transmission. It also means your brakes pads will last a long time—EVs are known for needing virtually no service.

Modern but Familiar Interior

The Mustang’s interior blends Mustang cues with the modern, simplified design made popular by Tesla. There’s a 15.5-inch vertical screen in the center of the dash that houses the latest version of Ford’s SYNC system, and it works pretty well, although it obscures the traditional twin-cove Mustang dash design.

Along the screen’s waist are a half dozen boxes that you can swipe and select for entertainment, information, navigation, tire pressure, and so on. Tap a box and the upper half of the screen fills in with easy-to-read information. Touch a spot on the top of the screen to open up a place to configure multiple setups. Ford promises over-the-air updates of its SYNC system, just like you-know-who.

Unlike Tesla, the Mach-E provides a small rectangular instrument panel behind the steering wheel, with a digital speedometer, a long blue bar displaying battery range (essential to monitor, impossible to miss), and a few other bits of info, like transmission setting. There’s also a tiny image of the car at the left above the range bar, and a humorous “easter egg”—it says “Ground Speed” under the digital speedometer. A head-up display appears in the windshield as well.

The FordPass phone app lets you go without a key fob (a la Tesla). I tested it, and while the doors locked and unlocked (with an annoying several-second delay), I was unsuccessful at starting the car with it. In fact, with the fob inside my house, I touched the car’s Start button and a screen message demanded to have the fob nearby and started honking the horn! Surely this would get worked out if you owned the car. The app displays lots of helpful info as well, including charging locations, with 13,500 charging stations included in the FordPass network from third parties.

Pricing for the Mach-E starts at $42,895 for the Select. My test car, the next level Premium in Carbonized Gray Metallic Paint with Black Performance Activex interior, had a base price of $47,000.  With the optional extended range battery ($5,000) and $1,100 for destination and delivery, the sticker said $53,100.

How the Mustang Competes

Certainly, the Mustang Mach-E, in its premium configurations, is aimed at folks considering cars like the upscale Porsche Macan and Audi e-Tron, but the big target is the Tesla Model Y. Both cars offer standard and performance editions and rear- or all-wheel drive. The Mustang sits on a 3.8-inch longer wheelbase than the Model Y but is 1.4 inches shorter nose to tail. It is an inch and a half narrower but stands a tenth of an inch taller. Weight is similar. So, the cars are essentially the same size.

The Tesla offers significantly better EPA green scores, but both cars are pure EVs. Interestingly, the EPA calls the Mustang Mach-E a “Small Station Wagon” and the Tesla a “Small SUV.”

How the Mach-E Takes on the Tesla Model Y

So, what DOES the Mustang offer? It’s style. The Model Y looks like other Teslas—pleasantly rounded, but subtle, with a grilleless face, generic-looking taillamps, and soft contours. The interiors are spartan Danish Modern in their sober restraint, with only a big, wide screen to interact with. The Mustang, however, is notably muscular, wears its traditional livery well, and inside, feels more like the cars we know and love.

This could be the Mustang’s most important role—using its emotional appeal to entice folks who admire Teslas but love the cars they remember and have enjoyed. Everybody knows what Mustangs are. Ford, who put America on wheels with the Model T, has had numerous other hits (1949 sedan, 1960 Falcon, Thunderbird, Taurus, Explorer) and a few misses (Edsel). This gives them more than a century of brand equity and tradition that Tesla can’t offer. So, if Ford can match Tesla’s performance and approximate the tech but offer more style and curb appeal, not to mention an expansive national dealership network, maybe they’ll bring new buyers into the EV fold. A successful Mustang Mach-E can then lead to more electric Fords as we leave fossil-fuel-burning cars in the dust over the next 10-15 years.

By Steve Schaefer

Micromobility—including scooters—is the latest quick and clean way to get around urban areas. But one big problem is managing where the fleets of shared scooters go and where they’re parked. Fantasmo has a solution—camera vision-based positioning. Fantasmo enables it by first mapping cities at the ground level, and then scooter riders use the camera on their phone to accurately record their exact position when it comes time to park.

