Battery Potential
Battery Potential is a retrospective on the early days of the commercialization of Li-ion batteries. Pioneers of the of Li-ion battery industry from the 80s, 90s, and 2000s are interviewed by two battery scientists: Vincent Chevrier and Kevin Eberman.
Battery Potential is produced by Cyclikal LLC.
Battery Potential
Joe Turner - K2 Energy
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In this episode, we sit down with Joe Turner, Principal at Lithium Junction, for a candid and entertaining look at the boots-on-the-ground reality of lithium-ion cell manufacturing. Joe shares his journey starting at the front lines of the early battery industry at Valence Technology, where he faced multiple challenges including material yields and cell gassing. We then follow Joe’s move to China in 2006 with K2 Energy Solutions, where he worked to scale up 26650 LFP cylindrical cells. Joe paints a vivid picture of the stark contrast between the manual, open-windowed Chinese factories of 2006 and the hyper-automated, world-class manufacturing behemoths that dominate the country today. Looking ahead, Joe outlines strategies for North America to catch up in the global battery race, emphasizing the critical need for hands-on pilot labs to build a trained domestic workforce.
Joe Turner - K2 Energy
Joe TurnerI if if the listeners get two things out of this interview, it's it's the three rules and the other thing is it feels good when you stop, right?
Kevin EbermanWhen you stop banging your head against the wall.
Joe TurnerWhen you stop banging your head against the wall, it feels good when you stop.
Vincent ChevrierSo um Welcome to batteries. It feels good when you stop. Yeah. That's great. Welcome to the Battery Potential Podcast. I'm Vincent Chevrier. And I'm Kevin Eberman. And today we have Joe Turner. Welcome, Joe, and a huge thanks for joining us on the podcast. Your career offers a fantastic look at the hands-on engineering required to scale battery technologies from the lab to production. After starting in semiconductors, you joined Valence Technology in 2002, where you scaled their second generation LFP cathode from one kilogram a week to full commercial volumes. You then spent over a decade at K2 Energy Solutions, optimizing commercial LFP cells and packs. With K2, you had the experience of setting up a cell factory in China. After 11 years at K2, you became director of RD at Coolometrics, overseeing rapid prototyping. And today you run your own consultancy, Lithium Junction, where you work at the intersection of cell design, materials, and process equipment. I've had the pleasure of collaborating with you in a couple of those roles. And it's great to have someone with such deep manufacturing and scale-up expertise on the show. Welcome, Joe. We're really looking forward to this conversation.
Joe TurnerThank you. Um glad to be here. Honored to be among the group of people you've already interviewed.
Kevin EbermanSo we're really excited to have your perspective here. This is gonna be great.
Vincent ChevrierYeah, a really unique experience. We often start with uh with the background. So how did you end up in batteries?
ChemE to Semiconductors
Joe TurnerI I'm a chemical engineer from the University of Utah. Um, I actually studied biological and living systems, which meant uh I'm one of the few chemical engineers that's taken anatomy, physiology, and microbiology. When I graduated, my gr wife graduated the same year. Um the people she worked with offered a relocation to Texas, the uh Dallas Fort Worth area. Um, and there are no pharmaceutical companies in Dallas Fort Worth. Yeah, sometimes wish I would have studied oil because there was a lot of oil jobs.
Kevin EbermanChemical engineering, oil.
Joe TurnerYeah, right. I got a job with a semiconductor fab called Tech or Electronics as a diffusion engineer. The diffusion part is where you put dopants into the silicon. Um, and I worked there for about uh it was only about two or three years. Um uh I didn't like living in Dallas Fort Worth. It's very hot and humid uh with a lot of people, which is uh not enjoyable to me. More of a desert guy. Yeah, so I'm I yeah, I I am a desert rat. Uh uh if there's one uh environment that I would use to describe myself, it is a desert rat. So um dry rooms feel like home to me. Nice. Um, they don't feel uncomfortable. I can be in them all day. Um they're they're wonderful pieces of equipment that remind me of home.
Kevin EbermanTell us about tech or what happened there when you do that.
Six Sigma at Tekkor
Joe TurnerSo uh tech or was a great experience. Um, like all semiconductor fabs, they're big into Six Sigma, which is a uh architecture to solve problems uh using statistics, uh things like CPK and uh B versus C, better versus current, uh two key tasks, things like that. Right.
Vincent ChevrierThe Sigma refers to the standard deviation, right? So like you want Yeah, you want six standard deviations of your products to be passing spec, basically.
Joe TurnerRight. So the CPK is a method to tell how tightly clustered and how tar on target you are, you know, like a shotgun versus a sniper rifle, right? If the sniper rifle is is off target, but it hits the same place every time, it doesn't do you any good. So CPK is a way to ensure that not only are you tightly clustered, but you're on target. Um so um, and I I used that to solve some problems at at tech or actually used it to solve a lot of problems. The first problem I solved was a boron deposition problem. Um I did what they call tilting the zones. So there's three zones in the furnace. Um, and I ran the front zone at a lower temperature and the back zone at a higher temperature. The the fronts would be over depth deposited and the rears would be under deposited. So I I fixed that problem.
Kevin EbermanAm I picturing like like like big circular wafers of silicon or what am I featuring?
Joe TurnerYes. Uh so the wafers were about six inches in diameter. Okay. Um, and the furnaces were about 10.
Kevin EbermanAh, okay.
Joe TurnerSo um, and each each traveler uh it was associated with 50 wafers of silicon. And back a long time ago, that cost about $50,000 for the silicon. Yeah, screwing up was an expensive thing. So I I fixed this boron deposition. We ran it that way for about two weeks when somebody was like somebody noticed that the non-conforming for diffusion had dropped like 75 lots. And they're like, what the heck happened? And I'm like, oh, I fixed the boron deposition. And then I spent until lunch being explained why I couldn't just change processes. So I I thought I was gonna get I yeah, I thought I was gonna get fired. Um, but as it worked out, because the boron depositions were fixed, they had more parts that met the spec, which meant the yields went up. So you know, like in the middle of the month, they're yelling at me for screwing up the whole thing and and you know, wasting millions of dollars. And at the end of the month, I'm being I'm presenting in the ops review, and everybody's clapping at what a great job I did. So um it was it was yeah, I I ran a I ran a lot fast and loose in my early days. Um, and it's something that's never completely gone away, for better or worse. Um, sometimes I like to just do things bias towards action.
Kevin EbermanThat's what I like.
Joe TurnerDo things and see what happens. That you'll see that theme uh played out a few times. Um so
Job Hunting
Joe Turnerfast forward to to 2002, they that actually had some people quit, and their their other policy was uh well, I'm not sure if it was a policy, but when someone quit, they escorted them the escorted them to their desk, they collected all their personal belongings, they paid them for two weeks and sent them on their way.
Kevin EbermanUh-huh.
Joe TurnerSo um, when I quit, I went to my boss and said, Hey, if I quit, are you gonna walk me out the door? Because obviously, if you're gonna walk me out the door, I'm gonna quit like the Thursday when I planned on my two weeks being up, so I got paid an extra two weeks. And they're like, Oh no, no, no. You just give us your two weeks. And in that two weeks, they worked me as hard as they possibly could. So um they tried to fix everything. And the the fab manager, Mike, he he said, If you if you don't like your new job, you got a place here, just call me back and we'll we'll put you there. So we just might reach seven sigma. Yeah, well I did a yeah, I it would it was a it was a very good learning experience. Um good and skills that I still use today. Texas is a nice uh is a nice place to live because the people are nice and there's lots of stuff to do, but it is I I mean I lived in Vegas for 15 years. Dallas Fort Worth is way hotter than Vegas is.
Kevin EbermanI see for me.
