[House Hearing, 117 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]



                          PEDAL TO THE METAL:
                       ELECTRIC VEHICLE BATTERIES
                    AND THE CRITICAL MINERALS SUPPLY

=======================================================================

                                     
                                     

                             FIELD HEARING

                               BEFORE THE

                     SUBCOMMITTEE ON INVESTIGATIONS
                             AND OVERSIGHT

                                 OF THE

                      COMMITTEE ON SCIENCE, SPACE,
                             AND TECHNOLOGY

                                 OF THE

                        HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

                    ONE HUNDRED SEVENTEENTH CONGRESS

                             SECOND SESSION

                               __________

                             APRIL 21, 2022

                               __________

                           Serial No. 117-53

                               __________

 Printed for the use of the Committee on Science, Space, and Technology

                                     
                                     
               [GRAPHIC NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
               
                                     

       Available via the World Wide Web: http://science.house.gov


                                 ______
                                 
                                 

                 U.S. GOVERNMENT PUBLISHING OFFICE

47-349PDF                 WASHINGTON : 2022










              COMMITTEE ON SCIENCE, SPACE, AND TECHNOLOGY

             HON. EDDIE BERNICE JOHNSON, Texas, Chairwoman

ZOE LOFGREN, California              FRANK LUCAS, Oklahoma, 
SUZANNE BONAMICI, Oregon                 Ranking Member
AMI BERA, California                 MO BROOKS, Alabama
HALEY STEVENS, Michigan,             BILL POSEY, Florida
    Vice Chair                       RANDY WEBER, Texas
MIKIE SHERRILL, New Jersey           BRIAN BABIN, Texas
JAMAAL BOWMAN, New York              ANTHONY GONZALEZ, Ohio
MELANIE A. STANSBURY, New Mexico     MICHAEL WALTZ, Florida
BRAD SHERMAN, California             JAMES R. BAIRD, Indiana
ED PERLMUTTER, Colorado              DANIEL WEBSTER, Florida
JERRY McNERNEY, California           MIKE GARCIA, California
PAUL TONKO, New York                 STEPHANIE I. BICE, Oklahoma
BILL FOSTER, Illinois                YOUNG KIM, California
DONALD NORCROSS, New Jersey          RANDY FEENSTRA, Iowa
DON BEYER, Virginia                  JAKE LaTURNER, Kansas
CHARLIE CRIST, Florida               CARLOS A. GIMENEZ, Florida
SEAN CASTEN, Illinois                JAY OBERNOLTE, California
CONOR LAMB, Pennsylvania             PETER MEIJER, Michigan
DEBORAH ROSS, North Carolina         JAKE ELLZEY, TEXAS
GWEN MOORE, Wisconsin                MIKE CAREY, OHIO
DAN KILDEE, Michigan
SUSAN WILD, Pennsylvania
LIZZIE FLETCHER, Texas
                                 ------                                

              Subcommittee on Investigations and Oversight

                  HON. BILL FOSTER, Illinois, Chairman

ED PERLMUTTER, Colorado              JAY OBERNOLTE, California,
AMI BERA, California                   Ranking Member
GWEN MOORE, Wisconsin                STEPHANIE I. BICE, Oklahoma
SEAN CASTEN, Illinois                MIKE CAREY, OHIO





                         C  O  N  T  E  N  T  S

                             April 21, 2022

                                                                   Page

Hearing Charter..................................................     2

                           Opening Statements

Statement by Representative Bill Foster, Chairman, Subcommittee 
  on Investigations and Oversight, Committee on Science, Space, 
  and Technology, U.S. House of Representatives..................     8
    Written Statement............................................    10

Written statement by Representative Eddie Bernice Johnson, 
  Chairwoman, Committee on Science, Space, and Technology, U.S. 
  House of Representatives.......................................    11

                               Witnesses:

Mr. Nate Baguio, Senior Vice President of Commercial Development, 
  the Lion Electric Company
    Oral Statement...............................................    13
    Written Statement............................................    15

Mr. Chris Nevers, Senior Director of Public Policy, Rivian
    Oral Statement...............................................    20
    Written Statement............................................    22

Dr. Venkat Srinivasan, Deputy Director of the Joint Center for 
  Energy Storage Research (JCESR) and Director of the Argonne 
  Collaborative Center for Energy Storage Science (ACCESS), 
  Argonne National Laboratory
    Oral Statement...............................................    29
    Written Statement............................................    32

Dr. Chibueze Amanchukwu, Neubauer Family Assistant Professor of 
  Molecular Engineering, University of Chicago
    Oral Statement...............................................    41
    Written Statement............................................    43

Discussion.......................................................    49

              Appendix: Answers to Post-Hearing Questions

Dr. Venkat Srinivasan, Deputy Director of the Joint Center for 
  Energy Storage Research (JCESR) and Director of the Argonne 
  Collaborative Center for Energy Storage Science (ACCESS), 
  Argonne National Laboratory....................................    74



 
                          PEDAL TO THE METAL:
                       ELECTRIC VEHICLE BATTERIES
                    AND THE CRITICAL MINERALS SUPPLY

                              ----------                              


                        THURSDAY, APRIL 21, 2022

                  House of Representatives,
      Subcommittee on Investigations and Oversight,
               Committee on Science, Space, and Technology,
                                                   Washington, D.C.

    The Subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 10:08 a.m. 
(CST), in the Werch Board Room, Woodridge Village Hall, 5 
Village Drive, Woodridge, Illinois, Hon. Bill Foster [Chairman 
of the Subcommittee] presiding.

             [GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
              
               
    Chairman Foster. This hearing will come to order. Without 
objection, the Chair is authorized to declare recess at any 
time, and before I deliver my opening remarks, I wanted to note 
that today, the Committee is meeting both in person and 
virtually. I want to announce a couple of reminders to the 
Members about the conduct of this meeting. First, Members and 
staff who are attending in person may choose to be masked, but 
it is not a requirement. However, any individuals with 
symptoms, a positive test, or exposure to someone with COVID-19 
should wear a mask while present. Members attending--who are 
attending virtually should keep their video feed on as long as 
they are present in the hearing. Members are responsible for 
their own microphones, and so, please keep your microphones 
muted unless you are speaking. Finally, if Members have 
documents they wish to submit for the record, please email them 
to the Committee Clerk, whose email address was circulated 
prior to the hearing.
    Well, good morning to our witnesses and to our attendees. 
It's great to be here in a field hearing in Woodridge. I think 
the last time I was here was following the tornado, a somewhat 
less happy time here, and I'm really proud to be back here in 
more pleasant circumstances. I'm thrilled to be meeting on a 
transformational technology issue.
    The United States has, at last, reached that story tipping 
point for affordable, high-quality, electric vehicles (EVs). 
The whole world is reaching for their wallets, and the 11th 
District of Illinois is answering the call. Rivian is, at this 
very moment, ramping up production of electric passenger and 
delivery trucks at its factory in Normal, and Lion Electric is 
readying for installation of production machinery at its 
electric bus factory in Joliet.
    I should point out here that battery electric vehicles are 
not the only game in town, or more literally in this area, for 
low emission fleets. Hyzon Motors is manufacturing hydrogen 
fuel cells for commercial vehicles in Bolingbrook, and the 
internal combustion industry is not sitting still. Traditional 
trucks and buses have been diesel powered with fossil fuels, 
which means that they have a higher emissions profile for 
nitrous oxides and soot than gasoline-powered vehicles. 
Clearflame Engine Technologies in Geneva, in collaboration with 
Argonne, has developed low emission diesel engines that run at 
full thermodynamic efficiency, powered by low-carbon biofuels 
such as corn ethanol, which opens the door not only to low 
emissions long haul trucking, but tractors, harvesters, and a 
full line of farm equipment that run on fossil fuel free 
biofuels that the farm industry itself produces.
    So, demand for low emission vehicles is booming, and our 
economy--local economy will reap the harvest.
    And the clean truck and bus revolution is not just an 
opportunity for Illinois, but for a safer climate and cleaner 
air around the globe. An electric bus, on one hand, doesn't 
really emit anything at all during operations, and allows clean 
sources of electrical generation to contribute to 
decarbonization of the transportation sector. Electric fleets 
will enable massive improvements in urban air quality and help 
protect public health. Furthermore, over the life of the 
vehicle, the average EV has less than half of the carbon 
footprint per passenger mile than the equivalent internal 
combustion engine (ICE) vehicle, and the environmental profile 
of EVs only gets better over time, as grid operators replace 
more and more fossil fuel plants with zero carbon alternatives. 
So, there is a lot to be excited about here.
    Let us not forget that decades of dedicated research have 
led to this moment. It is no accident that the global 
transportation sector is changing. Cost-effective, lightweight, 
and long duration batteries that last more than a decade are 
the key, and they were developed over time by hardworking 
scientists and engineers with a very specific vision, many of 
them toiling up the street at Argonne National Lab. I am proud 
to count some of those friends as my constituents.
    But now is not the time to stop innovating. On the 
Oversight Subcommittee for the House Science Committee, it is 
our responsibility to look into the technology concerns that 
could impede progress, and the supply chain for critical 
materials that go into an electric vehicle battery: lithium, 
cobalt, nickel, graphite, manganese, and others, may be an 
enormous technological and cost challenge.
    The problem is so large that it has even become obvious to 
Elon Musk, who apparently spent a good fraction of yesterday's 
earnings call for Tesla complaining about the high cost of 
lithium.
    Global demand for these critical minerals is surging, along 
with electric vehicle sales and projections from automakers. 
The numbers are simply eyepopping and because they have more 
cells in their products, Rivian, Lion Electric, and other 
companies that make big vehicles with big battery packs know 
better than anyone how mineral costs are affecting their bottom 
line.
    Unfortunately, the United States is home to almost no 
mineral processing or midstream fabrication for batteries. 
China has invested billions in these steps of the supply chain, 
and as a result, they hold a lot of the cards right now. One 
value proposition of electric vehicles has always been their 
potential to loosen our dependence on a global commodity: oil. 
Oil prices are out of the U.S.'s control worldwide, so they 
create volatility in our economy and harm American families. 
Russia's war on Ukraine has brought to light the grave dangers 
of our geopolitical dependency on fossil fuels. The last thing 
we need is to exchange one form of geopolitical vulnerability 
for another. So, we need to focus on alternative battery 
chemistries, recycling strategies that can help keep mined 
minerals circulating in the economy, and new methods for 
extraction and processing that reduce environmental impacts.
    I'm a technology optimist. I believe that we can engineer 
our way out of this problem, and the U.S. research enterprise 
has a lot more battery science breakthroughs up its sleeve. So 
many talented scientists, like Dr. Srinivasan and Dr. 
Amanchukwu--right? Yes. Thank you. Amanchukwu--are committed--
have committed their professional lives to the battery mineral 
supply chain. We have exciting companies like Rivian and Lion 
Electric both contributing to that quest, and providing the 
demand pull for new innovations.
    President Biden has set a goal for 2030 that half of the 
cars sold in the United States should be zero emissions and 
electric. I want to make sure that the Federal researchers are 
laser focused on that goal and deploying all available 
resources. I also want the Federal research enterprise to be 
thinking beyond 2030. So, I hope that our witnesses today will 
be frank in their advice to the Committee and we--as we 
appreciate that decarbonizing the global transportation sector 
is a matter of urgency. So, I thank the witnesses for joining 
us.
    [The prepared statement of Chairman Foster follows:]