A bit of history. When the first scooter fleets started operating in Santa Monica, California, riders took an end-of-ride photo that roughly placed their location. GPS was used to create a geofence in the city to say, keep scooters out of parks, but was not very accurate. When other cities started having scooter fleets, their biggest issues were bad parking and clutter and sidewalk riding. GPS mapping was too blunt of an instrument to monitor it effectively. Now, cities like San Francisco and Chicago simply require e-scooters to be locked to posts or signs to keep them out of the walkway.

Fantasmo’s technology solves this issue by providing the granularity to make accurate tracking of scooter parking possible. It will also come in handy for future applications, such as tracking delivery bots and use by the visually impaired.

Fantasmo is a seven-year-old US-based startup that’s backed by investors including Unlock Venture Partners, Freestyle Capital, TenOneTen Ventures, and LDV capital, among others.

The company recently partnered with major European micromobility operator TIER to map more than 85 cities through exclusive partnerships in Europe and the UK, including Paris, France and York, England.

I spoke with Jameson Detweiler, co-founder and president of Fantasmo, about his company and the software and hardware that make this possible. Educated at Drexel University in Material Science and Engineering, Jameson also has plenty of startup and leadership experience. He previously co-founded LaunchRock, an idea launching product, was founder and CEO of GreenKonnect, a human-powered search engine for the green building industry, and he co-founded LED lighting startup Summalux.

Fantasmo began as Fantasmo Studios. They were looking for the technology to create augmented reality games like Pokemon Go, which superimpose the game onto your actual surroundings. But it soon grew into much more.

“We wanted to combine alternate reality games with machines to better understand the real world and how to assist humans,” said Jameson. “We decided to focus on the next generation of mapping technology.”

Positioning from satellites, GPS is used by many applications, but the problem in cities is that buildings, trees, and other objects can block the view of the street. This causes inaccuracies when the signal bounces off of these objects. Fantasmo’s solution is to build a 3D map of cities at the ground level, collected using cameras and sensors similar to those found on EVs. Once a city is mapped, Fantasmo can determine someone or something’s position by pinning camera footage to that digital map using its Camera Positioning System (CPS)—an alternative to GPS.

“We can create a visual fingerprint from the surroundings, like a big QR code, and use advanced math to interpolate from the images,” said Jameson.

Fantasmo maps a city using the 22-pound Fantasmo Explorer backpack, which a Fantasmo employee wears as they walk down the sidewalks of the target city.

Fantasmo recently mapped 1,800 kilometers (1,118 miles) of Paris by foot, and is now working in York, with more cities on the way (under the TIER partnership). By taking the images from the sidewalk, it can target exactly where the scooters are at the end of a ride, when the rider uses their camera to take a few seconds of video images of the surrounding buildings.

The Paris project employed six backpacks, each shared by two people working shifts for a few weeks. The French capital enjoys high scooter usage, and with limited sidewalk space, has designated 2,500 mandatory parking corrals for them. Fantasmo mapped these areas first and will eventually map the entire city.

The high-tech backpacks are set up with shoulder and waist straps, like good backpacking gear. They bristle with two lidar “pucks” and six cameras, like the ones used on autonomous vehicles, and are a little like micro-sized, wearable Google mapping cars. After a couple hours of training, the employees follow their assigned missions for the day, using iPads to communicate with the backpacks.

Now, when a French scooter rider is ending their ride, they will use the TIER app to scan the surroundings for a few seconds and the app tells them if they are in a designated parking area, to an accuracy of 20 cm (just under 8 inches). If they are not, then they must move to one before they can end their ride. No physical infrastructure is needed.

Fantasmo manages the entire mapping project for a city for TIER or any other client. This means that they visit the target city and use their mission planning tool to draw the boundaries and create walking routes to cover the whole city. Once those routes are queued up, they can be assigned to the walkers. Fantasmo’s system monitors progress and can fill in any gaps that may occur.

Naturally, there are changes in a city over time, but the software can flag changes when riders use it, so new images can be taken, say, if a building is torn down. However, the initial backpack mapping creates a  “substrate layer” that doesn’t need much updating. The images use solid, permanent items like a building’s windowsills, so changes in signage, for example, don’t affect the accuracy.