Joe TurnerOkay, uh the d the dry heat is way easier to deal with than the wet heat in Dallas. So uh and it's really far away. So you know, we had kind of come to the conclusion, and actually one time we talked about well, if we both became teachers, we could just move back and then teach school and live back in the West. And thank goodness we didn't do that because teachers don't make anything, um, which is unfortunate. So I looked for a job, found
Landing at Valence
Joe Turnera job. Uh actually I applied for a lot of jobs. Um, but one of the ones I applied for was a position at valence technology. And they apologize.
Vincent ChevrierYou you knew nothing about batteries. Zero like zero about batteries. What made you apply to the valence posting?
Joe TurnerOh, because it was a it was a chemical processing. So it was it was processing powders into a different powder, right? Making LFP. It wasn't it wasn't essentially about the batteries. And right to be honest, I thought it was kind of a reach, but it was where one of the places I wanted to be, so you know, you apply for that job. So they called me back um on my daughter's birthday, um, which uh a little caveat, my all my kids are adopted. Um, so um, which which is important because my wife called me and left a message at work that our daughter had been born, and I had called her and said, Hey, these guys in Nevada contacted me back and they wanted to do a phone interview. Well, neither of us listened to the messages, but we both noticed that we'd called each other, so we called back, and the ensuing conversation was um very clumsy because we were talking about completely different things.
Kevin EbermanWe're talking right past each other, yeah.
Joe TurnerSo um, but they brought me in. I I did a phone interview uh with Johnny Stoker, who was over over the LFP production at Valence, and he was eventually the CEO for the entire time I was at K2. So I worked with him what's that 15 years? So and then so so he did a phone interview. Um, I went in for a in-person interview, they flew me out, and then I got hired uh uh towards the end of March. The in-person interview was like on the 22nd of January, and then I got an offer letter uh mid-March. Um, and I found out later we were actually in China with K2, and Johnny was telling the story about how you know he hired me. And I was like, oh, well, this will be boring. Apparently, during the phone interview, he thought I was full of crap. And after we were done, he started looking up all the statistical things I brought up because he was like, I'm not hiring this guy because he's full of crap. And he's like, I looked up the first one and I was like, Oh, yeah, I could see how that could be useful. I looked up the second one and I was like, Oh, that's uh that's even better. And then the one he was stuck on was the Tukey test, and he's like, I was certain you made that up. So I looked it up, and it turns out that that's when I decided to hire you. So the problem was um the manager at uh Valence was his name was George Adamson, and he did not think I was the right person for the position. Now he I believe had a PhD from MIT, and all of the people that worked under him had PhDs. Um Johnny reported to him PhD, Jim Hodge reported to him PhD, Yazine and Eileen Sidey PhDs, like Oh yeah, we know we know those MIT PhDs, you know how they are.
Vincent ChevrierYeah, so so he's where's your PhD from, Kevin?
Kevin EbermanUh yeah. MIT.
Joe TurnerYeah. Johnny basically George finally told Johnny, look, you can hire him, but it's all on you. I don't think he's gonna work out, but it's all on you. Um, and Johnny was like, okay, so um I got the job. So I ended up working for Jim Hodge. You know, I was what 29 years old and uh had a few years of engineering under my belt and moving with my wife and you know, an infant girl. Um, so and started working on making LFP. Uh and that process was pretty crazy.
Vincent ChevrierRight. So um we had as a guest Oliver Gross. Oliver Gross was at Valence from 1996 to 2006. Yeah, he brought us through the evolution of of Valence, you know, starting all the way back from when they were considering lithium metal and vanadium oxide through to 2006. Can you just sort of when you join Valence, like just give us a portrait of what is valence when you join? What do you what do you what are you joining? What do they do?
Valence in 2002
Joe TurnerOkay, yeah. So um I was at the Henderson location, and I think Oliver was at in Austin. He could have been there were basically people working remotely. Um, but I think he was in Austin, which is where they hired a CEO and he lived in Austin, and so uh half the company moved to Austin and never never came back. Uh it was it was an office in the front, you know, with all the engineers and technicians and you know, accountants and lawyers. Um, and then in the back was uh you know furnaces, V blenders, uh not a mixer.
Kevin EbermanBut what what what were they making and selling uh uh 2002 when you joined?
Joe TurnerUm they were working on making what they called um T54s, which was a four-inch by five-inch Bellcore technology pouch cell.
Kevin EbermanOkay. Yeah.
Joe TurnerUm, so uh they were they were making the LFP. Uh we were coating some in Henderson. Most of the LFP got shipped to Ireland. They had a factory in Ireland.
Fixing LFP Yield
Joe TurnerUm but the the main problem when I got there is their LFP production yield was like uh 30%. Um wow.
Kevin EbermanOuch.
Vincent ChevrierYeah.
Joe TurnerYeah.
Vincent ChevrierSo I mean there were yield is always a challenge in in batteries. There's so many sequential steps uh that yield really hurts you. So I mean, you know, it's really telling that they were looking for somebody who had six sigma experience, somebody who were you know could work on on manufacturing efficiency and productivity.
Joe TurnerI basically got thrown into that and worked worked through a lot of some ideas. Um one of them was that the lithium dihydrogen phosphate, LHP, um, was never one lithium to one phosphate. Right. Because if you're using reacting lithium carbonate with phosphoric acid, which one of those are you gonna add in excess, right? The phosphoric acid, of course, right? So we started measuring ICP because Valence had an amazing analytical lab on on the LHP we were using. Um and that got the yield a lot better, like 50, 60 percent. Um and one day, Stuart Graham, who I work with and still work with and known since forever, he he ha he started about three weeks after I started. Um said, What if you instead of graphing it um li to p ratio, you um graphed it versus mass of uh B L. So B L was the second step. So you had an A step, a B step, a C step. Okay. And when we did that, it made this perfect arc um of increasing ECEM. Yeah, and then it slightly decreased, so it kind of looked like a a dynagraph, um, but it all fit. And the top was where the LI to P ratio was about 0.98.
Kevin EbermanI see.
Joe TurnerUm, so we started making the powder that way, and the yield essentially went to 100%.
Kevin EbermanNice.
Joe TurnerUm, and then we had a whole bunch of arguments because um the e chem had to be 135 milliamp hours per gram. And we were making like 140. Yeah, 140. So what we were doing is we were taking the 130 that we made before and blending it halfway, and so the there was a big argument about what the actual yield was because we had already written off bad stuff, but now we were mixing it with good stuff and it counted. So, yeah, there were lots of yield arguments uh interesting uh in those days.
Bellcore Pouch Cell Gassing
Joe TurnerSo once that was fixed, um, I got moved to the assembly area while while I worked on the Bellcore technology, which not having any experience in batteries, I did not realize it was the stupidest process that has ever been invented.
Kevin EbermanSo um, the process that made made pouch cells possible at that in those early days was the stupidest process. I love it. I love it.
Joe TurnerOh well, so so you used a DBP binder, um, and um you made the cells, and then you had to do a liquid-liquid extraction with IPA that hopefully doesn't have any moisture in it, right? And then and then dose it with electrolyte. So we had all kinds of gassing issues. Um and these P54s went into something they called the N charge, which was um like a 15 millimeter high laptop battery size that was an extra battery for a laptop.
Kevin EbermanYeah, wasn't it basically like shaped like a notebook uh computer and it fit underneath your notebook computer? Fit underneath the notebook computer. Snap in there, and then you would your battery would last way longer, basically.
Joe TurnerYep. Yep. So um yeah, we had lots of gassing issues, and there was meet lots and lots of meetings to talk about where the gassing was coming from and how to fix it, and uh whatever. Uh switching.
Vincent ChevrierI mean, it's a process that in in retrospect is a lot more cumbersome than the way that pouch cells are made today. But oh but yeah, I mean it was a stepping stone, it did enable pouch cells being made in the evolution of lithium ion.
