David Noyce, director of the university’s Traffic Operations and Safety Laboratory, spoke yesterday during a Wisconsin Technology Council event in Wauwatosa focused on electric vehicle development.
He and other speakers discussed some of the challenges associated with advancing EVs, including China’s dominance of the global supply chain for these vehicles.
“China has about 60 percent of the EV market in terms of vehicles … about three-fourths of the market of lithium-ion battery production,” he said.
While the recent U.S. national infrastructure bill included about $1.6 billion for new lithium production facilities and technology advancement, Noyce noted, he added “it’s a slow climb” compared to competing nations.
“It takes about a year for an Australian lithium producer to get up and running … Here, it’s eight years,” he said.
Still, Faith Technologies Executive Vice President Wade Leipold noted about 60 battery plants are being built in the United States right now. He said U.S. manufacturers are “taking on the challenge” of competing in this industry at the global level.
Meanwhile, Art Harrington of Milwaukee-area law firm Godfrey & Kahn touched on challenges associated with building out electric vehicle charging infrastructure. Harrington is a shareholder in the firm’s Environmental and Energy Strategies Practice Groups.
“One of the big challenges as we start ramping up charging at home … is whether the utilities are going to have adequate distribution and transformers to deal with more home charging,” he said.
See more on the work being done at the TOPS Lab in Madison: https://topslab.wisc.edu/
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