Thinking On Paper Technology Podcast From Tesla to China’s Dominance: How the USA Lost the EV Battery Race – The Electric Stack, Part 1
China controls every Tesla, drone and electric toothbrush. Why? Because it produces over half of the world’s lithium-ion batteries and more than 90% of all neodymium magnets. They are the core ingredient in Teslas, drones, robots, and every electric motor you interact with daily.
China also mines 70% of global rare earths and processes 85–90% of them. The Electric Stack is Chinese.
In this episode of Thinking on Paper, Mark and Jeremy read Packy McCormick’s Not Boring Essay: The Electric Slide to understand the history, economics and technology of the electric stack. Because if it can go electric, it will go electric.
The story of the Electric Stack - and the slide - begins in 1973 with the oil crisis. Everyone’s favourite oil company, Exxon, funded early lithium battery research by Stan Whittingham. Stan’s batteries exploded.
Enter John B Goodenough, the man with the best name in technology. He has a voltage breakthrough. Akira Yoshino joins the show and stabilises the technology further. Sony get a whiff and use them to shrink the Handycam. It’s the Alpha product that makes lithium-ion batteries a global product and a commercial goldmine.
Elon Musk and Tesla take up the EV mantle. Tesla’s early cell-pack experiments, coupled with Panasonic’s partnership accelerate the progress.
Battery maker A123 in the United States collapses. China eventually acquire it for a fraction of its value.
The Beijing Olympics becomes a turning point: BYD test large battery systems in buses across the city, gaining a lead that CATL and BYD still hold today.
Then come the magnets. Neodymium magnets were discovered in 1983 in parallel by Masato Sagawa in Japan and John Croat at GM. They powered the boom in hard drives, then drones, then the emerging humanoid robotics market.
Today, China produces nearly all of them.
America is playing catch-up, does it stand a chance?
Please enjoy the show.
And remember: Stay curious. Be disruptive. Keep Thinking on Paper.
Cheers, Mark & Jeremy
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Timestamps
(00:00) The Electric Stack
(02:13) Beginnings: War, The Oil Crisis & Stan Whittingham
(03:46) The Song Handycam: Lateral Thinking With Withered Technology
(05:06) Tesla, Elon And Handycam Batteries In An EV
(06:46) China Buys US Battery Company A-123 At A Carboot Sale
(08:40) China, The Olympics And The Serendipity of Battery Technology
(11:37) Faraday And The Birth Of Neodymium Magnets
(14:26) The 3.5 Inch Neodymium Magnet Alpha Product
(16:46) Magnequench
(18:16) Drones, Ukraine And The Magnet War Machine
(20:16) Politics, Rare Earths And 'The Future's Too Important' T-shirts