“It’s a dynamic situation,” said Jameson. “We recently had to skip mapping a section in York because it was flooded,” said Jameson.

Jameson sees the future in self-healing maps, and the use of data from more sources.

“For the next generation, any device can take images, masking out personal data, and create a digital twin of a city,” said Jameson. “This will be good for autonomous solutions for micromobility, pedestrians, and cars.“

He also sees a time when the technology will live on the scooters themselves.

“We’ll know where the scooter is 100 percent of the time,” said Jameson. The scooters will be as smart as robots.”

Jameson believes that accurate positioning is a steppingstone to real autonomy in cities. Every device will be aware of itself, its location, and other vehicles, scooters, bikes, and people. And thanks to the shared mapping, it will be able to “see through buildings.” The goal is zero accidents and maximum efficiency. Fantasmo’s applications also work with mobile, auto, and robotics, so there are lots of exciting things coming.

When will the company come home and start mapping American cities? There are plans, and Fantasmo will announce them when it’s time.

Autonomy and micromobility are essential to the health of our cities, and Fantasmo’s mapping technology is in the middle of it, making it happen.

GM and Biden Target 2035

By Steve Schaefer

It was a week of good news for EVs and climate action, as General Motors and the new U.S. president announced ambitious plans to tackle global warming. Both set a goal fourteen years out, which, although it’s later than the often-cited 2030 target from the Paris Agreement, is a profound move forward.

General Motors Makes a Commitment

Years ago, Charles Wilson, President of General Motors, and Eisenhower’s nominee for Secretary of Defense, famously said, “What’s good for the country is good for General Motors. And vice versa.” Democrats on the committee focused on the vice versa part of the statement, but in the modern case, it may actually be true either way.

When GM first stated its intention to move toward electric vehicles and rolled out its vision of Zero Crashes, Zero Emissions, and Zero Congestion, I was skeptical. After all, this is the company that makes its money on gas-guzzling pickup trucks and Chevy Tahoes and has promoted Corvettes and Camaros. But they did introduce the worthy Bolt EV and were dabbling in green tech with the plug-in hybrid Volt before that.

With Tesla in their rearview mirror (or maybe now seen through their windshield!), one of America’s “big three” has officially put their bets on electric cars and has announced their plan to have a 100% electric fleet by 2035. GM will introduce 30 new EVs by 2025, including a new all-electric Hummer! They are developing a new flexible platform and the Ultium battery, which they will produce themselves. And they are putting $27 billion on the table to do it. With their long-established cross-country dealer network and factories in America, they have a good start.

Last night, I watched a recording of GM President Mark Reuss talking with Malcolm Gladwell at CES 2021 for GM Exhibit Zero. He said all the right things and laid out GM’s plan for 30 EVs by 2025 and all the rest. GM CEO Mary Barra has been quite forthright about the company’s plans, too.

Biden Steps Forward on Climate Change Action

Meanwhile, America’s new president put forward his plan, and it’s just what many of us have been waiting for. Immediately putting the U.S. back in the Paris Agreement and cancelling the Keystone XL Pipeline were signature acts, but Biden’s announcement of moving to an all-electric fleet was an eye opener. It goes along with California’s 2035 target of no new light-duty internal combustion engine vehicles sold starting in 2035. The Golden State has been leading the charge towards lower emissions for decades. It also fits nicely into GM’s plan.

Ford is Planning and Releasing EVs, Too

Ford is investing more than $11.5 billion in electric vehicles through 2022, and  zero-emission versions of some of its most popular nameplates are on the way, including the Mustang Mach-E, which starts arriving in dealerships this year, as well as a Transit Commercial EV and fully electric F-150 coming within 24 months.

The company previously announced its plan to use 100 percent locally sourced renewable energy for all its manufacturing plants globally by 2035. That means energy would come only from sources that naturally replenish – such as hydropower, geothermal, wind or solar.

