Second in a series, "EV adoption wars in the US"
North Carolina has emerged as a leader in clean energy, partly through government incentives to attract a mix of industries from electric vehicles to charging stations to lithium-ion and sodium-ion batteries used in EVs.
PART 1: How North Carolina plugged in and went mega-electric
Ssshhhh….the wheels on the bus go round and round
A big part of North Carolina’s clean energy value chain comes in those classic yellow electric school buses assembled by Thomas Built Buses in High Point, NC. The company, founded in 1916, is the leading manufacturer of school buses in North America.
A secret Thomas Built shares is how electric buses are quieter than diesel buses, making the ride to school easier on drivers and even allegedly promoting positive student behavior. And by the way, they don’t pollute as much.
“There’s less stress from noise and pollutants. We spend quite a bit of time on the culture and the mindset” of going electric, said Daoud Chaaya, vice president of sales and marketing for Thomas Built, in an interview with reporters on a clean energy tour sponsored by the Economic Development Partnership of North Carolina.
What the electric bus company has noticed is a generational gap between younger school district transportation managers who buy in to the electrification concept versus their older diesel-prone counterparts.
“There’s so much change happening in this space and it’s hitting everybody at the same time,” Chaaya added. A big adjustment is how schools will adapt to plugging in to charge buses using the electric grid instead of lining up at the diesel pump. A small district with just a few buses will discover it faces a hefty investment for charging stations, not to mention getting the utility to run electric lines to remote locales where that charging infrastructure is being set up.
Larger rollouts of electric school buses have drawn some headlines, including more than 300 purchased by Montgomery County, Maryland, Public Schools in 2021. In March, Thomas Built celebrated its 1,000th electric school bus delivery -- a significant step in the slow, but gaining, evolution of industrial machine electrification in the US.
Dominion Energy in next door Virginia even has an electric school bus program with 25 school districts and recently joined Thomas Built in celebrating 1.5 million electric miles driven in the Old Dominion state. Thomas Built, a subsidiary of Daimler Truck North America, has also developed an education curriculum combining insights on electric buses and STEM principles.
School buses have emerged at the forefront of vehicle electrification. Even truck adoption of electric is not so quick, Chaaya said. “It’s definitely an exciting time and we’re excited to usher that in. It’s been nice giving birth and shedding light on an era moving from diesel…to EV.”
As a big electric bus proponent, Thomas Built follows closely the US EPA Clean Bus Rebate Program, which has adapted its rules in recent years. Up to $965 million in rebate awards is anticipated nationwide for the 2024 fiscal year, part of $5 billion from the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law available from fiscal years 2022 to 2026.
Virginia Clean Cities also has a lottery rebate for electric vehicle replacements of up to $65,000 per bus. As an example of how valuable rebates can be for a district, the price of a 77-passenger electric bus in early 2024 in Virginia was more than $360,000, compared to $120,000 for a diesel model.
The hangup for many school districts is the charging infrastructure, not the acquisition of the electric buses, which on their own have a better TCO than diesel, Chaaya said. He hopes government rebate and incentive policies can move to better rewarding school bus electrification in dense urban areas where a charging infrastructure powers buses at greater scale more efficiently than in rural areas.
“Deployment of a school bus is nothing but a project,” he said. “The concept is really clear to buyers, but how mature is the culture where the electric bus is to come in, and is that culture embracing?”
Kempower supercharges EV charger factory in Durham
North Carolina recently welcomed Kempower’s opening of an electric vehicle DC charger factory in Durham to help increase the availability of fast charging for different types of EVs. The company, based in Finland, ambitiously dubbed the June opening as a “pivotal moment in the fight against climate change.”
Ironically, when Hurricane Helene devastated the southeast including North Carolina nearly four months later in September, climate change anxiety resonated again. More than 220 people died in six states, mainly due to fast floods, with the region facing years of recovery at a projected cost of billions. Once again, a major natural disaster had underscored the resilience (or possibly, lack thereof) of economic viability in a region to mount a recovery and the urgency (or not, depending on one’s politics) of an electric technology revolution.
North Carolina is a purple state, politically, and one of seven swing states in the contentious November presidential election. Business leaders and state officials seem to want to be loud and proud about electrification, while recognizing many rural residents are still wary of buying an EV over a reliable gas-powered pickup truck or SUV. The state and much of the US beyond states in the Northeast and West is, as Thomas Built’s Chaaya said, undergoing a prolonged culture change over electrification.
