2023-04-05 EV Committee Meeting Minutes

Public Page

Date

Apr 5, 2023

Agenda

• Welcome/Networking

• Antitrust

  • This meeting is subject to the terms of the anti-trust and it will be recorded.

• Review Meeting Minutes

• Project Plan/Brainstorming

Meeting Minutes

• Antitrust Accepted

• Meeting minutes reviewed and accepted.

• Project Plan/Brainstorming

  • Topic of Battery Disposal

    • The shops are a lot of shops are wanting to understand what their expectation is and or liability with respect to high voltage battery disposal. My thought is they're probably most on core exchange programs, but I'm not positive that all OE had defined that.

    • Disposal and recycling of the battery will come down to each manufacturer and how the battery is constructed.

      • If Cells are glued together, it is harder to separate and fix and recycle.

      • If the battery is module based, you can take out the bad cells and fix the battery.

      • Manufacturers of connected cars can see the health of the battery and if an issue arises, they can send maintenance to the vehicle. This allows for internal battery repairs.

      • There can also be damage to the metal or battery casing.

    • California Senate Bill SB615 was introduced for Electric Vehicle batteries and how they can be reused and recycling of these batteries.

      • Specifies the individuals and organizations that can recycle the battery.

      • Batteries may not be suitable for automotive applications after a collision but they may be good for some other infrastructure.

        • Agriculture, power plants, home based solar panel recharging uses or other things where the range in capacity are less sensitive, right.

  • Transport of Battery

    • Only thing currently regulated is of course the transport of a battery and comes this battery out of a compromised vehicle. This battery is decelerated as a compromise battery. What has to be transported in a Group 1 shipping container to the recycling facility. We have currently a case where I'm involved and consulted to the Canadian Government, then they have a case where an Audi each run ended up in an accident.

    • And the battery was a severe accident and the battery got separated from the car. So it sounds funny, but since I possibly one and half month a high voltage battery lays on a screen strife between two lanes in downtown Vancouver. So what they did is they shoveled sand over this thing, and I could show you a whole picture and the and the and why.

    • And shoveled sand above it to cover the battery and put bean blocks or big big concrete blocks around that. You protect it. The problem is that there is $150,000 in wire mental cleanup cost involved in the biggest portion is definitely the shipping container and the shipment of this, so I.

    • The Brady suggestion to remove to open the battery lid and remove the battery modules from it from it, from the battery, then then you deal only with 3312 walled components and then you have not in high voltage battery so and that will reduce the cost of shipping then you don't need a Group 1 shipping container any more than you don't deal with high voltage battery. You see deal with single 12 Volt modules. So that's where we are going for it to clean this up in the next couple of weeks.

    • And that's maybe could be a scenario what I see when we go back to the collision repair facility, what you want to do when you have a compromise battery laying around that you want to ship it in a Group 1 shipping container. This container cost around $50,000 and then ship it to the next recycler. I think that's the way when I hear Jake saying, yeah, we repair this, this is the only way we can move forward to avoid this, try to repair as best as possible.

    • The battery, when it's possible and when it's not as possible, and it has to be recycled. I think the way has to be to break it down and recycle and send it as pieces as weird as sounds. Then it's really expensive and to ship this around though only.

  • Specialized Tools for Battery

    • In collision repair applications, a couple of cars with a damaged battery casing, the carbon tray underneath the battery or the aluminum extruded sides of the battery would damaged. The collision impacts the casing but internals of the battery were completely fine. OEMs have tools to be able to check the battery directly, tool that we can connect to the battery independently from the car.

    • Tool pulls data from the battery itself, and so in situations where it is just a component failure, not an entire pack failure. And we could actually dissect the old battery tray out and put it in a new tray, then put the, put the battery pack in there, kind of kind of like reusing the engine block, you know, putting a new engine block but using existing Pistons and rods and things like that.

    • Adding serviceability to vehicle batteries.