    Good morning to our witnesses and all our attendees. It's 
great to be here for a field hearing in Woodridge.
    I'm thrilled to be meeting on a transformational technology 
issue. The United States has at last reached that storied 
``tipping point'' for affordable, high-quality electric 
vehicles. The whole world is reaching for their wallets, and 
the 11th district of Illinois is answering the call. Rivian is 
at this very moment ramping up production of electric passenger 
and delivery trucks at its factory in Normal, and Lion Electric 
is readying for installation of production machinery at its 
electric bus factor in Joliet.
    I should point out here that battery electric vehicles 
aren't the only game in town--literally, in this town--for low-
emission fleets. Hyzon Motors is manufacturing hydrogen fuel 
cells for commercial vehicles in Bolingbrook. Clearflame Engine 
Technologies in Geneva has developed a truck powered by low-
carbon biofuels. Demand for low-emission trucks and buses is 
booming, and our regional economy will reap the harvest.
    But the clean truck and bus revolution is not just an 
opportunity for Illinois, but for a safer climate and cleaner 
air around the globe. Traditional trucks and buses tend to be 
diesel powered, which means they have a higher emissions 
profile for nitrous oxides and soot than gasoline-powered 
vehicles. An electric bus, on the other hand, doesn't emit 
anything at all. Electric fleets will enable massive 
improvements in urban air quality and help protect public 
health.
    Furthermore, over the life of the vehicle, the average EV 
has less than half the carbon footprint per passenger mile than 
its equivalent internal combustion engine vehicle. And the 
environmental profile of EVs only gets better over time as grid 
operators replace more and more fossil plants with zero-carbon 
alternatives. There's a lot to be excited about.
    Let us not forget that decades of dedicated research have 
led to this moment. It is no accident that the global 
transportation sector is changing. Cost-effective, lightweight, 
long-duration batteries that last more than a decade are the 
key. And they were developed over time by hardworking 
scientists and engineers with a very specific vision, many of 
them toiling up the street at Argonne National Lab. I'm proud 
to count some of these folks as my constituents.
    But now is not the time to stop innovating. On the 
Oversight Subcommittee for the House Science Committee, it's 
our responsibility to look into technology concerns that could 
impede progress. And the supply chain for critical minerals 
that go into an electric vehicle battery--lithium, cobalt, 
nickel, graphite, manganese--may be an enormous technological 
challenge.
    Global demand for these critical minerals is surging along 
with electric vehicle sales and projections from automakers. 
These numbers are simply eye-popping. And because they have 
more cells in their products, Rivian, Lion Electric and other 
companies that make big vehicles with big battery packs know 
better than anyone how much minerals costs affects their bottom 
line. Unfortunately, the United States is home to almost no 
mineral processing or midstream fabrication for batteries. 
China has invested billions in these steps of the supply chain 
and as a result, they hold a lot of the cards.
    One value proposition of electric vehicles has always been 
their potential to loosen our dependence on a global 
commodity--oil. Oil prices are out of the U.S.'s control, and 
so they create volatility in our economy and harm American 
families. Russia's war on Ukraine has brought to light the 
grave dangers of our geopolitical dependency on fossil fuels. 
The last thing we want is to exchange one form of geopolitical 
vulnerability for another. So we need to focus on alternative 
battery chemistries, recycling strategies that can help keep 
mined minerals circulating in the economy, and new methods for 
extraction and processing that reduce environmental impacts.
    I am a technology optimist. I believe we can engineer our 
way out of this problem. And the U.S. research enterprise has a 
lot more battery science breakthroughs up its sleeve. So many 
talented scientists, like Dr. Srinivasan and Dr. Amanchukwu, 
are committing their professional lives to the battery mineral 
supply chain. We have exciting companies like Rivian and Lion 
Electric both contributing to that quest and providing the 
demand pull for new innovations.
    President Biden has set a goal for 2030 that half of the 
cars sold in the United States should be electric. I want to 
make sure the federal researchers are laser focused on that 
goal and deploying all available resources. I also want the 
federal research enterprise to be thinking beyond 2030.
    I hope our witnesses today will be frank in their advice to 
the Committee, as we appreciate that decarbonizing the global 
transportation sector is a matter of urgency. I thank the 
witnesses for joining us.

    Chairman Foster. So, if there are Members who wish to 
submit additional opening statements, your statements will be 
added to the record at this point.
    [The prepared statement of Chairwoman Johnson follows:]

    Globally, electric vehicle demand has tripled in just the 
last three years. It is expected to increase another five-fold 
by 2030. It's hard to fathom how rapidly the changes are coming 
in the transportation sector. We have to be ready to meet the 
booming demand for critical minerals that goes along with it. 
Unfortunately, the United States is responsible for almost none 
of the mineral processing and component fabrication steps in 
the EV supply chain. China and Russia have outsized control in 
these sectors, and that represents an economic threat to the 
United States. Now is the time for a robust, coordinated effort 
in the United States to develop new technologies for vehicle 
efficiency, minerals extraction and processing, alternative 
battery chemistries, and battery recycling and reuse. I am 
pleased the Subcommittee on Investigations & Oversight has 
taken up such an important topic for today's hearing.
    It is impressive for me to see how this corner of Illinois 
has taken up the critical minerals challenge. Congress has been 
listening to experts like the witnesses before us today. And as 
a result, the last few months in Washington have seen a flurry 
of policy activity on the EV battery supply chain.
    The Energy Act of 2020, which I led for the Committee on 
Science, Space, and Technology, directed DOE to undertake a 
research program on critical material recycling and reuse that 
promises to unlock exciting new innovations in the EV battery 
space.
    In addition, the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act 
that President Biden signed into law this past December was an 
enormous leap forward. It includes at least a dozen sections 
that address battery materials. It has $3 billion in grant 
funding for EV minerals processing, and another $3.3 billion 
for EV battery recycling grants. It directs the U.S. Geological 
Survey to map potential critical mineral deposits under U.S. 
soil. It calls for the National Science Foundation and the 
Department of Energy to explore the use of artificial 
intelligence for geological exploration. It makes critical 
minerals projects eligible for loan guarantees from the 
Department of Energy. And earlier this week, DOE made its first 
such conditional commitment for a loan to Syrah Technologies to 
scale up production of graphite-based battery anode material.
    The title of this hearing is ``Pedal to the Metal'' for a 
reason. We are not done yet. The Committee on Science, Space, 
and Technology has developed two other bills, the DOE Science 
for the Future Act and the National Science Foundation for the 
Future Act, which would both help advance early stage, 
fundamental research in battery science. Both of these bills 
passed the House as part of the America COMPETES Act earlier 
this year. I am leading the conference committee negotiations 
with the Senate, and Subcommittee Chairman Foster is a member 
of that committee as well. We intend to come to bipartisan 
agreements with the Senate that will help these become law this 
year. The DOE Science for the Future Act will authorize new 
advanced computing applications for chemistry and materials 
science. It will also authorize new money for the Electricity 
Storage Research Initiative, which will advance our ability to 
control, store, and convert electrical energy to chemical 
energy and vice versa.
    I am proud of my colleagues in Congress for coming to the 
table on a bipartisan basis to tackle this critical technology 
challenge. And I hope our witnesses today will tell us how else 
we can help.
    But I am even more proud of the researchers and innovators 
who are out there doing the work at American universities, 
national laboratories, and private companies. Texas is here for 
the challenge too. My hometown of Dallas has an exciting new 
technology start-up called Momentum. Momentum seeks to recycle 
lithium-ion batteries using foundational science that was 
developed at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. And they're hoping 
to have their first two battery recycling plants in operation 
by the end of this year. Down in Houston, a company called 
TexPower has developed a new cobalt-free cathode that they say 
can go head-to-head with today's battery chemistries, and they 
are cooperating with UT-Austin to develop new electrolytes as 
well. These are the kinds of innovation stories we need to 
repeat over and over in the coming years.
    I think we have a golden opportunity here. By redoubling 
our innovation efforts on EV minerals, we can not only help 
address the global climate crisis, but also regain economic 
leadership in the United States in the energy storage sector. I 
look forward to hearing from our witnesses about the best next 
steps for the federal research enterprise.
    I yield back.