Kevin EbermanYou got that direction going, I guess. Yeah, yeah.
Joe TurnerSo um, so I I I I ended up doing a lot of work on this gassing issue. Um, and I made what I what I aptly named the Stoker meter after Johnny Stoker, and it was essentially a lever that had a pad that sat on the the cell. And what you do is you'd put that in the vacuum and you'd turn up the vacuum. And when the lever arm moved to a certain position, you'd record what pressure it was, right? So I was essentially um kind of measuring the partial pressure in the cell um by pulling a vacuum on it, and so we figured out that the gassing problem was way higher than than we thought. It was a bigger problem than we thought, is what we actually found out from that work. And the problem was people would get their end charges and they would use them and they would get hot and then they'd swell up. Um and so Jim Pugh, Dr. Jim Pugh, was our electrolyte guy. He had been for a year working on doping EMC, DMC, etc. with heavy hydrogen, and then putting it into cells and then measuring how much heavy hydrogen came out so he could figure out where the gassing was coming from.
Kevin EbermanOh, right, like a tracer.
Joe TurnerYeah, like a tracer. Oh, crazy, crazy, amazing work. So one day I had an idea and I went and talked to Jim about it, and I said, What I want to do is I want to make cells that only have EC EMC, EMC, DMC, DMC, EC, and then compare those three different sets. Yeah.
Kevin EbermanOh, four sets, okay.
Joe TurnerYeah, yeah. B basically pull one of the solvents out and then form and analyze the gas.
Kevin EbermanYeah, which one's the problem? Yeah.
Joe TurnerYeah. So he looked at me and he finally went, I've just wasted over a year of my life. Doing this heavy hydrogen stuff, this is gonna work. It's gonna take like two weeks, and it's easy. So we we've been we've been friends ever since. That's hilarious. He's a he's a great guy. Yeah, so we figured out where all the gases were coming from.
Kevin EbermanCool fancy stuff is uh is not really the way. Sometimes it's like let's just do elimination. It's an elimination matrix.
Joe TurnerSo yeah, so we we got the gassing under control. We tweaked uh the types of carbon we put in a little bit and adjusted the electrolyte, and essentially the gassing problem was solved.
Vincent ChevrierUm
Electrolyte Root Cause
Vincent Chevrierand so in the end, the source of the gassing was the electrolyte?
Joe TurnerIt was they didn't have any additives, um and they had a very simple EC, EMC, DMC ratio. So um Jim Pugh actually said we should do these ratios and do this additive, right? And they're like, no, that's the wrong. And he's like, fine. And then like a month later, a different scientist said, Oh, I read a paper, we should do these ratios. They were almost the exact thing Jim had suggested, and Jim quit like a month later. He's like, This is ridiculous. Um, and and and along this, you know, fixing the LFP and and um gassing issue, we went and saw the second Lord of the Rings, and we started a program which we called Xbox Lunch. That's where everybody bought their Xboxes in, and we got little Caesar's Pizza, and we spent an hour uh killing each other. Um what was the game? Do you remember? Oh, Halo, original Halo, of course, nice, yeah, like double kill. Yeah, so so you know that core group that played Xbox Launch ended up being the core group uh uh uh K2, um, and are people that I'm still in contact with it. So nice, so like fantastic, yeah.
Kevin Eberman3M had a product in lithium ion batteries when I when I started, although we were working on cathode and that sort of thing, and that was uh LITFSI, and we didn't really know its main use. Its main use was solving your problem. People are putting in a small amount of it in there to mitigate if you have a thousand ppm water, it'll like chew it up so that doesn't uh lead to gassing. Yeah, it took us a long time to figure out that that's what people are using it for.
Joe TurnerYeah. So um eventually I got moved to the exotic phosphates, vanadium, cobalt, um, nickel. Um, and LVP uh was the biggest one we worked on.
Vincent ChevrierAnd this is kind of where with uh Jerry Barker?
Joe TurnerYeah, that's Jerry Barker. Yep. Okay.
Patents and Magnesium Doping
Joe TurnerSo so Valence added magnesium to the LFP to get around the good enough patent, and they didn't add any additive to the LVP to get around the good enough patent. Valence had a brilliant attorney, but it jaded me on the worth of patents because you could design your way uh way around it.
Vincent ChevrierSo yeah, yeah, right. Yeah, exactly. It's so hard to make a patent that um you can't design around. Yeah. Yeah, you can only fence people out of something uh with a patent. So so maybe just explain a little bit. You said that they were doping lithium iron phosphate with magnesium to get around the good enough patent.
Joe TurnerYeah.
Vincent ChevrierSo can you explain that a little bit?
Joe TurnerSo Valence added uh a percentage um of magnesium, and they claimed that it altered the structure of the LFP and made it cycle better, right? You know, this is they were claiming uh a thousand cycles to 80 percent in 2003, right? Which sounds amazing, which sounded amazing then, but like every LFP cell can do that easily now, right?
Vincent ChevrierSo the magnesium was was replacing uh was substituting for iron in the lithium iron phosphate? Yeah, okay. The lithium iron phosphate patent portfolio just simply didn't consider magnesium, and so the addition of magnesium made it significantly sufficiently different to uh to be outside the space.
Joe TurnerIt it made it sufficiently different that it got around the patent. Now we I may have had to run some experiments where we added different dopants um and no dopant at all. And it turns out that the eCem went up by the exact same percent of the magnesium you didn't add to the LFP.
Kevin EbermanSo you're saying you're saying adding adding magnesium reduced the capacity.
Joe TurnerYeah, by the exact percent that you added.
Vincent ChevrierSo it just it simply made the uh those sites inactive. Right.
Kevin EbermanRight.
Vincent ChevrierCorrect. Right, because it can't it can't go to three plus.
Kevin EbermanYeah, right. Yeah.
Joe TurnerRight. So I again that was all initiated by the lawyers. It was a special project that I only reported to the lawyers, and when they saw the results, they were like, okay, that's enough of that. And I I assume it went in a drawer somewhere and got destroyed. Um because it it did not support their arguments.
LVP Production
Joe TurnerUm, so then then I got moved to LVP, which is uh a lot trickier um because the when you pull that third lithium out, the chemical structure uh degrades and and your batteries don't cycle well. Um, but we had a lot of problems making the the LVP. And in one meeting, I suggested this is how we need to solve it. And I was told, you're just an engineer, do what do what we tell you, oh god, and we'll solve the problem. The the guy said, We're sick of ERA Nova charts, they don't mean anything. So after I I I came up with one of my sayings, what's the best thing about banging your head against the wall?
Kevin EbermanI don't know.
Joe TurnerIt feels good when you stop. So um after about 132 runs, I decided screw it. I'm gonna make all the odd numbers the way I think it should be made, and I'm gonna make all the even numbers the way the scientists think it should be made. Well, about two weeks later, someone in the three times a week meeting noticed that all the even numbers were bad and all the odd numbers were good, and why could that be? Right. So after that meeting, I went and talked to Jim, and he's like, What the heck's going on? I'm like, Yeah, I didn't know look, if you have to fire me, you have to fire me. I've been making all the odd numbers the way I think it should be made. So two days later, we have another meeting, and they brought in the the vice president. Um, so we're having this meeting, and Jim goes, Look, we've been making all the odd numbers the way Joe outlied in the meeting three months ago. And the VP goes, make them all that way. Meeting adjourned. That was it. It's like sweet, didn't get fired again. Yeah, well, results speak for themselves. Exactly.
Vincent ChevrierWell, and but it's also I'm sure Kevin has seen this at 3M and before, and and I've seen it at 3M and my time at 3M too. And it was just like when you have complex manufacturing processes, you just have to consider everybody's perspective, right? Like the people who run the line and the people who run the machines and the people who deal with the materials and and the scientists, like they all come at all come at it with a different perspective.