  • Safety

    • Making 3D printed safety Shields for technicians, so when we open a battery up, they can put these 3D printed safety Shields in place so that you can work on the battery safely.

    • Look to innovate in those ways.

    • Made some 3D printed plugs for the drive units and for the batteries. So when they're disconnected, you don't get foreign materials in there.

  • Monitoring a Connected Vehicle

    • OEMs have applications that are connected to the vehicle to show if the vehicle is running, what version of software its running with, tire pressure, door open, charge of vehicle. There are also critical errors that will cause alerts, such as a thermal runaway event.

    • When a car is moved to salvage, it becomes unsupported by the OEM and monitoring is no longer done.

  • First Responder Safety

    • The challenge is the first responder, like when these cars get damaged. The people that show up at the scene, they really don't have the tools to be able to tell whether there's an event, you know, and I've been. When these cars get towed into a Body Shop and they get set in the line next to the other cars that got towed in and they may or may not have enough of the room around them to be able to have them quarantined like you're saying.

    • Can the OEMs add some kind of a light that just indicates when a first responder comes up. If the orange lights on this car that it's a concern and everybody's going to treat that car different now, they should be treated different because they're EV anyways. But is there some way that the first responder, the tow company, The Body Shop or the salvage lot that winds up with this vehicle getting it on it?

    • With the body, shops need and even if it's in an electronic communication that goes to the owner or even the manufacturer, I'm trying to understand how we can make this visible to others beyond just this ecosystem that you've got.

    • The Screens in the new vehicles both traditional and connected cars, should be able to show a visual alert.

    • Fireman's loop should be pulled.

    • Energy Security Agency, is not a government agency, but they're getting government funding and they're operating a hotline where firefighters and tow truck operators can call in and can say and say, hey, I have here this vehicle and they do whisk analyzes on the vehicle for them. So firefighters have, for example, one tool they can use.

    • Truck what is a form gas meter monitor and when an electric vehicle high voltage battery goes into a thermal runaway and we will speak next week at CIC at the collision Industry Conference a little bit more in detail on it so I will be up there on the stage with the emerging committees. So thank you Jake for putting putting their website up. So they have a hotline where you can call. And what I wanna go back to the car. So when a high voltage battery.

    • Is a chemical reacting to the impact of whatever happened. What happens is first, that is, the battery starts off gassing the gas. What goes off the battery events out is strongly carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide and fluoride gases. So when the firefighter is at the scene and you would measure and see all level, what is higher than 35 PPM than he would be starting to get in concerned it's this PPM levels going.

    • Up over 100. Then we know we are in deep trouble when it's something over 100 PPM. What you can measure around the battery, then a thermal runaway will occur really, really fast.

    • So what has to be done? The car has to be isolated. The fire department can put water on the battery, So what they do next is they using a thermal imaging camera and measure the temperature under the battery. It's pretty hard, and the battery housing is really thick so, but for them it's like a 200 degrees Fahrenheit and 100 PPM CEO, absolutely concerning. Then then we have a fire. Really, really soon.

    • So when you asked him how shops can protect themself, I when I would be a shop owner in a car would be on a lift in my shop. I would define what is my exit strategy to get the vehicle out where I repair this in my shop in the last corner or maybe a little bit closer to the to the door. And third of all I would have CEO monitor with an alarm set of 35 PPM in an range of four to five feet.

  • Education

    • I think we need to create a video that shows a skit that actually shows a car that was brought in on a tow truck and we're at a shop and all of a sudden that car experiences a thermal event or is it and it's just it kind of takes me back to elementary school when they were trying to tell us about fire drills and what to do and go to this exit and that kind of thing. But when the real fire drill happened, all the kids went crazy and they ran everywhere. And that's what I think of when I go, when I'm thinking about a Body Shop and they experience a thermal event like this, it's not calm and collected, right. Everybody walked to the exit. It doesn't work that way. So if we could put together something that.