    Chairman Foster. At this time, I'd like to introduce our 
witnesses.
    Our first witness is Mr. Nate Baguio. Mr. Baguio is the 
Senior Vice President (VP) of Commercial Development at the 
Lion Electric Company. He has held positions at Lion as a 
leader in electric school bus deployments across North America, 
and works to provide a healthy breathing environment to 
students, drivers, and communities. Previously, Mr. Baguio has 
held leadership roles within various transit projects in Los 
Angeles County and in the school transportation sector.
    Our next witness is Mr. Chris Nevers. Mr. Nevers is Senior 
Director of Public Policy at Rivian. He joined Rivian in 
February 2020 to help implement the policies needed to expand 
electrification and Rivian's role in creating a sustainable 
future. Prior to joining Rivian, Chris was the VP of Energy and 
Environment at the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers and 
worked in EPA's (Environmental Protection Agency's) Office of 
Transportation and Air Quality, and held several roles at 
Chrysler. His work focuses on energy, the environment, and 
electrification.
    Our third witness is Dr. Venkat Srinivasan. Dr. Srinivasan 
is the Director of the Argonne Collaborative Center for Energy 
Storage Sciences, or ACCESS, and Deputy Director of the Joint 
Center for Energy Storage Research, JCESR, at Argonne National 
Lab. His research develops continuum-based models for battery 
materials and combines them with experimental characterization 
to help design new materials, electrodes, and devices. Dr. 
Srinivasan previously served as the Acting Director of the 
Batteries for Advanced Transportation Technologies Program and 
as a department head and interim director at Lawrence Berkeley 
National Lab.
    Our fourth witness is Dr. Chibueze Amanchukwu. Dr. 
Amanchukwu is a Neubauer Family Assistant Professor at the 
Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering at the University of 
Chicago. His research has focused broadly on sustainable energy 
technologies. His team is especially interested in 
understanding electrolyte behavior in a wide variety of 
electrochemical systems, such as batteries and 
electrocatalysis. His work has been recognized with an NSF 
(National Science Foundation) career award, an ECS 
(Electrochemical Society) Toyota Young Investigator Fellowship, 
and the 3M nontenured faculty award.
    As our witnesses should know, you will each have five 
minutes for your spoken testimony. Your written testimony will 
be included in its entirety in the record for the hearing. When 
you have all completed your spoken testimony, we will begin 
with questions. Each Member will have five minutes to question 
the panel.
    We will start with Mr. Baguio.

                 TESTIMONY OF MR. NATE BAGUIO,

        SENIOR VICE PRESIDENT OF COMMERCIAL DEVELOPMENT,

                   THE LION ELECTRIC COMPANY

    Mr. Baguio. Thank you, Chairman Foster, Congressman Casten, 
Ranking Member Obernolte, and esteemed Members of the Committee 
for inviting me to speak today.
    As we meet here in the Land of Lincoln, it reminds me of 
something he once said. ``You cannot escape the responsibility 
of tomorrow by evading it today.'' Today's discussion about 
this historic change in the way our great Nation's 
transportation system moves children, passengers, packages, 
materials, hauls waste, and important--imports and exports of 
goods through some of the world's busiest ports is as critical 
an issue as we face today.
    With change comes opportunity, an opportunity to take a 
direct role in combatting climate change, creating healthy 
breathing environments in our communities and workplaces, 
reducing our dependence on overseas energy supplies, improving 
national security, and reducing the tax burden on our citizens.
    Lion is a leading and dedicated to zero emission 
manufacturer of all electric medium- and heavy-duty vehicles, 
including school buses, urban delivery trucks, refuse trucks, 
and shuttle buses. Currently Lion has delivered nearly 600 
vehicles in North America, and we are about to open the largest 
all-electric medium- and heavy-duty vehicle manufacturing site 
in the United States here in Illinois. At full production, this 
facility will produce 20,000 all-electric medium- and heavy-
duty vehicles per year made by American workers. This factory 
is on schedule to be operational before the end of this year.
    The transition to electric vehicles is already well 
underway, as EV car sales have more than doubled each of the 
past three years, even during the most significant health and 
supply chain crisis in our lifetime. Orders at the Lion 
Electric over a few years have grown by over 500 percent, with 
more expected to come with the Federal Clean School Bus Program 
opening in the coming days. This program will help communities 
most in need with $500 million in funding for electric school 
buses. Funding provided and recently signed into law in the 
Infrastructure and Jobs Act will add another $1 billion per 
year over the next five years for new, all-electric healthy 
school buses for children.
    Modern electric school buses have been taking children to 
school since 2016, and have been outperforming their fossil 
fuel counterparts. On average, the cost to maintain an electric 
school bus is 80 percent less than a diesel bus, 60 percent 
less costly to fuel. The number of parts to replace, maintain, 
or fail in a diesel school bus versus an electric one are 
approximately ten to one. The lithium-ion batteries in these 
buses have performed well as well. At Lion, we are measuring 
less than 1/2 percent degradation available battery energy year 
over year from the robust use in wide-ranging climates.
    It is important to note that these buses, although very 
different technology to diesel, meet or exceed all safety 
requirements under Federal law in each of the States in which 
they operate.
    In order for original equipment manufacturers such as Lion 
to continue to provide and grow the availability to EVs in the 
U.S. market, a stable supply chain needs to be present. The 
manufacturing capacity of vehicles is robust, as is the demand 
for these vehicles, but content continues to be based on 
volatile sources, even if the vehicles are actually built in 
America. It is critical to partner with favorable allies, such 
as Canada. The current Canadian Federal budget includes over $2 
billion in research for the implementation of funding for 
critical mineral mining and processing as well.
    Over 90 percent of the lithium-ion battery pack can be 
recycled or disposed of sustainably. The Recell Project at the 
Argonne National Lab is working to improve this as well. The 
goal is to reintroduce minerals and metals back into the supply 
chain, do it sustainably, and cost effectively. This continued 
research and recycling will be a key part of keeping up with 
the demand.
    As demand on critical minerals and metals intensifies in 
the EV era, a program of encouraging responsible use of these 
valuable resources can effectively ease the burden on supply. 
The Federal Highway Administration just released results last 
month showing that Americans drive less than 40 miles per day. 
In very few instances do commuters need maximum range on their 
vehicle. The anxiety associated with range and the resulting 
strain on the battery supply chain can be offset with robust 
investment in charging infrastructure networks and public 
education.
    Thank you for the opportunity to submit these brief 
comments to the Committee, and I invite any questions you may 
have for me.
    Thank you.
    [The prepared statement of Mr. Baguio follows:]

             [GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]

    
    Chairman Foster. Thank you, and next is Mr. Nevers.