Kevin EbermanAny one of them might have seen the thing that's the key. Exactly. Because they see different things and they think about it different ways, yeah.
Joe TurnerRight. And and and a lot of times um they blame the operators. So what I learned at at Valence was I never saw an operator do anything malicious, and they did their jobs well. And when I went to Valence, I actually spent my first Easter Sunday in Vegas in the molar room watching the operators because some was someone was convinced that the operators were screwing it up on purpose. And it turned out to be it was a basic recipe problem.
Vincent ChevrierUm, but just like the purpose of the lithium vanadium phosphate was what? It was just higher capacity than lithium iron phosphate.
Joe TurnerSo our our LFP was you know 135 to 140 milliamp hours per gram. Uh, it had a lot of carbon in it, like five and a half, six percent. So uh weighed it down. Um the LVP was about 170 reversible, and its nominal voltage was more like 3.6, 3.7. Um, so uh it it had steps, but basically that was their way how they were gonna compete with LCL.
Vincent ChevrierYeah, okay. So we're like, you know, 20 years later, nobody's doing lithium vanadium phosphate, everybody's doing lithium iron phosphate. What so what what in the end, what was sort of like the conclusion of the problem? Oh, yeah.
Joe TurnerSo so um once we started making good LVP, we shipped all that to Korea, and another group, for lack of a better word, threw it over the wall at a standard manufacturer and built 18650s that never worked, right? And and at that point, you know, I my cell experience was very low. And when they shut down valence, I had to send to a uh recycler a whole bunch of LVP. Yeah. And since about 2008, I've always wished I would have kept all of it. Um because as I learned how to make cells and what was important in making cells, I was like, I think I could make a good LVP cell. But essentially it was very difficult to make with materials that were safe for humans, yeah.
Kevin EbermanRight, right, right.
Vincent ChevrierSo ease of manufacturing kind of killed
Scale and Cost Pressure
Vincent Chevrierit. Yeah.
Kevin EbermanWhat kind of scale are you talking about when you've got uh like how much powder are is being made and and uh cells, how many cells are being made? What what are we talking about here when you're working on this process?
Joe TurnerWe were making three to four batches a day of about a hundred kilograms uh for the LFP. Um for the LVP, we were making like 15 kilogram batches. Um until until we got it all sorted out, and then we actually moved to a place in Indiana called Porous Powder Technologies PPT, and we had them toll process the powder for us.
Vincent ChevrierUm but it was super expensive, you know, a few lots of 100 kgs a day. That's quite a lot of material. Is that all going to Ireland?
Joe TurnerMost of it's going to Ireland. Um to be made into cells. To make be made into cells. Um, but they were porting 82% yield uh into cells. When we dug into that, we found out that any time that they had waste, they didn't count it against their yield because oh, we had this slid off you know two inches from each side on a three kilometer coating.
Kevin EbermanRight.
Joe TurnerThat's not usable, so it doesn't count to our yields, right? So by the time you actually did the analysis of powder to yield, yeah, it was like 22%. Oh, so so that one of the jokes was instead we should sell the end charge for $200, right? And we should put $400 in cash in there and leave it empty. Because the sales cost twelve hundred dollars.
Kevin EbermanHoly crap.
Joe TurnerSo so Valence would have tons of sales and uh better margins that lose less money by just sending them out empty with this hundred dollar bills in. Yeah.
Vincent ChevrierYeah, so you know that kind of brings us back to the question of of yields and and the the Six Sigma and the the reason that you were hired in the first place. Yeah, so production costs remained sufficiently high that Valence struggled to sell sales at a profit. Did they ever sell sales at a profit?
Joe TurnerUm I would I would say probably not.
Moving LFP to China
Joe TurnerSo um one of the the reason they moved um the LFP manufacture to China, um, which is how China got its hands on LFP. That happened late 2004-2005, um, was to lower the manufacturing cost of the LFP. Um the the LFP when I got there probably cost us about sixty dollars in raw ingredients. Um, the iron was like $30 per kilogram. The iron we were using was like $37 a kilogram. Um, and because they were buying it from Alpha Azar Azar, yeah, sigma here they were, right? Um and we'd tried other irons and none of them worked. Oh ironically, um one day we were opening the iron powder and somebody had cut open a bag and dropped it in with the iron. Um and it had the name of the it was it was it was the bag of where they were buying it from and repackaging it.
Kevin EbermanSure.
Joe TurnerSo the the cost of the iron went from like $35, $37 to like $11 to eventually like five dollars uh overnight, right? And once the higher ups saw that cost reduction, they're like, how can we get it down more? And it was let's move it to China. Uh so there was a uh Johnny and Stu and a couple other guys moved to China and set up then we moved all the manufacturing to China and set it up uh there. Uh and I stayed in Henderson and did, you know, exotic phosphates and spray drying and liquid preparation of of LFP and stuff like that.
Why LFP
Vincent ChevrierSo do you remember what the view of lithium ion was when you were at Valence? Like what how how did you think of the the market of lithium ion and and how do you how did the rest of the world sort of perceive lithium-ion and and how did you think of sort of the market or the international scene?
Joe TurnerValence felt like uh LFP was gonna be huge, and they were gonna make a gozillion dollars and be worth hundreds of billion dollars in valuation, right? That's that was their plan. In the initial time, I was too much of a novice to understand most of that marketing stuff, and towards the end, I was too beat down by the culture to believe it would ever happen. But it it was obvious to me that the lithium-ion battery market was going to grow lots over time. Um, I I hadn't envisioned it this big, but you know, it it was something that was here to stay and it wasn't going away for sure.
Vincent ChevrierAnd you know, at that moment LCO is sort of the the default cathode, NMC already sort of exists. What what do you think the value proposition is of LFP at that time? Why does Valence think LFP is gonna be big considering the other cathodes in the market?
Joe TurnerSafety and life, right? It was expensive, but you got two or three times the cycles that you would get out of an LCO, um, and it didn't blow up. Yeah, I so um that was that though those were the two big driving points. Um they, you know, if you look at the cost of iron, phosphate, and lithium, you're like, oh, these will be cheaper. Um, but they didn't talk about that a lot because every time they were like, oh, it should be cheaper, some investor would go, well, how much do you pay for the LH LFP now? And they'd have to say a big number that was bigger than LCO. So they they kind of shied away from the cheapness uh part. But we we talked about that a lot at K2, right? Cheaper, safer, longer lasting than than the oxide-based chemistry.
Vincent ChevrierRight.
Joe TurnerThose were our selling points.
Vincent ChevrierYou were making the N charge, which was sort of like an extending a battery extender for for laptops. Um, what did they see as the as the future market?
Joe TurnerValence had hired a lot of Apple people, some of who went back to Apple afterwards, um, specifically to try to get into Apple's all Apple's new handheld products. So they were using the N charge as a demonstrator to try to get into phones and iPods and laptops and stuff like that. So so between um the VP that was also named Joe, he came from Dell. So like all the upper upper executives were either X Apple or X Dell. So the see the the path forward to them was you know laptops and iPods.
K2 and Moving to China
Kevin EbermanYou mentioned K2 Energy. How did you end up in K2 Energy?
Joe TurnerUm, so at the end of 2005, Valence laid basically all the powder engineering team off, both in China and in the US. Um, and so that core group that played Xbox Lunch together started K2.
Kevin EbermanUh, I see. You're like, okay, we're the we're the dream team. Let's do this.