However, as builders of America’s favorite vehicle for more than four decades, the F-150 pickup, Ford can have a big impact by putting an electric motor under its tall hood. And, leveraging the reputation of their most iconic vehicle, the Mustang, they have just introduced the category-bending, all new Mustang Mach-E, an all-electric four-door crossover that has the Tesla Model Y in its sights (with a heavy dash of Mustang traditional styling and performance). If these two pillars of Ford’s product line move the sales needle, Ford will be making an impact, too, and can start introducing more electrified vehicles.

It’s easy to see America’s two surviving American-owned car companies jumping in and writing big orders for all those electrified U.S. government fleet vehicles and making those American factories hum with green-tech jobs. It has win-win written all over it. Of course, making this huge transition will not be easy or instant, but the overwhelming weight of scientific evidence tells us we must do it now.

When Mark Reuss answered Malcolm Gladwell’s question, “Why now?” during the interview, he said it was because it was the right thing to do, and that he wanted a safe, healthy world for his three grandchildren. As a grandparent myself, I wholeheartedly agree.

Bold initiatives by corporations, states and national governments have proven effective in Europe and China, and now the U.S., under new leadership and in cooperation with its auto manufacturers, is approaching the EV tipping point. I have more faith now that we can and will make this happen. In the middle of the next decade, it will all seem like it was meant to be, and once-skeptical buyers will be sold on the new, cleaner, better technology. For now, I’m doing whatever I can to push us to and beyond the EV tipping point.

By Steve Schaefer

In the growing world of EVs, the Aptera stands out, for its unusual design, incredible range, and the company’s plucky chutzpah. I attended a fascinating Zoom presentation by Jason Hill, the company’s designer, where he kindly provided details and shared his excitement.

Company History, in Brief

The company was founded in 2005 by Steve Fambro and Chris Anthony, but faltered and closed down in 2011. But—hope springs eternal, and after a circuitous path, Aptera rose again in 2019 under the original founders. They and their team worked quietly behind the scenes, including a painstaking redesign of the car as a full electric vehicle. In December of 2020 they introduced the Aptera 3 and announced a crowdsourcing campaign, which quickly generated 3,000 deposits from eager customers.

Jason Hill, Designer

Jason Hill remembers seeing the extremely aerodynamic original Aptera on the cover of Popular Science magazine. When the company restarted, the founders went looking for a designer, and through a friend Jason was offered the job.

Jason is founder and president of Eleven LLC, a design studio whose clients include Subaru and other automotive entities. He was the first designer at Porsche’s American design studio, working on the exterior of the Porsche Carrera GT show car.

“I support the vision of the efficiency model and what that means for mobility, transportation, and vehicle design,” said Jason.

Jason found that they had never really stopped working on the car, but he believes that now is the right time to produce it.

“The technology, processes, and general environment have caught up to where Aptera can be a leader in this space,” said Jason.

His task as designer is to mix the engineering with the aesthetics and uphold the company’s design ethos.

The Shape

Aptera means “wingless” in Greek, and is a great name for the car, because it really looks like a wingless airplane. The company likes to translate Aptera as “wingless flight,” but is not taking inspiration from the actual wingless flying insects to whom the term is applied.

Design Is at the heart of Aptera, as Jason explained in detail during his online session for investors, journalists, and other interested parties.

The car has room for two people, and the designer’s goal was to maximize vision, comfort, and the “reach envelope” for the activities inside the car.

“We wanted the perfect shape for aerodynamic functionality, low weight and a high level of design,” said Jason.

Packaging

The design goal was to tackle the question of housing both people and the powertrain, including the batteries. Jason says that for the Aptera 3 redesign, they started on the inside and worked their way out, rather than designing a perfect body and trying to fit the pieces inside it.

“We started with the base of batteries and balanced that with the needs of the shape for the best balance,” said Jason.

They put the batteries into smaller, higher-density packs, so they could fit them more precisely into the vehicle.

The overall design process, per Jason, is to seek the best advice, and not defer to a single decision or direction.

“If it fits, it goes that way,” said Jason. “Nothing is superfluous, and nothing is left out.”

That comes down to a “rightness” from having the best user functionality, where the reach to the controls, cupholder locations, materials, colors and finish have a premium feel but are cost effective to produce.  As seen in other EVs, recycled materials appear here, and per Jason, there’s a much greater variety of sources now from which to procure them.