                 TESTIMONY OF MR. CHRIS NEVERS,

            SENIOR DIRECTOR OF PUBLIC POLICY, RIVIAN

    Mr. Nevers. Chairman Foster, Ranking Member Obernolte, 
Congressman Casten, and distinguished Members of the 
Subcommittee, thank you for the honor of appearing before you 
today for this important hearing to discuss ways for the United 
States to meet surging demand for battery electric vehicle.
    My name is Chris Nevers, and I am the Senior Director of 
Public Policy for Rivian Automotive. We submitted written 
testimony to address some of the details of this hearing. I 
would like to use my oral testimony to touch on the high points 
and critical aspects surrounding electric vehicle batteries and 
the supply chain.
    Rivian is a U.S.-based manufacturer of electric vehicles 
and chargers, with vehicle production in Illinois. Our mission 
is to keep the world adventurous forever; forever meaning 
sustainability, and sustainability in this case meaning the 
electrification of all transportation.
    The key to accomplishing this mission are the three 
vehicles we now produce in Normal, Illinois: the R1T pickup, 
the R1S seven-seater SUV, and a commercial delivery van 
designed and engineered by Rivian in collaboration with Amazon. 
I'll note that the R1T is the first all-electric pickup in the 
U.S. and won the 2022 Motor Trend Truck of the Year.
    In addition to producing electric vehicles, we have 
committed to both decarbonizing our business and helping to 
protect critical natural carbon sinks, complementary and 
necessary work that is required to address climate change.
    We believe the United States must make transportation 
electrification a priority to address climate change, remain 
globally competitive, and strengthen our national economic 
security. We support congressional action to create targeted 
incentives, increase efficiency with funding and--funding 
deployment and permitting, and overcome unnecessary burdens to 
EV adoption such as State level dealer protection laws.
    We also applaud Congress for its current action to 
strengthen our domestic semiconductor supply, and we encourage 
Congress to use its bipartisan work on semiconductors as a 
model for addressing our domestic mineral supply chain as well.
    As our CEO recently said in a Wall Street Journal article, 
``Semiconductors are a small appetizer to what we are about to 
feel on battery cells over the next 2 decades.'' Although the 
demand for EVs is robust, market penetration will be limited by 
supply chain constraints.
    The business and consumer value proposition of battery 
electric trucks and fleets are enormous, but battery prices 
have actually started to rise due to commodity pricing. 
Currently battery cell production capacity still represents 
perhaps less than 10 percent of what the market will need in 
the next 10 years.
    To address the growing supply chain constraints, we need a 
whole of government approach to address surging critical 
mineral demand, starting with increasing and expediting Federal 
support for research into exploration, new extraction and 
processing methods, alternative battery chemistries, and 
recycling. The United States has the mineral resources and 
industrial capability to create a fully domestic battery EV 
supply chain, as well as world-leading environmental standards 
to ensure it is built and operated ethically and responsibly. 
There is also strong bipartisan support for increasing existing 
Federal investments, accelerating the deployment of funds, and 
removing unnecessary barriers to domestic EV adoption and 
battery development. These efforts will yield billions in new 
investment across America, create thousands of new jobs and 
ensure our supply chains continue to outpace consumer demand.
    Thank you for your time, and I look forward to any 
questions you may have.
    [The prepared statement of Mr. Nevers follows:]

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    Chairman Foster. Thank you, and next is Dr. Srinivasan.

              TESTIMONY OF DR. VENKAT SRINIVASAN,

              DEPUTY DIRECTOR OF THE JOINT CENTER

              FOR ENERGY STORAGE RESEARCH (JCESR)

        AND DIRECTOR OF THE ARGONNE COLLABORATIVE CENTER

              FOR ENERGY STORAGE SCIENCE (ACCESS),

                  ARGONNE NATIONAL LABORATORY

    Dr. Srinivasan. Chairman Foster, Congressman Casten, and 
distinguished Members of the Subcommittee, thank you for 
inviting me to testify at this important hearing.
    My name is Venkat Srinivasan, and I am here representing 
Argonne National Lab. Let me start at the most important 
message I want to convey. I believe that we are at a unique 
moment in time where the United States can become a dominant 
force in energy storage technology. We have a once-in-a-
lifetime opportunity to discover, manufacture, and 
commercialize next generation storage technologies to enable a 
carbon-free economy, ensure our energy security, create 
equitable jobs that benefit everyone, and position the U.S. as 
a leader in one of the most important technologies in the 21st 
century.
    Let me elaborate. Over the last--past decade, the cost of 
lithium-ion batteries has decreased dramatically by an order of 
magnitude. This, in turn, has led to a surge in market demand 
with the increasing penetration of electric vehicles and grid 
connected storage. We expect the U.S. battery market to 
increase by a factor of 20 in the next decade. The growing 
demand for batteries has led to significant private capital 
flowing into the battery industry, and the Biden Administration 
and Congress have sent a clear signal on the need to transition 
the country to what is a carbon free economy. This is the good 
news.
    The bad news is that our country does not have a secure 
supply to meet the growing demand. The supply gap stretches 
from minerals to materials to cells to packs. A 20-fold 
increase in cell manufacturing capacity is not a trivial task 
and takes time, money, and deep expertise, and the challenges 
get more acute as you move upstream where our country will 
continue to depend on complicated global supply chains for the 
battery materials and minerals, including cobalt, nickel, 
lithium, and graphite. These supply chains are subject to 
sudden dips in disruption like we have seen recently. Recycling 
should play an important role in bridging this operation gap, 
but it remains expensive and undeveloped. The gap is not just 
in supply chain, but also extends into the work force that is 
sorely missing to build this industry.
    Beyond these operation issues, I want to emphasize that we 
will still have a technology gap in this space. While lithium-
ion batteries have created a world where EVs are now not a 
distant dream but a reality, we still need significantly better 
batteries for economy-wide decarbonization.
    Let me give you a couple of examples. Electrifying long 
haul trucks requires energy density twice that of lithium ion 
that we have today, and for electric aviation, it is even 
harder, requiring as much as three to five times the energy 
density. These dramatic changes are not possible with 
incremental improvements to lithium-ion batteries.
    In summary, we have a shot-term challenge. We know lithium 
ion works for many applications, but we need a secure supply 
chain. But we also have a long-term challenge. We need leapfrog 
technologies that can enable a sustainable, carbon-free future. 
To solve the shot-term challenges, we suggest these five 
parallel actions.
    First, we should incentivize domestic mining, but do that 
with consideration for environmental impact, water, and energy 
use. Second, we should perform the R&D (research and 
development) to reduce the cost of recycling to enhance our 
supply, and do the kinds of research that the ReCell Center at 
Argonne is doing. Third, we should expand the research and 
development of substitutes for critical materials with emphasis 
on earth abundance and U.S. resources. Next, let us prioritize 
chemistry-agnostic R&D to ensure that the right battery is used 
for the right application, rather than relying on lithium-ion 
batteries for all the applications that are out there. Last, 
and the final one, we need to establish international 
collaborations so that we are working with our allies toward 
our common targets.
    I want to emphasize that success in these five areas 
requires seamless interaction between fundamental science, 
applied research and development, and industrial production. 
Success will also require coupling the near-term actions that 
I've mentioned with a sort of complementary long-term solutions 
that can be the basis of a sustainable carbon-free economy. We 
need storage that enables deep decarbonization that is also 
inherently safe, uses earth-abundant materials, lasts many 
decades, and is completely recycled. Such chemistry is not 
achievable with incremental improvements in today's lithium-ion 
batteries. Rather, a basic science approach that brings new 
insights into battery storage, integrates the latest tools, 
such as artificial intelligence and machine learning, and 
enables actual discovery of novel materials, architectures, and 
systems will ensure long-term U.S. leadership in this 
technology.
    The Federal Government has taken many bold steps in these 
directions. I want to call out all of DOE (Department of 
Energy) and all of government approach taken in programs of the 
Energy Storage Grand Challenge, and organizations like the 
Federal Consortium for Advanced Batteries (FCAB) that have 
really pushed the boundaries, and I want to call out the Office 
of Science with programs such as JCESR that have provided a 
pipeline of ideas that can lead to a diversified set of 
solutions.
    I will close by noting that the United States has a long 
and rich history of innovation energy storage, with world-class 
expertise in fundamental and applied research. Our country 
continues to be a hotbed for entrepreneurship, with vibrant 
startup culture. However, we have struggled to translate these 
activities to a robust manufacturing base. We now have an 
opportunity to do this. We should seize this moment to become 
the world's leader in the most important technologies of the 
21st century.
    Thank you again for giving me the time to speak at this 
meeting. I will be happy to answer any questions that you might 
have.
    [The prepared statement of Dr. Srinivasan follows:]

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    Chairman Foster. Thank you.
    Next is Dr. Amanchukwu.