    • I think if we had a, I think we had a video that showed 2 scenarios that showed people that panicked and what happened and then showed the right way to do it. And what are the steps, what are the checks, what does that, that CO2 monitor? What's it sound like? What does it look like? You know what when is, when it's mad at it? Yeah. How does it smell exactly?

    • Give them a visual on that. That's, you know, 5 minutes or less that shows that that check in process of the car coming in on the tow truck and then us running through the checks and we got a safe vehicle, right. And also show them the what they're looking for in the diagnostic tool what is high blood pressure look like in an EV. Let's show them that. And so I think a video would really work well there.

    • And then to learn how they're burn, what is their best suppression of method, how you can extract people out there for and share this information. Then we'll firefighters and with the industry all overall that they're noticed. So take your calls will be there. The cause will go on fire. So we should use that what you just said as an impossibility to create this video. And they have video team everything there do I know.

  • Get Young Technicians

    • Look at the links shared below for technicians and educations in the field.

  • Recycling Battery

    • Manufacturers know the the vehicle is resetting the life it's collision damage you know likely a good portion of that battery is still usable and obviously with the way that your architecture is where they are serviceable the creating a pipeline that would bring that battery you know what I mean back into the manufacturers supply chain right you know we can test and we can you know what I mean identify that now?

    • Percent of this battery, or perceptually 100% of the battery is still usable and as opposed to going to a second purpose or something else, right? Reintegrating back into the manufacturing process.

    • a very high training curriculum requirement. It's not an ask you have to do it. We also have a very high tooling list that that the shops must acquire and they have and we force them to do it. We're one of the few OEM's that requires them to have eight dash capability.

    • No questions asked. Gotta do it right. So that's where you know, somebody buys one of our cars and wants to bring it back through back to life. We also offer a complete body shell. So if you wanted to buy a complete body shell, you could, and we'll ship it to you. And you can transfer everything to the new body shell and almost create a seamless repair. And some people may do that, you know, so we don't obviously want to see our cars end up buried in a landfill somewhere. That's not what we're looking for, but we have to be careful on who's working on them.

    • Aftermarket will find a way to bring these cars back to life and not use OEM parts.

Great Brainstorming Session.

Up Next

• Welcome/Networking

• Antitrust

• Meeting minute Review

• Work on Business Use Case/Workflow for Intake process of an EV

Action items

Decisions

1. Committee will focus on the Education of Intake process and create educational materials to help the industry with this pain point. In creating the documentation, we may find areas that CIECA can provide messages to help with this process.

Related Documentation:

Recording of the Kickoff Meeting can be found at https://cieca.atlassian.net/l/cp/Nzh14Zgv

Shared Information in Chat:

Steve ARC - Suppliers Partnership has already mapped out the all LIB shipping regulations for the USA - https://www.supplierspartnership.org/evbtransportation/

Timothy Ronak - This company implies they are north America service capable https://www.globaltechenvironmental.com/recycling-services/battery-recycling/hybrid-ev/

Steve ARC -

Jason Norman -

Kimberly Sorlien - http://www.beacollisionengineer.com./

Participants

• @Paulette Reed

• Chris Chesney

• Kimberly Yow

• Jake Rodenroth

• Tom Julius

• Colin Gerspacher

• Jeff

• Harvey

• Jeffery Brewer

• Ginny Whelan

• Steve ARC

• Jason Norman

• John Peixoto

• Paul Barry

• Stacey Phillips

• Timothy Ronak

• Nick Kupstas

• Orest Tkaczuk

• Dierk Fuchs

• Melissa Dunn

• Jeffrey Pabst

• Jeff Oldenettel

• Kimberly Sorlien

• Gene Lopez

• Sean Carey

• Todd Korpi

• Gregg Rebber

Participants in the meetings are noted for your information.  If you have questions on the committee’s activities, please contact a recent attendee.