Joe TurnerUm, so Stu called me up and we were talking about you know what they were doing at K 2 and and all the things, and he said, Yeah, we're getting so busy. I'm thinking about hiring an engineer. I said, Why don't you hire me? And he said, Well, you live in Utah and we're in Vegas, and I'm like, Why does it really matter if I'm just gonna be going to China? He was like, Well, that's a good point. Let me talk to Johnny. He called me back, that was a Thursday night. He called me back Friday and said, Can you start Monday? Wow.
Vincent ChevrierSo if you have a core group of people from Valence, they see Valence close down essentially. Yep. But obviously they believe in the LFP story, right? Correct. Because they're gonna they're going to do something in the same vein. What do they think they're going to do differently that's going to make them succeed compared to Valence?
Joe TurnerWell, we had all realized that the bell cat core technology was not the path forward. Oh, wait, wait. We you needed to get into cylindrical cells. Um at Valence, we made the um powder, and at K2, we bought the powder from FozTech and made the cells, right? So um, you know, I I started with with K2 on a Tuesday after um Labor Day, which was basically I went to Best Buy and bought a laptop, and then on Wednesday I got on a plane to China for 15 days. Wow. And after I'd been in China for 15 days, um I realized that I needed to be there the whole time or nothing was ever gonna get accomplished. So I worked it out with Johnny and Stu, and I'm like, I'll move to China. My girls were three turning four and four turning five, so that before they go to kindergarten, so I came home from that trip. We moved all our possessions into a storage shed, and then got on a China and in October of 2006, we all moved to China.
Vincent ChevrierThe whole family, yeah.
Joe TurnerThe whole family.
Kevin EbermanWhat city? Where'd you go?
Joe TurnerIt's 40 kilometers um south of Shanghai. Um it's the Feng Dust district. So yeah, moved the whole family to China, had a lot a lot of adventures in China. Um, I got my Chinese driver's license. We had a driver during the week to take us back and forth to work and run my wife around. But on the weekends, I had a Buick minivan that we, you know, went went into Shanghai, went over to Shuzhou, drove all went to the international kite flying beach. Um, that was the other direction. Um, yeah, driving in China is it's different.
Kevin EbermanRight. I was there at that time. What I remember is you could find people pulling a thousand pounds of the bicycle right next door to like a Frari, all on the road together.
Joe TurnerYep. Yeah, we we took a road, it was called the Pushi Road into Shanghai. I called it the broken highway because for probably 20 kilometers, it was just the bricks from the buildings they destroyed um for for the new road. They just took the houses, they just took those bricks and laid them down in the dirt for the road while they were building a freeway. It was crazy.
Vincent ChevrierSo yeah, we had a lot of how much time, how much time did you end up living in China?
Joe TurnerUh I lived there for about six months. We came home at the end of March. So we got there middle of October and came home at the end
Mission at DLG
Joe Turnerof March.
Kevin EbermanWhat happened in the six months that you were there? What did you do with it?
Joe TurnerYeah, yeah. So what was your mandate? Yeah, yeah. So it was to convert the DLG factory into making high-volume LFP. So they'd done some experiments.
Vincent ChevrierWhat's DLG?
Joe TurnerDLG was was K2's partner, so they're a manufactur uh cell manufacturer. Um they're a different name now. Um, Jeffrey Wu was the CEO, and he is one of the people that is in and out of my life as well. So he's a good guy. Uh he's Chinese, but he has Australian citizenship, um, speaks very good English, is hilarious. Um, so he was the partner with with K2. So he owned stock um in K2, and K2 owned stock in DLG to kind of keep the the carrot for DLG. I got there, um, I went through all of their experiments they'd done beforehand. None of them made sense uh for a variety of reasons. And you know, I at this point I was not very knowledgeable about making cells. I've made powder, I'd made Belcor cells, I'd never made a cylindrical cell. Uh, but I I looked at the data and I'm like, something's wrong here. So I immediately started designing experiments to try to figure out where that red X was.
Vincent ChevrierK2 and DLG partner, DLG already has a cell factory in China. You're going there to make a cell designed for K2, produced by DLG, and to improve the manufacturing processes to increase to increase the volume.
Joe TurnerYeah. So DLG only made LCO.
Kevin EbermanI see. So you're bringing them over to LFP. Yeah, okay.
Joe TurnerThe they were an 18650 LCO manufacturer. We wanted to be a LFP 266650 manufacturer, right? So that's that's what I was doing. I would I was also the accountant. Um, I paid all the Chinese employees, I paid the driver, I paid the rent on on the apartment we lived in. So, like once a month, I'd have to go to an ATM and withdraw like 40,000 Kwai and just distribute piles of cash.
Vincent ChevrierYeah, it was it was crazy times.
Kevin EbermanWow.
Vincent ChevrierSo you I I kind of interrupted you. You were saying, you know, the big red X was cathode density.
Joe TurnerUm turns out that LFP likes to be in a specific window density-wise, and if you're out of that density, you have problems, right? So they'd been making 18650s. Um, and we got the 18,650, so it worked kind of good. And then we're like, okay, in November we made our first 26,650. It cycled 60 times to zero.
Kevin EbermanOuch.
Joe TurnerYeah.
Kevin EbermanOuch.
Joe TurnerYeah.
Kevin EbermanSo you're talking about electrode density, like it's a porosity or something.
Joe TurnerIt's porosity, yeah. And and uh I think it had to do with the anode we were using. It the swelling and and shrinking for the anode and cathode were so different that it just uh that the the cell would just tear itself apart, it would it would essentially etch off the anode. Um and you take it apart if you let it dry out when you unrolled it, you just get graphite dust falling to the floor. So we fixed that problem by the middle of December. So the main problem is they were smashing the anode way too much. As a quest for capacity, you make your electrodes thinner. Going up in density is a way to do that. Right. If if you densify the anode with LFP too much, it just stops working correctly.
Vincent ChevrierI see.
Joe TurnerUm, we I did some experiments, figured out where the where all those parameters needed to be.
Kevin EbermanYou you need you need to have the impedance drop in the cathode, not in the anode. If the impedance drop is in the in the anode, then you're gonna plate lithium every time you charge. Yes, yeah.
Joe TurnerSo by uh before I went to Hong Kong for Christmas vacation, we had cells that would they looked like they were gonna cycle over a thousand times. And that cell was uh 2.8 amp hours in a 26650 and had an impedance of about 30.
Vincent Chevrier30 million.
Joe TurnerYeah, so not a very good sell. Like if I made that sell today, I would just find a corner to beg on because it was awful. But you you don't know what you don't know, right? And somebody asked me last week while I was at Lucas' lab if I would have had a lab like this in college, how much time would it have got me in my career, right? I would have been 10 years ahead in my career, if not more.
Vincent ChevrierRight. The the need for training in North America in cell production is is real.
Joe TurnerYeah, yeah, it's huge. Yeah. I I always tell people if you if you make a cell and its performance looks nothing like you expect, that's the one you need to pay attention to. Because you don't you don't know what happened to that cell. You thought it was gonna be good and it was bad. You gotta figure
Why 26650 LFP
Joe Turnerout why.
Vincent ChevrierAnd 2660, I mean that's uh same height as an 18650, but a a wider diameter. Yeah. What was the application for that cell? What why did you want that format?
Joe TurnerWe had no application for that cell. We just wanted a bigger cell than an 18650 because the low energy density of LFP, right? So if you make a bigger cell and it's still safe, it kind of gives you a foothold. And there were other people making LFP 26650s. We we certainly weren't the first, but that that was the mentality behind not making 18650s because an 18650 was like 1250, 1300 milliamps at 3.2 volts, so it was like five watt hours. Well, an LCO cell was like 10, right? So it's like you're not gonna ever compete directly with that, but if you have a specialty cell, you you don't have to compete against the LCO as much.
Vincent ChevrierSo a cell manufacturing factory in China in 2006, you've now seen a number of manufacturing sites. Yep. How does that compare to a modern factory today?