             TESTIMONY OF DR. CHIBUEZE AMANCHUKWU,

              NEUBAUER FAMILY ASSISTANT PROFESSOR

        OF MOLECULAR ENGINEERING, UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO

    Dr. Amanchukwu. Chairman Foster, Honorable Casten, and all 
distinguished Members of the Committee, thank you for the 
invitation.
    I am an assistant professor at the Pritzker School of 
Molecular Engineering at the University of Chicago, and I am 
honored to join the Committee today at this pivotal moment in 
the U.S. energy industry, a moment that could define the next 
century.
    The renewable energy transition is already upon us, but we 
can learn from the past with other energy transitions. The 
advent of the internal combustion engine led to the rise of 
gasoline as a fuel source. Crude oil was easy to source in the 
U.S.; however, as car manufacturing and deployment soared, the 
U.S. became an oil importer. Dependence on foreign oil led to 
the oil shocks of the 1970's that made the U.S. vulnerable. 
Fortunately, innovation in drilling practices, such as 
horizontal drilling and proliferation of natural gas set the 
U.S. on its path as the world's top oil exporter today.
    From this history, it is important to emphasize that 
innovation, rather than diversification alone, played a primary 
role in regaining U.S.'s energy independence. This history 
provides a lens with which to view the challenges that will 
arise in the current energy transition.
    Innovation focused on alternative battery chemistries 
beyond current lithium-ion batteries is the ultimate disruptor 
and path to mitigating supply chain challenges and making the 
U.S. energy independent. Batteries are complex devices, and can 
be broken down into three primary components: the anode, the 
electrolytes, and the cathode. Many of the current supply chain 
challenges can be tied to the cathode. Promising short-term 
research efforts have focused on reducing the cobalt content 
and increasing the nickel content in these batteries.
    My research group at the University of Chicago has invested 
heavily in designing new electrolytes that can allow these 
next-generation cathodes to be used. However, nickel will 
become an even more critical material; hence, this strategy 
works only for the short-term.
    Promising long-term research efforts focus on batteries 
that do not exist today. My research group is working on some 
of these new chemistries. Alternatives that use lithium metal 
as the anode have been termed the Holy Grail because they can 
double the energy that can be stored. Some battery chemistries 
completely eliminate the use of lithium, such as sodium ion, 
fluoride ion, calcium and dual ion batteries. However, these 
battery chemistries are plagued by lack of suitable 
electrolytes and many other challenges, and suffer from poor 
understanding of the fundamental mechanism. That is why 
continued and increased funding appropriation for basic and 
fundamental research through the Department of Energy's Office 
of Science and the National Science Foundation is key.
    From the discovery of lithium cobalt oxide by University of 
Chicago alumnus John Goodenough, to the development of lithium 
nickel manganese cobalt oxide NMCs at Argonne, U.S.-based and 
U.S.-led innovation in the lithium-ion battery chemistry are 
what led to the revolution in energy storage. However, America 
lagged in translating these discoveries to the marketplace and 
fell behind its counterparts in Europe and Asia.
    The recently enacted Bipartisan Infrastructure Bill 
acknowledges these challenges and provides funding and 
incentives to U.S. companies. Even greater efforts would be 
needed to translate future battery discoveries to American 
industry. Significant effort must be placed on training the 
talent and U.S. work force that will develop next generation 
batteries, build those batteries, and manufacture electric 
vehicles here in the U.S. This is an area where universities 
have historically shone. Training women and under-represented 
minorities in battery science and electrochemistry is important 
and under-represented minorities in battery science and 
electric chemistry is important to ensure that all segments of 
U.S. society benefit from the energy transition. A curriculum 
that was heavily dominated by the thermochemistry of the past 
century will need to transition to electrochemistry for the 
next century.
    To summarize, as the U.S. ramps up deployment of electric 
vehicles and battery manufacturing, it is important that the 
U.S. continue to invest in fundamental research to develop 
alternative battery chemistries with properties that surpass 
that of current lithium ion. This alternative battery chemistry 
strategy is the pathway for the U.S. to regain its perch as the 
leader in battery technology and lead the world as it 
transitions. In the past, the U.S. innovated in batteries but 
did not manufacture. Now, we need to manufacture and continue 
innovating.
    Thank you.
    [The prepared statement of Dr. Amanchukwu follows:]

