Thiel: Small EV drivetrain efficiency gains matter because batteries are expensive
Dr. Greg Thiel · Why climate tech startups get this one thing wrong · Oct 31, 2024 · at 26:24
Dr. Greg Thiel of Energy Impact Partners uses EV drivetrains to demonstrate why component-level techno-economic modeling must evaluate system-level cost interactions.
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“The biggest, biggest single line item cost in an electric vehicle is, is the batteries, and a lot of the drivetrain, you know, power conversion equipment, motors, and so forth, are really, really efficient, and so it could be tempting to kind of, if you're looking at a, at some piece of that drivetrain, say, hey, this is already 90% efficient plus, what does efficiency matter here? But, A few points in efficiency might actually matter a lot at the system level, because every kilowatt hour that you waste in the drivetrain is a kilowatt hour that you have to store in your battery, and that's a really, really expensive kilowatt hour to store.”
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