The Right User Experience

No matter what the shape of a car looks like, most of the human interaction with it is inside, so it has to be right. Jason has given this much thought.

“Functionality—needs and wants—has to balance out,” he said.

For instance, the original interior design had a single screen with all the information on it, and three rear vision cameras. Jason says they can do better now. He listens widely to the words he hears from leadership and tries to match them to the vision.

“That’s exactly what I was talking about,” is what Jason wants to hear when he unveils a new design.

The Aptera is designed to accommodate most people, so it’s designed around the 95^th percentile human—typically a 6-foot-2 adult male—and for short people too.

The design ethos is about engaging the driver and passenger.

“We wanted it to be free of hassle and clumsiness,” said Jason. So, there’s no key fob, and not a bunch of buttons and distractions. We wanted it to feel clean and luxurious, but not to be missing anything.”

Unique Interior Features

The Aptera features a center console cover, which incorporates a phone charger. There’s also a soft glovebox that sits on the dashboard, not in it. Drivers can store items safely in a backpack that lives on the back of the seat. The rear storage area will be convertible into a camper with a new tent feature that’s being designed with a “tent developer.”

“We wanted to give freedom of mobility and heartfelt limited use of resources—to go far using little,” said Jason. This includes traveling to out-of-the-way places.

The steering wheel started out quite square but has evolved into a more rounded shape. Jason paid special attention to how it feels in your hands, aiming for the right thickness and providing adjustability.

The rear-view mirrors use a video camera system, with high-fidelity feedback—better than a regular mirror. You can also select a standard mirror with a click. The regular rearview mirror is tied in with side cameras for a wider field of vision.

A Different Exterior

Cars are starting to use phone apps as your key—a la Tesla—and the Aptera adds something special—three round lights on the side near the upper part of the butterfly-style doors. They provide a visual cue for locking and unlocking the vehicle. The owner waves their hand over the door pillar and the lights  display sequentially upwards for unlocking and downwards for locking. The Aptera logo next to them remains lit all the time.

The Aptera looks a little like a stripped-down hotrod, with its exposed wheel linkages. The wheels are covered with wheel pans, which move with the wheels when turning. Design and engineering are working together to make sure changing a tire will be easy.

Solar Technology

The surface and dashboard top of this latest Aptera are covered with solar panels, laid out in an elegant diamond pattern. Jason found that turning the square panels at an angle allowed more of them to be placed on the car. These panels generate up to 41 miles of range per day, so since most drivers drive less than that, you could technically never plug the Aptera in. This would be the first EV to be able to claim that distinction.

Why Three Wheels?

Three wheels instead of four eliminates some weight while maintaining stability. Of course, having the batteries at the bottom of all electric cars provides a lower center of gravity, reducing the risk of turning over and enhancing handling. Jason said they will consider different wheel sizes and widths that are most efficient and also can adapt them for different markets.

Jason Sums it Up

“The process is so rewarding—to be part of setting goals and seeing their manifestation,” Jason said. “The style part is one thing but mixing it with efficiency is even better. This gives us freedom of mobility.”

Order Yours

Tempted to have one of your own? Aptera’s website claims up to a 1,000-mile battery range at the top level, with a  $44,900 price. The entry-level model, with a 250-mile-range, starts at under $26,000. You can get on the order list with a $100 deposit.

By Steve Schaefer

Climate scientists tell us we must limit the earth’s warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius to reduce the risks of various catastrophic events. To do it, we need to lower our CO₂ emissions by half in the next decade and achieve carbon neutrality by 2050. Replacing our fossil-fuel-powered auto fleet with electric vehicles is crucial to success. This change will be difficult and take time, but there is one big issue—the mining of battery components—that has been EVs’ dirty little secret.