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    Chairman Foster. Thank you, and at this point, we will now 
begin the first round of questions, and the chair will 
recognize himself for five minutes.
    Dr. Srinivasan, you described meeting the battery challenge 
as a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. Dr. Amanchukwu said in his 
testimony that this moment in energy technology ``could define 
the next century.'' The Administration and Congress have heard 
this call, and we have been putting a lot of--pulling a lot of 
policy levers to help. The Infrastructure Investment and Jobs 
Act had $7 billion in funding to support EV battery minerals 
programs.
    Dr. Srinivasan, I mentioned you are familiar with all of 
these new funding streams, as Argonne will be a key player in 
carrying them out. With those in mind, if you had to identify 
one key research frontier that could still use more attention 
and resources, what would it be?
    Dr. Srinivasan. Thank you, Congressman Foster.
    I will maybe point out a priority of three that might be 
the most important to think about.
    The first one I believe it's very important for us to think 
hard about substitutions for nickel and cobalt in these 
materials. I think that in the long-term, moving away from 
these critical materials is going to be important for us in the 
country to maintain the kinds of secure supply chains that we 
will need going to the future.
    The second, which is maybe equally important, is to ensure 
that we are able to buildup the supply chain earlier in 
material refining and maybe on to capital and add-on materials. 
We do not have that as you pointed in your remarks, and I think 
it is important for us to build out that part of the supply 
chain to ensure that the many of the cell manufacturing plants 
that are coming up in the recent past are able to reach a point 
where they can get the supply of the materials from domestic 
manufacturing units.
    And the last one is, I think, as the next 10 years, I view 
recycling as being critically important and incentivizing and 
providing the R&D support to make recycling cost effective is 
going to be extremely important for us to add to the supply 
chain of these materials.
    Chairman Foster. Thank you.
    Dr. Amanchukwu, do you have a favorite area that you think 
could use more effort and attention?
    Dr. Amanchukwu. Yes, certainly. Thank you very much, 
Congressman Foster.
    I think one especially important area is on innovating in 
battery chemistries that do not exist today. So, while we are 
trying to deploy lithium-ion batteries, there will be the 
incentive to focus on solving challenges with lithium-ion 
batteries. But we need to anticipate the challenges of the next 
10, 20 years, and that often involves funding to the National 
Science Foundation and the Office of Science where there is no 
current target. So, ``pie in the sky'' ideas for battery 
chemistries.
    And then the second point is on talent. Who will build 
these batteries here in the U.S.? Who will manufacture them? 
Who are the scientists that will solve these problems? This is 
where efforts, specifically from the Federal Government on 
emphasizing battery science and electrochemistry, to make sure 
that even with the demand that we anticipate, that the U.S. can 
actually build these here in the U.S.
    Thank you.
    Chairman Foster. Thank you, and you point out that there's 
a lot of technological uncertainty in what materials will 
become crucial, and so, one of the key and difficult things 
that Congress faces is the need to sort of become venture 
capitalists and decide which minerals to invest in early.
    China has clearly placed a big bet on lithium and first-
generation lithium-ion batteries and won by that early 
investment in minerals processing. And so, do you feel that 
more could be done to partner with the minerals processing 
industry, at least for the minerals that we can see, are likely 
to be important, and what are the efficient ways to deploy 
Federal resources there to demonstrate new processing 
technologies and bring them to market?
    Dr. Amanchukwu. I think, one, yes, there are certain 
chemistries that will continue to dominate. We know that there 
are certain chemistries that will be important. So, lithium, 
nickel, cobalt, and the U.S. used to dominate lithium 
processing, actually, in the early 1990's until it fell behind 
in terms of how to process these cheaply. And so, investing in 
companies that already exist as well as fundamental science and 
the research to come up with new ideas to process lithium, for 
example, will be important for any energy transition that will 
go on in the next century.
    Dr. Srinivasan. If I can quickly add a comment to this?
    One of the reasons why Asian countries were able to move 
ahead is because they had a roadmap of where they thought the 
market was going to be. I think it's important in the United 
States to think about where we think the markets are for the 
different transportation sectors and maybe even the good 
sector, ask what kind of chemistries might be the answer, three 
years from today what do we need, 10 years from today what do 
we need, and then start to build out the industrial base that 
allows us to meet those targets.
    A little bit of that kind of road mapping exercise is going 
to be crucial for us as we think about how we are going to 
incentivize companies to do the things that will give them a 
sustainable, long-term future.
    Chairman Foster. Thank you, and my time is up, so I will 
now recognize my colleague, Mr. Casten, for five minutes.
    Mr. Casten. Thank you so much, Chairman Foster, and I am so 
excited to be here. I love that we are having this hearing, and 
not only because it's a stone's throw from my house and I got 
to see my kids before coming down here today.
    I am an entrepreneur, and I sit there and I look at these 
numbers I just pulled up--and don't quote me on this, but it's 
on the internet so it must be true. 2019 U.S. demand for 
passenger electric vehicles, 2.1 million vehicles. 2020, 3.1. 
2021, 6.7. We are in this exponential increase in demand, and 
all of the concerns that we hear is demand is growing faster 
than supply. I love that kind of problem, right? We can solve 
that and the fact that we are in Illinois, we have got this 
entrepreneurial spirit that we've not only got, you know, the 
foundational research that's happened at Argonne and our 
universities, University of Chicago, U of I, Lion, Rivian, 
the--Navistar up the road. We've got the people who are 
building this infrastructure. I go to, you know, the union 
halls at IBEW (International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers) 
where they've got the training facilities. We're owning the 
future and it's awesome, and I just love that we're doing this. 
And so, thank you all for doing what you do and embracing that.
    I do--I want to--and by the way, we also are generous. We 
don't--we share our wealth in Illinois. One of the first Loan 
Program Office investments was for Sierra Technologies down in 
Louisiana, so you're welcome, Louisiana. We are sharing with 
you.
    I want to focus on some of the supply chain issues. I know 
we got time for multiple questions, so I probably won't get 
through all this first.
    But Mr. Nevers, I want to start with you. Your boss talked 
about that, you know, we've only got 10 percent of the supply 
we need for the chain. I know you've talked about expanding 
your supply--your production in the U.S. I wonder, as you think 
about the supply chain, we've got basic materials, whether it's 
lithium or cobalt, where those are going to come from where the 
natural deposits are. We've got, you know, the first stage 
processing refining that oftentimes is going to happen close to 
the mine, you know, except in unusual situations. How much of 
the supply chain do you think you can--you know, we can put in 
North America as you think about building this out, and how 
much of the supply chain is just naturally going to be 
overseas? How do you think about that?
    Mr. Nevers. Well, thank you. That's a great question, 
Congressman, and I can get back to you with more details there. 
I think eventually, of course, depends on where we go with 
chemistries is, as the doctors had pointed out earlier on 
diversification. We're trying to onshore as much as possible. 
Eventually we would like it all, and some of that can be done 
with not only looking at some of the Mining Act on the table 
right now--of 1872--but allowing and changing how we permit.
    For example, right now if someone were to stake a claim, 
the only way for locals to voice concern is to basically 
litigate. Whereas if you had a--I know we talked earlier about 
a road map. But if you went out and actually had a map of where 
the resources are and you could sell things to be a lease or 
you can get public comment up front, I think if you did that, 
you would fill in the supply chain, as it were, at least the 
raw material aspect.
    As far as--what are they called--midstream, that could all 
be done here. We have refineries here doing similar things. We 
have the talent here. It's just realizing that, and again, once 
the batteries are here, keeping them here. Once they're here, 
they're a resource.
    I don't know if I answered your question, but I can get 
back to you.
    Mr. Casten. You know, that's great, and like I said, I know 
I am going to run out of time, but Mr. Baguio, I know you guys 
are manufacturing in Quebec, right? I'm curious how you think 
about the same question.
    Mr. Baguio. Yes, we have a saying at Lion Electric 
internally that every one year at Lion is like five years 
everywhere else. So, when you----
    Mr. Casten. I feel the same way about our job.
    Mr. Baguio. Yes. So, when you look at what we're doing, 
because we are building a battery manufacturing plant just on 
the other side of the border in Quebec as well to produce 500 
gigawatt hours per year. But that's not enough to feed the 
factory we're building right down the street.
    So, it's--we are looking for additional domestic sources of 
these batteries, and you know, the outlook is good for the next 
two, three years from our standpoint of supply chain, but we 
can't plan a business in that short term.
    So, I think the comment on having a long-term road map with 
measurable milestones to know that we're on track is going to 
be key to getting this considerable change in the way our 
economy works underway. And yes, the first phase is with 
lithium ion, and that's a big, lengthy phase. But new 
technologies, new chemistries are going to have to back that up 
as we start to try to power ships and planes and over the road 
trucks.
    Mr. Casten. OK. See, I'm out of time, so I yield back.
    Chairman Foster. Thank you, and the Chair will now 
recognize himself for five minutes.
    Mr. Baguio, I guess we all remember the three R's, reduce, 
reuse, and recycle. Alternative chemistries will help us reduce 
demand for critical materials, and we can hopefully figure out 
how to efficiently extract and recycle minerals from the old 
battery cells into new ones.
    But there's also an opportunity to reuse the entire battery 
pack. People are talking about taking batteries out of the EVs 
once they're depleted and stacking them up to create a grid 
scale energy storage device. Can you talk a little bit more 
about what Lion Electric is doing to prepare for vehicle to 
grid applications with your batteries?
    Mr. Baguio. Yes, absolutely. We have participated in five 
V2G, vehicle to grid, pilot programs across the United States, 
and recently--as a matter of fact, yesterday--signed an MOU 
(memorandum of understanding) with the Department of Energy to 
more closely examine the usefulness of these batteries in a 
grid application so that once they come out of the battery--out 
of the vehicle, I'm sorry, there are other opportunities to 
power with other renewable sources such as wind, solar, and 
hydro.
    Again, if we are taking the batteries from these vehicles 
that still have considerable energy resources in them, again, 
there are supply chain impacts. You don't have storage 
companies looking for brand new lithium ion when there is this 
vast resource across all of transportation, not just our 
vehicles, to fill that need for stationary storage.
    Chairman Foster. Thank you. It sounds like your rate of 
degradation of the battery is, you said, one percent per year?
    Mr. Baguio. Half of one percent per year.
    Chairman Chairman. Half of one percent. That's under normal 
use?
    Mr. Baguio. That's under normal use.
    Chairman Foster. So, it's mostly 200 years before----
    Mr. Baguio. And that's----
    Chairman Foster [continuing]. Your battery pack is ready to 
be sent out to pasture?
    Mr. Baguio. We'll see. We're tracking this, but the initial 
results are very encouraging.
    Chairman Foster. Wow. So, are there other things that the 
manufacturers of automobiles and vehicles have to do to 
anticipate the recycling? I remember saying, you know, one of 
the new innovations in, I think it was Tesla, is to make the 
aluminum support frame for the whole thing being filled up with 
batteries, and I looked at that and said boy, that's going to 
be hard to recycle. Whereas if you have a, you know, a 
standalone battery pack that you can just pull out and use, it 
will be easier. Are there things that are anticipated or rules 
that government could set about ease of recycling that make 