Joe TurnerIf I knew what I knew now and went back to the 2006, I would have just ran away. I mean, the windows in the mix room were opened, there was no air conditioning control for the uh coating area. The only thing they had air conditioned was the cell dosing, which was which which looked like it was a giant uh glove box, but actually the the same air.
Kevin EbermanOh, so so so so you weren't even filling in it in a in a dry box. No, it was no holy cow.
Joe TurnerUm, once the cells were crimped, they had basically an oil pan filled with diesel fuel that they washed the cells in and then they dried them off all by hand. The holy cow the slitter wasn't a slitter, um, it was a guillotine, right? And it just they pushed it forward, cut an electrode, pushed it forward, cut an electrode.
Kevin EbermanHoly cow.
Joe TurnerIt was, I mean, I didn't know any better, so I'm like, okay, this is normal, but right, like I would have pooped my pants and then run out of the factory.
Vincent ChevrierSo, what what PPM of water do you think those cells were starting with?
Joe TurnerOh, huge amount. So, so over the years at DLG, they got more and more sophisticated, right? And so eventually, you know, they had a dry room and dryers and stuff like that. And and, you know, if if you had access to all the data and looked across the cycle life of our cells, it was always improving, right? And a lot of that improvement was because we had less water in the in the cells. So, and and every everything was originally hound hand wound. So, you know, the the there was a lady who had an anode in one hand and a cathode and a separator in the other hand, and they manipulated them into a will that was turned on and off by their foot. Like a swing machine.
Kevin EbermanYeah, I've seen it. Yeah, but it was a long time ago. Yeah, yeah.
Joe TurnerSo they they were winding, those winding operators would wind probably three or four cells a minute. Yeah.
Kevin EbermanI heard that the the the woman who who who steered the electrodes was the highest paid operator that they had, or the one I saw. Like, because it was like so much art on gotta steer the winding perfectly.
Joe TurnerThere was like two rows. The front end was all men and the back end was all women. Don't know why.
Kevin EbermanInteresting.
Joe TurnerSo we we called her the wine, the dragon winding lady. She was the boss, and she had all these girls that just sat in their seat and wound cells all day long. It it was really amazing that we could make uh a good product with a reasonable yield um in those conditions.
Vincent ChevrierYeah, I mean, in a way, you were lucky that your active materials were very sort of moisture uh resilient. Yes.
Joe TurnerCorrect. Correct. I always tell people in the first Batman, the best Batman, um, the Joker goes to the surgeon and he says something like, You see the tools I have to work with, right? That's how I felt a lot, both at Valence and at K2. I I never had the the good tools. And and looking back, I certainly didn't have the the best tools.
Kevin EbermanWow. So there were there any big like um so in those six months, was it a similar thing of you like identify the problem, solve the problem, identify the problem, solve? Was there any one that you stands out that you want to highlight?
Joe TurnerUm so there's a couple
Scaling Up and Old Stock
Joe Turnerof things. So so starting in early 2007, um, we went from making one batch every once in a while to making three batches a week.
Kevin EbermanThat's a huge step.
Joe TurnerYeah, yeah. So that that that scale up between uh after Chinese New Year to middle of March, where the guys in Henderson realized we'd made like 50,000 cells with nobody to sell them to. Um basically said, okay, let's stop. So while I while I ramped up that production, I also started a uh design on a new cell, which was the 3.2 amp hour 26650 that had an impedance of about 20.
Kevin Eberman20 million at a thousand hertz or something like that.
Joe TurnerYeah, yeah. That yeah, at a thousand a thousand hertz, yeah. So we had a meeting and I presented, hey, this is the new cell I think we should make, and I expected to get beat around the head and neck. Um, it was unanimously approved that we're now gonna make that new cell starting the next day in China. Yeah, yeah, a little faster. A little bit of a different uh experience. So so the funny thing, the funny thing is in 2015, we had a customer come to us and said, I just need 26,650s. I don't care what the capacity is, I don't care what the impedance is, it just has to cost this much money. We had like 45,000 of those original um 2.8 cells sitting on sitting on a shelf in Henderson that'd been sitting there for like seven, eight years. Holy cow. Almost all of them, I think we had like 16 cells out of 30,000 that didn't meet the OCV and impedance standard.
Kevin EbermanOkay.
Joe TurnerSo like that's pretty good. Even in the crap tacular process conditions, those cells just stored great.
Kevin EbermanWow. That's crazy.
Modern China Automation
Vincent ChevrierYeah, well, I have a when's the last time you've been to China to look at cell manufacturing?
Kevin EbermanYeah, comparison.
Vincent ChevrierTwo years ago. Okay, yeah. So pretty recent. And what did that look like?
Joe TurnerAmazing. Um, I visited BAK's 21700 production line. All of it was in a dry room. There were like two guys from slitting to uh crimping, who were just kind of standing in the corner while the machines did their work. I went to a couple of large format prismatic cells, which it's just amazing. Just amazing to watch those winders wind, those big elliptically wound jelly rolls. It's right fantastic.
Vincent ChevrierSo just uh insane level of automation, yep, perfect process control, yep, environmental control.
Joe TurnerYeah, the equip the equipment's just amazing. At BAK, they were talking about how they wanted to get rid of all the Korean junk winders that they had and replace them with Chinese winders, but um, they couldn't until the new factory was built, right? So, like the Chinese equipment's come so far that that yeah, it's flipped upside down. The BAK line that you saw that had two guys sort of babysitting the equipment, how many people would have, you know, back in 2006 to do that same work, how many people would have taken so so when when we went to semi-automatic winders, we usually had 12 people running 12 different semi-automatic winders. Um, there were probably three people doing bottom welding. Uh, there were probably four or five people doing manual high pot QAQC testing. Uh we put the the asphalt in the bead area. There was a guy running the bead, there was a guy running the asphalt. Um, and then there would be a guy running the are you counting these? Because I'm not counting these. Uh there would be a guy, there would be a guy that was loading them into trays and putting them in the vacuum oven. There'd be a guy on the other side taking them out of the vacuum oven. There'd be three people at dosing, there'd be two people at Top Weld, there'd be one person at um crimping, and then two people um doing QAQC and loading them up to take them up to cycling or to formation. The formation team was probably 15 or 16 people, yeah.
Vincent ChevrierSo we're probably close to 50 people, yeah.
Joe TurnerTo to make to make 10 to 15,000 cells a day, right? The BAK probably had 50 people to make a million cells a day.
Vincent ChevrierRight, yeah. Orders of magnitude, orders of magnitude, big difference.
Finland Pouch Factory
Joe TurnerAfter I converted DLG, we built a factory in Finland for European batteries oi. Um and that was a pouch cell factory. They essentially paid K2 for their electrode designs, and then we helped them build the factory and and get it running, and then uh, you know, they decided they weren't gonna sell cells, they were only gonna sell packs.
Kevin EbermanAnd how did you get the equipment for that?
Joe TurnerI mean, what what what country did you get from or yeah, all that the mixers were from America, the coders were from Korea, the calendar was from Germany, there uh the the stackers were from Italy, which I gotta tell you, if your client says, Hey, we think we want to buy Italian equipment, you say, Yeah, let's go visit the factory. Because visiting and working with an Italian factory is amazing because the food in Italy is amazing. I mean, let me put it in perspective. Normally I would go to China and I would come back and I'd be like 10, 12, 15 pounds lighter.
Kevin EbermanUh, I see.
Joe TurnerWhen I went to Italy and then China and then home, I was 15 pounds heavier than when I left because I ate so much in Italy.
Vincent ChevrierOh, the heavenly carbs, yeah, only carbs.