Kempower in an August statement had praised congressional funding of $10 billion for the Grid Resilience and Innovation Partnerships program first established in 2023 as part of the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law. Duke Energy in North Carolina received $57 million for a grid upgrade.
“We empower the electric revolution,” said Kevin Lindley, product manager for Kempower
North America. He spoke during a tour of the Durham facility for three reporters including Fierce Electronics. The company’s Durham expansion was “just to keep up,” with expanding charging needs.
The publicly traded company of 700 employees experienced 174% revenue growth in 2023, reaching 283 million Euros. (About $311 million US.)
Kempower focuses on DC charging standalone stations with all the power electronics in one box. The company’s 50KW charger is a movable station charger for Level 3 charging in the US only. Other varieties include a Kempower Power Unit at 600KW, supporting up to 8 charging outputs simultaneously (Tesla’s supercharger is limited to four.) A mega-satellite version provides up to 1.2 MW of total charging power for use by vehicle fleets. Its Station Charger reaches 400KW at 300 amps and 800 volts.
Forge Nano begats Forge Battery with Atomic Armor coatings
The US-based EV charging network might be the highest priority for proponents of EVs as companies scramble to build more stations, but plenty of industry attention is focused on basic battery efficiency and increased production.
In one example, materials science company Forge Nano, based in Denver, launched Forge Battery a year ago with a new gigawatt hour-scale factory in Morrisville, NC, based on an initial investment of $165 million.
Forge Nano already has a reputation in the semiconductor segment for its surface coating technology called Atomic Armor, which is designed to help products last longer with
increased safety. Forge Battery will apply its coating to particles used in its manufacturing process as it produces 21700 and 18650 lithium-ion cells.
Both cells have higher voltage than a typical AA battery, usually twice as much. Carmakers rely on their EV battery suppliers to pack and seal the cells inside large, flat metal battery packs that ride on the underside of EVs.
Forge Battery argues its production approach with Atomic Armor can outperform current and future cell chemistries. Natron Energy, meanwhile, is building a $1.4 billion manufacturing plant in Rocky Mount not far away to produce batteries for EVs based on sodium-ion chemistry. Without taking sides on the differing battery physics, economic development officials proudly refer to the region as the Battery Belt of North Carolina.
In September, Forge Battery was picked for award negotiations worth up to $100 million from the Department of Energy to expand its Morrisville production facility to produce 3GWh of lithium-ion cells per year, triple its original plan. The expected funds will be combined with $140 million from Forge Battery. Production of the first cells should kick off in 2026.
The output of 3GWh per year equals about 150 million cells, Forge Battery officials said. To illustrate their process, they compared the company’s Atomic Armor used to coat the electrolyte powder inside battery cells to the outer shell of M&M candies. In the example of the battery, the coating helps the battery withstand abuse from multiple cycles of energy charge and discharge. The process also means less electrolyte is needed to make the cells lighter weight. Also, lithium ions move faster.
The electrolyte powder in its atomic layer deposition process was described by Forge officials as similar to a slurry that’s the consistency of peanut butter which is coated with a thin layer of aluminum foil and then rolled up and encased in hard material to prevent exposure to water and humidity.
(Here’s some battery basics from the US Department of Energy: EV batteries and other rechargeable batteries allow electrons and ions to move either direction through a circuit and electrolyte. Batteries generally store energy in the form of chemical potential converted to electrical energy through a chemical reaction between two metals where electrons are passed back and forth. )
“Domestic production of best-in-class battery cells is critical for the US to compete on a global scale in energy transition,” said Paul Lichty, CEO of Forge Nano, in a statement.
Only 14% of the batteries produced domestically are from US-owned companies, something Forge wants to change. “Forge is looking …to be the leading domestic battery supplier for the EV market,” said William McKenna, brand communications manager for Forge Nano.
Made in America: one piece of N. Carolina's clean energy message
Economic development officials in North Carolina, both on the government and private sector side and at the Economic Development Partnership of North Carolina, appear eager to embrace the Made in America theme as well.
That effort includes bringing in large foreign-based companies like Toyota, which has been in the US for decades, but is now far along in erecting a massive $13.9 billion lithium-ion EV battery facility on rural land in Liberty, NC, southeast of Greensboro.
One Toyota official summarized in a sentence the reasons many companies give for coming to North Carolina— access to markets and good transportation to a world class education system.
“We chose North Carolina for several reasons, including its extensive and well-maintained infrastructure, four international airports and two seaports, its consistent ranking as one of the top states to do business, its world-class education system and, importantly, its outstanding and diverse workforce,” said Christopher Reynolds, executive vice president of corporate resources at Toyota Motor North America.