sense to contemplate?
    Mr. Nevers. Good question. I'll note our battery packs are 
modular, so you can take out the individual modules. And what's 
great about that is the optionality. So, down the road you 
could either choose to recycle or reuse whatever made most 
sense for you.
    As far as what government could do going forward, Rivian is 
for extended producer requirements guided by, actually, the 
Federal Government. Instead of having, perhaps, maybe 30, 40, 
50 State programs, we could see that coming. That would be a 
nightmare on the regulatory side. We're all for zero landfill, 
no battery ever going to landfill again. It wouldn't make any 
sense to, because they're actually worth something now.
    So, I don't know if I answered your question there, but 
there are things that you can do, including EPR (extended 
producer responsibility) and working with some of the States, 
including California and some other States who are already 
looking at implementing warranty and battery durability 
requirements that we're following closely.
    Chairman Foster. Do any of our witnesses know, are there 
other countries that are doing a better job of specifying the 
recycling ability of things that are hitting the market?
    Mr. Nevers. So, right now, the European Union Battery 
Directive, which is under review, will set recycling 
requirements. Those will be effective probably in the next 
couple of years. I will note, we are concerned there that we 
don't want to specify maybe--we don't want to specify a mandate 
of recycling percentage, just because we don't know how many 
recycled batteries are going to be available if they end up 
lasting like we expect, 10-plus years. It's going to be a while 
before we can get them back and put them into new batteries.
    Chairman Foster. So, you would prefer just sort of a 
structural requirements on you have to be able to remove the 
batteries efficiently, you have to be able to disassemble, 
perhaps, the individual cells rather efficiently?
    Mr. Nevers. Correct. We look more for extended requirements 
on the manufacturer, either battery take back or 
responsibility. They're coming anyway. Let's do them 
responsibly.
    Chairman Foster. Thank you, and my time is nearly up, so I 
will now yield the next five minutes to Representative Casten.
    Mr. Casten. Thank you.
    Dr. Srinivasan, back in my misspent youth I spent a ton of 
time working on the GREET (Greenhouse Gases, Regulated 
Emissions, and Energy Use in Technologies) model, trying to 
understand the impact of, you know, the total well-to-wheels 
cost and environmental impacts of various fuel choices.
    I wonder if you can speak--you know, we talk in electric 
vehicles about the supply chain issues of electric vehicles, 
where it comes from, the environmental--as we should. Have you 
guys done any analysis of how that compares to conventional 
vehicles? You know, my sense is that we also need weird metals 
to make an engine block, and on a lifecycle basis, I would 
assume that we use a lot more imported material to run a car 
for 20 years than we need to run an electric vehicle. That's an 
oil joke, for those of you that didn't get it.
    Have you guys, within GREET or some other context, can you 
speak to the--both in terms of domestic content and 
environmental impacts of conventional vehicles versus electric 
vehicles?
    Dr. Srinivasan. So, the GREET model has looked very 
carefully at both the internal combustion engine-based vehicles 
and the electrically based engines. I'd have to get back to you 
on details of exactly what it says about domestic versus 
foreign, but I will note that in general, making an electric 
car tends to be more environmentally energy-use wise than a 
gasoline car, and that's because much of the energy used goes 
into making the battery itself. So, you can imagine making a 
battery is a high energy process. There's a lot of high 
temperature heating that happens in different stages. Mining 
processes also take a lot of energy and refining is actually 
oftentimes at high temperatures, which take quite a lot of 
heat.
    One of the things that we think about quite a bit in the 
R&D space when it comes to the refining and the mining and the 
making of the materials is how do you make low temperature 
routes for those high temperature analogs? Just as an example, 
if you have to heat a battery cathode material to 800 degrees 
Celsius for many hours to make the actual crystal structure 
that you need, you're going to spend the energy by doing it 
either from a fossil fuel source or some sort of a hydrogen 
source to get that kind of heat that needs to be there. 
Instead, if you can find a different process, say, a solution-
based process to make that same cathode material, then all of a 
sudden instead of using 800 degrees Celsius, you can decrease 
the temperature and that will--significantly, and if you can 
get the same characteristics or even better characteristics, 
then all of a sudden, the total energy use has come down. So, 
there is quite a bit of work but if you try to link what GREET 
is telling us about energy use in EV batteries, trying to see 
how to develop alternate processes so we can find a way to 
decrease the total energy use. And I believe that this concept 
has to go upstream all the way to even the refining of 
materials where we think about how much energy and water we are 
using, so that we can develop new processes.
    So, one of the things that we want to do is integrate GREET 
into all of the innovations so that we're able to continuously 
use that as a metric to understand are we doing better than 
existing.
    Mr. Casten. Can you compare that, though, because the 
domestic content, I expect we'll get back on that, but you 
know, it also takes a lot of thermal and electrical energy to 
pump oil, to refine oil, to run a cat cracker, to distribute 
it, and I'm doing that every time I fill up my tank with oil as 
opposed to just when I buy the car and keep it for 13 years or 
whatever. How do those--just with conventional manufacturing, 
how do those balance out?
    Dr. Srinivasan. Conventional manufacturing--electric 
vehicle manufacturing is more energy use than conventional 
manufacturing without taking into consideration things like 
the, you know, the extraction of oil. We're just talking about 
making the pack itself. So, then it becomes a question of what 
is the primary energy source? Are you going to use oil in one 
case or gasoline in one case? Are you using electricity? Where 
is the electricity coming from? I think in general, all of us 
know that renewable electrons for all electric cars is the best 
way to go, but if you can't do that, it's always better to sort 
of think about it in terms of going electrification, because we 
know that they're going to gain when we drive that electric 
car.
    Mr. Casten. OK. Well, pivoting there to on the electric 
side. I just introduced a bill with Paul Tonko two weeks ago 
and I hope we get the appropriations. But I have a concern that 
because of this entrepreneurial challenge, we're seeing so much 
rising demand for electric vehicles. The--you don't have to 
grow very far before we need to build more generation, we need 
to build more transmission, we need to build more wires. We 
need to build them in the right places, which you know, not 
necessarily where the loads are right now. I'm hoping to get 
some money to the Department of Energy to fund that, but I'm 
curious if you've looked at that and have some sense of--just 
in order to meet the market demand we're seeing, how much 
supply do we need to add to the grid, and by the way, let's 
make sure it's zero carbon supply.
    Dr. Srinivasan. Yes, so we've looked to ask the two 
scenarios one can think about in the United States. One where 
we have a grid across the country with the renewable generation 
at different bases and maybe nuclear to add onto that where we 
don't have to worry about moving electrons from place to place, 
and we can deal with intermittency of renewables. That scenario 
is expensive, but also requires us to have State rights, you 
know, kind of cross State transmission lines.
    If that scenario doesn't work, then we have to go to 
distributor generation storage concept. The latter is always 
going to be more expensive because there's a lot of storage you 
have to buy, and storage can be expensive. But in the sense of 
looking at this right, if you were to go the latter route then 
the amount of batteries needed for the grid is going to be 
another approximately 6-terawatt hour to 8-terawatt hour. If 
you build transmission lines, you might be much lower, maybe 2-
terawatt hour to 1-terawatt hour, somewhere in that range.
    So, we've looked at that scenario to ask ourselves what the 
future could be, but certainly, I think the debate is on as to 
whether there's going to be a transmission line built country, 
or are we going to go more distributor generation and storage.
    Mr. Casten. Thank you. I yield back.
    Chairman Foster. Thank you. You can say a little bit more 
about that. In terms of grid storage, which is one of the 
things that I know I--both Sean and I worry a lot about, is 
there seems to be almost two problems. One is the day/night 
problem where you're talking about a battery where you're 
buying cheap electricity during the day and selling it at night 
or vice versa, and so, that requires a battery that can hold 
its charge for 1 day and the capital cost that gets recovered, 
you know, bit by bit every day. Much more challenging is the 
seasonal variation where many places in the U.S. there are two 
to one or more ratios with the availability of renewable energy 
on a seasonal basis. And that seems like it's much tougher and 
may lead to different technologies.
    Any of you have ideas on where you think the leading 
chemistries and the focus of effort on that much tougher long-
term energy storage problem might lead?
    Dr. Srinivasan. I can start and see what others have to 
think about this.
    Congressman, you're exactly correct. There is a dual 
challenge, one that we call the short duration challenge, 
anything less than 10 hours, and the long duration, which is 
now everything beyond 10 hours. So, it can be multi-day. As you 
pointed out, it could also be seasonal. And the challenge gets 
harder and harder and harder the longer and longer we desire to 
store energy.
    So, when we take seasonal, that's probably the hardest 
because of the lowest cost. Estimates are that we might have to 
be in the area of $10, $20 a kilowatt hour, just to give you 
some numbers. Today, the install cost is probably in the order 
of $250, $300 a kilowatt hour. So, we're talking order of 
magnitude decreasing costs for those applications.
    In those chemistries, it's not even clear that we want to 
be thinking about, you know, manufacturing and pulling things 
out of the ground, because all of that takes money. So, I think 
we have to start looking at alternates like things like 
hydrogen as a means of storing energy. Unfortunately, that 
requires us to store the hydrogen, which means that the 
location matters a lot. So, it's going to work in some parts of 
the country, not in others. We have to think about extremely 
low-cost electric chemical storage using things like manganese 
and zinc and materials that we know are ubiquitous, easy to--
available, but also should be easy to make into batteries so 
that every cost is going to come down dramatically.
    We also, I think, should be thinking very, very hard about 
using other forms of storage, including liquid fuels that are 
easier to store and using that as sort of a backup as we go to 
the future.
    I do think that R&D in long-term seasonal storage is going 
to be extremely important. As all of you know, the Department 
of Energy has announced the Energy Earthshot, in which one of 
them is a long duration storage shot, so I'm hopeful that as 
part of that, many of these ideas and more will be sort of part 
of the R&D portfolio.
    Chairman Foster. And it's my remembrance--Sean may correct 
me if I'm wrong--but I thought that the--what they call long 
term storage is a matter of weeks, not truly seasonal.
    Dr. Srinivasan. Right, they define long duration storage in 
the Department as anything more than 10 hours, and as you know, 
11 hours can be a lot easier target. Three months is a 
significantly harder target. So, the way I think about this is 
you should think about the time of storage on one axis and the 
cost you can have on the other axis, and the cost comes down 
dramatically as you start going toward seasonal as----
    Chairman Foster. Dr. Amanchukwu?
    Dr. Amanchukwu. I think I will just echo some of what Dr. 
Srinivasan mentioned, and I think the big part of it is 
innovation in chemistries. The chemistries that can do this 
don't exist today. So, why is that a challenge? So, one, 
electrochemical reactions that you want to control, they lead 
to side reactions, and so, can you sustain them for weeks, 
months? So, that--calendar life. So, what's the calendar life 
of these new battery chemistries that have been developed? And 
while it is easy to see that we have iron or zinc in abundance, 
typically nature is not a favorable way of--also really 
difficult to make batteries, long-term batteries with. So, 
there's a lot of innovation and science that needs to be done, 
but the promise is there. If we can do it, we have an 
electrified future.
    Chairman Foster. Thank you.