Joe TurnerSo it the funny thing is the equipment manufacturer had a cafeteria. Amazing. Uh amazing. I was like, let's not go out to eat, let's just go back to the cafeteria. But yeah, I I love visiting Italy. Finland was okay, but Italy was uh yeah, it's it's a great place to visit.
Kevin EbermanRight. You could do your sauna in Finland. Like uh did you have to sauna at all?
Joe TurnerUm, they had a sauna inside the factory.
Vincent ChevrierGo and go from the dry room to the sauna.
Joe TurnerYeah. Yeah.
K2 Highs and Supply Chain
Vincent ChevrierSo you know, manufacturing in China, manufacturing in Finland, and then what happens at K2?
Joe TurnerWe're scaling up, we're making a lot of sales, we're building another factory in China um with QJ, the motorcycle manufacturer. Um, everything, everything's going really pretty good. Um, we get the rail gun contract. You know, I worked on that. I went to the rail gun conference, did a presentation. Like we were we were hitting on all cylinders. Um, we actually had an offer to buy us, um, which when Johnny found out that they were gonna replace him, uh, that ended that deal, which is disappointing because um I had a whole bunch of stock and stock options that would have been worth a lot of money that ended up not being worth anything. One of those things I learned that Kevin brought up earlier that stands out is when the Fukushima rack reactor got damaged by the um tsunami, yeah. Um, we were using uh separator out of Japan, and we could no longer get it. And they told us it was gonna be 36 months before they supplied any non-Japanese people with separator, especially in the small volumes we use.
Kevin EbermanSo holy cow.
Joe TurnerUm we uh basically that's how I met Charlie Odom at Sell Guard, was basically calling them up and saying, Save me Obi-Wan. Um and they came through and you know, when somebody set saves your bacon, you always work with them. Yeah, so you know it it highlighted how weak, how insecure our supply chain was. I spent the next 18 months testing new powders, uh separator, electrolyte. Um, so at the end of that, we had like three or four different LFP powders, three or four different annual powders, three or four different separators, different foil manufacturers. Like we made sure we had backups for everything, which was a good lesson.
Kevin EbermanYeah, for sure.
Vincent ChevrierSo did you stay with K2? Did you stay focused on cell manufacturing? Did you sort of branch off into packs or like how what happened to K2 and what happened, you know, sort of the broad arc of your time at K2?
Joe TurnerUm, so so I was always responsible for the cell and materials. Production, uh, Stu was in charge of production, he was the director of operations. But if the cells had a problem, he would have me fix it. Um, I helped with a lot of the pack designs. So I had I made this gigantic spreadsheet where you could model like you want to do a 14s 3P and you need this much power, and here's a stochastic load, and it would model all that.
Vincent ChevrierRight.
Joe TurnerUm Right.
Vincent ChevrierActually, you have,
3M Shuttle and LMFP
Vincent Chevrieryou know, there's a there's a funny part where 3Ms pass. Um and K2 across, which was at one point 3M had a a product called the Shuttle. Yes. And its purpose was to um on overcharge shuttle current so that you could take an LFP cell, you could overcharge it, and it would just shuttle current through the through the shuttle. And the upside of that was that if you had you know more than one cell in series, they could be at different states of charge and they would rebalance as you kept charging. And the cell that was already at full charge would just shuttle the current through, and then you could get all your all your cells even. And K2 had tried that shuttle.
Joe TurnerOh yeah, I I argued for that shuttle forever. And um, it was too expensive. I'm like, it costs like two cents a cell, right? And and we don't need to do any balancing, and and it worked, it worked, it was amazing. And I I pushed for it hard. Um when 3M finally decided they weren't gonna make it, they wanted to sell us, they wanted us to essentially pay shipping for the 10 tons they had on hand, on hand, yeah. So I was like, it's it's essentially free. And the same guy was like, Yeah, but when we run out, then what are we gonna do? I'm like, it's like we'll figure out how to make it. It's like it was like a billion cells worth of shuttle. Like made no sense. So so that yeah, that shuttle, it was magic. Right, that's lifestyle. It was magic super high.
Vincent ChevrierYeah, yeah, exactly. So 3M never carried the shuttle forward and K2. Um, I don't think you ever commercialized a cell with the shuttle, right?
Joe TurnerWe did not. I I argued that we should commercialize a cell with the shuttle and just charge more for it. And if people didn't buy it, we would still be able to say, look at the technology we developed. We were the my biggest fear was one of the other LFP companies was gonna start using shuttle because as soon as they started using it, our customers would ask for us to use it, and then instead of looking like we were the leaders in technology, we would look like we waited for somebody else to do it and then copied it.
Vincent ChevrierRight.
Joe TurnerSo um, we we also worked with Dow at the about the same time on their LMFP and Foztech with their LMFP. So, like the first sales I made with LMFP were 2012.
Kevin EbermanOkay, yeah, okay.
Joe TurnerAnd we actually did an LF LMFP NMC blended 26650 that was five amp hours in 2013. However, it was not very abuse tolerant.
Kevin EbermanUh okay.
Joe TurnerIt was it was not quite as dangerous as pure NMC, but pretty close. So I see.
Kevin EbermanUh okay, and and so that safety advantage is not was not there.
Joe TurnerYeah, with with the pure LMFP it was, but um it was not much higher watt hour per kilogram than regular LFP. It was a like 15% higher.
Vincent ChevrierSo so um, so it sounds K2 is going well. It sounds like we're making cells and selling them at a profit in packs and motorcycles and in defense contracts. So what happens to K2?
K2 Decline and Rebirth
Joe TurnerSo we continue to grow, and then China decides that uh all buses should be LFP, and all of a sudden the amount of Chinese cells that were available on the market like quadrupled or more, right? Right. Which which hurt us a little bit, but we were still growing. In 2015, I got an SBIR project to do aqueous cathode production for LFP. I had a whole bunch of quotes out with the national labs to, you know, one national lab was going to code it, and one national lab was gonna wind it, and right, I was waiting for all these quotes to come back. And Jim met Ed Buell at a conference, and I called Ed and told him what we were trying to do it, and he's like, Yeah, we can do it all here. He gave us a quote. I went there, did the work, built the cells, tested the cells, wrote the report, submitted it to the SBR, uh, right, and closed the closed the project. Three weeks later, I got the first national lab quote back.
Kevin EbermanYou've already done the work.
Joe TurnerAlready done the work. The quote from the national lab was for more than double what my entire budget was, and that was just for one part of it. Uh uh, I was I was very disappointed. Uh I understand why things take so long sometimes. So, so like the the lab that University of Alabama is putting in, the lab, uh the one in Texas that just went in, Whittingham's lab in New York, uh, Coolimetrics, the BIC, University of Michigan, like all of these, like we need more labs like that because otherwise, you just you have to go to China and say, build this new and exotic thing for me. And I know that there'll probably be somebody who now beats me to the market and is a price that I can't compete against because you know I I needed to build these cells to show investors so they'd give me a lot of money. So yeah, we need more labs and more trained people. Interesting.
Kevin EbermanSo the end story of K2.