KoBold Metals is a San Francisco Bay Area high tech startup, with Andreesen Horowitz and Breakthrough Energy Ventures, a climate technology fund backed by Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos, as major investors. KoBold has developed an artificial intelligence (AI) machine learning solution for the sourcing and mining of the precious metals used in our current batteries—lithium, cobalt, and nickel. I met with KoBold’s CEO and co-founder, Kurt House, Ph. D to discuss what they are doing and the impact it will have. House is a serial entrepreneur with an educational background in physics and math and a career curriculum vitae in energy—both oil/gas and sustainable energy. He is also an Adjunct Professor in Stanford University’s Energy Resources Engineering Department.

The move to EVs is accelerating, and major auto manufacturers like Tesla, GM, Ford, Volkswagen, Hyundai/Kia, Mercedes-Benz, and others, are stepping up new EV introductions. However, for mass production of EVs, we will need a mass of the battery ingredients. And according to House, there isn’t enough metal around now to build the initial stock of EVs.

“To beat global warming, we need to electrify everything,” House said. “And we need to do it all in the next 30 years, so we need to build renewable like mad.”

Per House, there are about 1.3 billion cars around today, of which only 10 million are EVs. That total could be 3 billion vehicles by 2050. That means a lot of these metals need to be mined now.

However, while the mining industry does find some new materials every year with traditional methods, it isn’t moving at the pace needed to provide the materials for the batteries in a short time frame. There has to be a better, more efficient way that’s also sustainable and ethical.

House says there are two approaches:

• Spend more money
• Do better with the same money

The second approach obviously makes more sense.

“We need to find ore systems that can be mined with minimal impact, in reliable jurisdictions,” said House.

Unfortunately, much of the known cobalt is in Congo, where it is highly concentrated, some of it right at the surface and some in deep mines. Workers, often children, can dig it up by hand and bring it in for a few dollars—which in the poverty of the area is enough to be an incentive. This is obviously not a good long-term plan.

“We are trying to create a diversity of supply,” said House. “Major OEMs and battery manufacturers would rather have a sustainable, ethical choice in where they source their materials.”

That’s where KoBold’s Machine Prospector technology comes in. Here’s what KoBold’s website says about it.

“KoBold’s Machine Prospector technology combines never before used datasets with conventional geochemical, geophysical, and geological data in statistical association models to identify prospects… KoBold’s technology accelerates exploration by efficiently screening large regions and makes our search more effective by identifying the most promising locations.”

This means that KoBold uses AI and machine learning to look at all of the data, from 80-year-old maps to satellite data, to find the most likely sites for drilling.

“It’s aggregated from all over the world and structured into universal data schemas that can be interrogated by our algorithms,” said House.

What they are seeking is “compositional anomalies”—large chunks of rock that can be mined. As an example, House said that if you drilled for nickel under, say, your house, you would probably come up with dirt with 70 parts per million (ppm) of the ore in it. To extract the nickel from that would cost 100 times the current price for the ore. They want to find where it’s at 25,000 ppm, which would make it very economical to extract and process the ore.

So, why hasn’t anyone done this before?

“They couldn’t do what we’re doing even 10 years ago,” said House. “We are standing on the shoulders of trillions of dollars of high bandwidth computing networks that enable us to spin up and spin down dramatically large computing resources.”

KoBold’s Machine Prospector technology first makes predictions about where the ore is concentrated, and then collects additional data that helps to decrease uncertainty. The goal is to quickly eliminate any places that have a low chance of success so that when they do drill, it’s much more likely to hit paydirt.

Today, KoBold has field campaigns on three continents. Unlike many software companies, they do not license their technology to other companies—they use it themselves and partner with companies to do the actual drilling when they have decided on a location. Some projects they own 100 percent, and some are partnerships.

So, what does the market look like and what’s the best plan? Because battery components are nearly 100 percent reusable, they allow for a circular economy, which fossils fuels decidedly do not. House says we need to get all the metal we can in the next thirty years.

“With a circular economy, the metal stays in the system,” said House. “Circular economies require full renewable energy, so we just mine a bunch for a few decades and then we’re done.”

The manufacturers building the coming fleet of EVs want to ensure they have enough precious metals for the batteries they will need, and the battery manufacturers do too. KoBold, by locating safe, accessible locations and providing focused, high-percentage, sustainable extraction methods, helps assure that we can convert to an all-electric fleet in time and with as little environmental impact as possible.