Joe TurnerSo I I go to I go to Coolmetrics, um, Ed and I meet for the morning. We start doing the codings. Um, you know, I'm there for a few days. Um, by like one o'clock, his guys are saying, Hey, can I borrow you for a second? And showing me the problem they're having and asking me what they should do. That should have been assigned to me. So I did a couple of more projects at Coolimetrics, and you know, Ed and I talked on and off, and he convinced me to come to work for him. Um, and K2 was still growing, they had a plan to go public, and I was like, sweet, this is my chance to double dip. Yeah, I bought my options or not, not all of them, but a significant amount. Uh, and I invested in the company early on, and so I had a sizable amount of shares of K2. And I'm like, they're gonna go public. I can go work at Cool Metrics and make more money, and then when they go public, I won't be associated with the company, so I can sell all my shares, and I'll get to do the biggest double dip ever. Right. And um, Stu left about nine months after I left, and the company just slowly went. They had a a guy that they they decided Johnny wasn't he because he didn't go public, they ousted him as the CEO and they hired a different CEO, and he hired his own CFO. And then the Chinese investors realized that those two guys were trying to do what every one of the Chinese investors did, which was invest in them, make them go bankrupt, and then take them out of bankruptcy. And so the Chinese investors put a stop to that and they reinstated Johnny, and then he was ousted again. And it was it was like drama rama. Um, eventually, Jeffrey Wu ended up owning a majority of the share of K2. Um, they had to sell off the military portion of K2 that went to Lithion, um, which is also in Henderson and has a lot of uh K2 people at it. Um, and they make 26,650 L of P cells in America. If you if you're looking for those, that's one of the places you can find them. At the end of 2023, um Jeffrey had called Stu and asked Stu to come back and you know try to resurrect K2. Stu came up with a plan where we bought the trademarks and the IP and uh some of the equipment and some of the inventory out of K2. We renamed it Grand Teton and moved it to Idaho.
Vincent ChevrierWe've had stories of companies sort of going bankrupt because of a safety event like Molly, or you know, companies looking at the margin and saying it's not worth it, like Duracell. Um this one's interesting. This one it sounds like there was a viable business model, and through loss of talent and management decisions, slowly went down, but was you know fundamentally viable, and and the model was more sourcing cell from China and and um building packs in North America.
Joe TurnerSo so when I was there, K2 had dedicated employees and and US citizens in the factories, making sure the production was done correctly, right? Yeah. After I left, they switched to the Dell model, which is we're just gonna say, hey, you make an LFP 26650, give us your thing, send us some, we'll test them. If your price is right, we'll buy them from you. So they went from building their own cells and and overseeing that production to just buying cells off the market and then building them into packs. Yeah.
Three Battery Laws
Vincent ChevrierSo wrapping it up, any concluding thoughts on where the market is now and what the what the path forward is in North America?
Joe TurnerI have uh three unwritten laws of battery, the battery world.
Kevin EbermanOkay, I'm excited. I don't know this one.
Joe TurnerWhat one is the first law is battery people are paranoid. Everybody thinks their mix is special, and how they run the mixer is special, and what they do in the process is special, and their material is special. And they can't tell anybody about it because if they told somebody, then they would know and be able to build just as good or better of a self. So they're paranoid, they don't want to tell each other what the heck's going on. Rule number two is I'm constantly surprised at the battery knowledge level of people who are high up in battery and cell manufacturing companies. In the not too distant past, I have had conversations where somebody said, Oh, well, we didn't think the coat weight was important. And I'm like, but your cell's not balanced. And they're like, Yeah, but it really doesn't matter. And I'm like, no, it's like one of the most important things, right? Right. And so so I I'm constantly rule number two is I'm constantly surprised at the lack of battery knowledge of people I think based on their position should know better. Rule number three is this saying you know, it's not really a good time to be raising money in the battery world. Those three things have been pretty much uh ubiquitous across the years. There was a blip in the money thing in 2011, but that was only for who the government thought they should give money to, right? So so it's never like universal all high tides rise all boats. It's like this company got a lot of money, and that company got a lot of money, and this company a lot got a lot of money.
Kevin EbermanSo yeah, just the select view. Yeah, yeah.
Joe TurnerKind of random. If if the listeners get two things out of this interview, it's it's the three rules, and the other thing is it feels good when you stop, right? When you stop banging your head against the wall, when you stop banging your head against the wall, it feels good when you stop.
Vincent ChevrierSo um Welcome to batteries. It feels good when you stop. Yeah, that's great.
Joe TurnerYeah, he actually um I had a conversation with Ed. Oh, it's been a while ago. Um, after I left, we were talking, and he's like, you know, do you ever want to do something else different than batteries? I'm like, Yeah, I'd love to. He's like, like what? I was like, I don't know, making chairs. That seems like a good job. Right. Right. So I I mean there is something that draws you down the battery rabbit hole, and it constantly like, like, I'm like, why do I do this? But I just I just have to. I it's like I'm a compulsive gambler. I have to, I have to go and see what that cell will do and this that what this electrolyte will do, and what this electrode will do, and you know, pouch cell, cylindrical cell, prismatic cell, tablet cell, anode-free cell, bipolar. Like, you know, I'm realistic enough to know that the battery world is super hard, but I'm also ideal enough to know that I think, or maybe it's cocky enough to think that I can help solve some of those problems. So that that's the first half of Vincent's answer.
Roadmap for US Manufacturing
Joe TurnerWhere do I think the battery manufacturers manufacturing is going? The US has a ton of work to get people trained. I mean, you kind of need like five years of help for the battery manufacturers to get some legs under at the volumes that need they need to produce.
Kevin EbermanI think so you talked about how you first go to China and uh it's like hand winding, and now it's like that the Chinese equipment is the best in the world and it's all fully automated and all that sort of thing. And then you have comments here in in North America about like, oh, well, we've got a leapfrog, the Chinese, you know, in their technology. And that just sounds sounds crazy. I mean, I think it's uh we've got to recognize that we we've got to learn what they've figured out. But what do you think about that?
Joe TurnerI think the roadmap is very clear. You do exactly the same thing that China did. You buy the best equipment in the world, you put it in your factories, you reverse engineer it, you build American versions, you improve on it, and you build the next factory. But yeah, uh in China, they know those battery manufacturers know, and the equipment manufacturers know that the government is going to be supporting it for decades, right? And you know, there might be a lot of money for batteries in 2022, but there's zero money in 23 and 24, and then there's a little bit of money in 26, right?
Kevin EbermanSo in the US, yeah.
Joe TurnerSo you have to you have to have investors put in a lot of money or go public and sell a lot of stock and generate a lot of money and and essentially do it yourself. But China has the whole infrastructure: raw materials, active materials, foils, separators, like equipment. Yeah, equipment and then the manufacturing know-how. So uh one of the most important things we're missing is the manufacturing know-how.
Vincent ChevrierAnd therefore, the reason why you're you were you mentioned you were visiting the Alabama lab, um, the piloting facility. Hence highlighting the need for those labs across the across North America and and the ability to train a workforce that can understand and uh not succumb to your three rules.
Joe TurnerYeah, and and and that's why somebody asked me, how much time do you think if you had a lab like this when you were in college, would it have saved you? And I'm like, a decade. I have really high hopes of the I I mean, I'm not an Alabama fan. The University of Utah has only played Alabama once in the Sugar Bowl. Utah kicked Alabama's butt. So I I'm not I I'm not that much of an Alabama fan, but like I I'm a fan of that Alabama lab. Um, I think it's gonna be world class. Um, so I I'm excited about that. Because awesome. You know, more trained engineers that know something about batteries coming out of school is better.
Kevin EbermanYes, absolutely.
Wrap Up
Vincent ChevrierWell, maybe that's a good place to uh to wrap up and to thank you so much, Joe, for joining us, for sharing your experience, sharing your story. Yeah, uh lots of fun anecdotes. Yeah, uh it was a pleasure.
Joe TurnerThe the funny thing is, I'm probably gonna remember like 15 more stories after we we finish. I I didn't even get to talk about making uh uh an autoclavable LFP cell that has to live for 45 minutes at 135 degrees C. That was uh that was a great project. So I I'm sure I I'm sure I'm gonna think of 10 or 12 other things. Um I should have done that, but um it's okay.
Kevin EbermanAnother time. Another time. Yeah, this is great. Yeah, thanks a lot. We learned a lot here.
Vincent ChevrierBattery potential is produced by cyclical music by big flavor.
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