    Now, the--one of the things we've done recently is that the 
America COMPETES Act is going to be authorizing large upgrades 
to the major user facilities operated by the Office of Science, 
predominantly at the National Labs. And you know, I've always 
felt that these facilities were crucial in that they enabled 
access to scientific instruments that are really outside the 
ability of individual universities to access.
    Dr. Srinivasan, can you say a little bit about how such 
user facilities are important for moving this forward?
    Dr. Srinivasan. Thank you for that. I will say two things. 
One is a computing facility. In the last 10 years in the 
battery space, the discovery of materials has been 
revolutionized because of computation. What used to be a Ph.D. 
thesis of five years is now maybe within six months because of 
the computational--come and accelerate discovery of materials. 
So, it is extremely important for us to continue to use those 
kinds of facilities to continue discovery and acceleration.
    The second one I will call out is the Advanced Photon 
Source, which is the use of the cyclotron facility at Argonne 
National lab. We use this photon source for everything from new 
material discovery, but also to do science on things like 
manufacturing. So, you know, one thing that I want to emphasize 
is that science comes everywhere across the supply chain. Even 
an applied problem can be solved using a fundamental approach, 
and the APS (Advanced Photon Source) shows how to do that by 
looking at things like how our battery material is being made, 
what happens during the making of the battery material, what 
happens when you try to make an electrode in a battery, and try 
to understand the processes that occur there so that it can 
control them better and try to make them into something that 
can last a long time.
    So, I think the use of facilities will continue to play an 
outsized role as we think about innovation and the future.
    Chairman Foster. You spent that whole time talking about 
the APS without mentioning curing cancer.
    Dr. Srinivasan. Yes.
    Chairman Foster. Thank you. I will defer five minutes for 
Mr. Casten.
    Mr. Casten. Thank you.
    Dr. Amanchukwu, don't take this personally, but you hurt my 
feelings when you said that we needed to transition from an 
education system based on thermochemistry to one based on 
electrochemistry. You gave me a flashback of as a chemical 
engineer when my former head of engineering, who was a double 
EE, said to me, you know, a chem E is just a double EE who 
couldn't handle the math. And it was painfully true, because 
once we got to imaginary numbers, I was really lost. So, no 
offense taken, but I'll get over it.
    I do want to ask, though, how you think about sort of where 
we should be investing from an education perspective, because 
if we are making this move to electrochemistry, you know, I 
suspect there's a lot more before your line that we should--you 
know, your short line. What does that look like? How do we do 
that, and you know, given my own experience, it's hard, right? 
How do you--what do you envision we should be doing, especially 
at the Federal level, to help facilitate that transition in our 
work force?
    Dr. Amanchukwu. Yes, I am also a chemical engineer, so we 
can relate to that comment.
    So, I think there are multiple approaches that the Federal 
Government can take, and one is that you need to start early. 
So, if the benefits of the industrial revolution were not 
evenly distributed, so how do you make sure that young kids 
grow up to want to become scientists and maybe especially 
battery scientists, electrochemists. So, that's also investing 
in the education system, investing in training our teachers, 
equipping them with the skills that they need to be able to 
translate real world science problems in a way that a middle 
schooler can understand. That takes training. Investing--I'm 
probably biased, but the investing in early career faculty 
members or professors so that many institutions--many countries 
in Europe and Asia that there's greater focus on ensuring that 
early career talent have the support that they need. Research 
has shown they take the most risks in terms of scientific 
problems, and that's--those are the people we want solving 
battery problems. Yes, they can solve cancer challenges. That's 
great, but we also want those minds coming to battery science 
and electrochemistry.
    And then finally, ensuring that even those who come into 
the States, into the U.S. to do this work, so international 
collaborators, can also stay here and contribute to the science 
that we've trained them to do. So, having them leave to go back 
to their own countries is also a loss to the United States. How 
do we keep the talent that we've already trained?
    Mr. Casten. Hear, hear.
    Question for all of you, and it builds up on--follows on 
some of what Chairman Foster was asking about the recycling and 
the recycling technologies. I'm wondering how you think about 
this in a world where the battery chemistry is rapidly 
changing, and you know, I've been to recycling facilities that 
really focus on getting, you know, chemically pure strains. You 
know, eddy current field separators. I've also been to other 
recycling facilities where--like some of the battery recycling 
facilities I've seen are sort of, you know, powdering the 
cathode down and saying we're still going to maintain the 
chemical composition of this thing, but put it in a pellet that 
can be reused.
    Can we even confidently predict enough about where the 
battery technology is going to think about how we--what sorts 
of recycling facilities and technologies we should be investing 
in, or do we have to wait until the technology stabilizes to 
think about how to make sure that we do have a robust recycling 
industry on the back end? For any of you who have a thought on 
that, I'd love to know how you think about that?
    Dr. Srinivasan. I will maybe start off by sort of noting 
that I think the way the battery industry is moving, we will 
constantly see this sort of stream that is coming into 
recycling is going to be an older material compared to the 
material that we want to be putting into a battery. The 
challenge, I think, is going to last for a few decades. You 
know, we don't have a solution for that. We've already seen 
this change happening with high metal content, cobalt content 
materials really coming into the market, because the batteries 
that were made 10 years ago are now going to have to be made 
into high nickel content.
    So, for example, in [inaudible] the way we think about this 
as to ask how do we convert from one form of cathode to another 
form of cathode, so that we are always supplying the right 
cathode that seems to be the one that everybody wants to use at 
the time, but by starting with whatever input feed shows up, 
because that's the one that we put into a battery ten years 
ago. So, I think it's going to be important for us to 
constantly have that.
    I will go back to the idea of a road map. I think if you 
had a road map of where we think things are going to be in the 
next five, ten years, it's easier to sort of plan these things.
    Mr. Nevers. Congressman, I would just add--oh, by the way, 
I'm a Chem E also.
    But I would just say----
    Mr. Casten. We can all cry on each other's shoulders later.
    Mr. Nevers. I would add, this is a good problem to have. 
The fact that technology is advancing, we are not stuck in one 
place. This is actually the best problem you could have. So, it 
will turn into basically another commodity tool, if you will, 
where a battery comes in one end and out the other end, you 
have a set of commodities. I think that's what we're seeing 
long-term, and we will have time. We'll have 8 to 10 years 
plus, based on some of the EPRs we expect to see. They set up 
those requirements to adapt.
    Mr. Casten. Thank you. I yield back.
    Chairman Foster. Thank you. I guess as a physicist, I will 
refrain from quoting what physicists say about engineers, which 
is probably the same thing that mathematicians say about 
physicists. So, we are probably--we know where we are in the 
ladder of snobbery in academia, I guess.
    But let's--if we think a little bit more about, you know, 
sort of the future of vehicles and the recycling strategy. You 
know, there is sort of--there's a flashlight scenario where 
you'd plan on replacing the batteries many times over the 
lifetime of cars. However, there's the iPhone strategy where it 
costs so much to replace the battery, they might as well just 
get the next model. Where do you think the vehicle industry 
will be going in these? You know, both for frequent use 
vehicles like delivery trucks, and also for, you know, consumer 
vehicles?
    One of my big worries in this is that we really want to 
deploy these batteries to avert CO2 emissions, and 
the worst thing you can do is build a big, expensive battery 
pack that stays in the garage of some rich person. You actually 
want to get that battery out there and you want to charge and 
discharge it as many times as you can, you know, basically beat 
it to death as quickly as possible to avert the most C02.
    So, where do you think the tradeoffs are going to be there?
    Mr. Nevers. Well, thank you for that question, Chairman. 
There's a lot of components to that.
    First of all, if you want to make sure the vehicles are 
being used, there are other mechanisms that can be in place. 
For example, EPA is looking at an E-RINS (Electric--Renewable 
Identification Numbers) program as far as their RFS (renewable 
fuel standard) rule that will incentivize use. States also have 
clean fuel standards that incentivize use or displacement of 
conventional vehicle miles with electric miles. So, that's 
probably the first piece.
    As far as how long will these vehicles last, it really 
depends on, I think, on the class. As you get into the medium- 
and heavy-duty vehicles, you're looking at decades and you will 
probably see more battery swaps than you will on light duty. 
With the light and medium duty, which is where our R1T and R1S 
are, you will probably see at least one battery swap if it were 
to last 15, 20 years based on our warranty that we have right 
now. But that's going to depend on the consumer, you know, in 
the long run.
    Mr. Baguio. Yes, historically when you look at how long a 
vehicle's, you know, useful life is, you know, when you look at 
a school bus or a class six truck or a tractor----
    Chairman Foster. I remember when I was a child, you know, 
there was an even money bet whether the car would just rust 
into a pile of junk, you know, before the drivetrain failed.
    Mr. Baguio. Right, and historically, older meant dirtier 
and more costly, but with this EV future we are talking about, 
the platforms in medium- and heavy-duty are so robust you can 
run that chassis for decades, as was previously stated.
    So, we're going to see more battery swaps once those come 
out. And also, when you are connecting your vehicle to the 
grid, you're going to see more cycles. So, those batteries will 
have to come out sooner. It's not just based on the vehicle's 
duty cycle, it's going to be based on what everybody wants from 
that battery, including utilities, and there instances even in 
Virginia where they are pulling the battery even before its 
done with its useful life as a source of energy to make the 
vehicle move, because they have other plans for stationary 
storage and microgrid.
    So, I think it's going to be all over place, but the good 
news is older in EV doesn't necessarily mean dirtier and more 
costly.
    Dr. Srinivasan. If I can add a very quick comment to that. 
I should note, I think, because you are on the record, I am 
also a chemical engineer, so I thought it was just important 
for me to say that.
    One of the things that is happening in the battery 
community is we think it's extremely important, especially for 
the things that you guys were talking about--and also the need 
to use vehicle to grid on an ongoing basis, to have batteries 
that can last many decades. So, there is a lot of work going on 
in the battery community trying to understand why degradation 
occurs and how do we extend the life of these batteries?
    Probably the biggest challenge that we are facing is 
predicting the life of the batteries. So, if something has to 
last 20 years and the applications are changing because we are 
suddenly going to V2G which we were not doing in the beginning, 
and we don't quite know how degradation is going to be impacted 
by how we are going to use the battery, and nobody wants to 
wait 20 years to find out what the life is. So, a big part of 
what we're doing is using tools like machine learning and 
artificial intelligence and use of facilities at the labs to 
start to think about how do we take early data, accelerate some 
of the mechanisms, and try to see how to predict the life of 
these things.
    Chairman Foster. One of the concepts that was big about a 
decade ago was the idea of hot swapping batteries, and I guess 
that is sort of being reborn in China where they are doing long 
haul trucking by swapping. What is the status of that thinking 
in the United States?
    Mr. Baguio. At this point, you know--and we have seen 
models for that as well in other countries. Israel is doing 
something similar. But it's--you know, there are so many duty 
cycles right now that are the first step for heavy duty EV 
that, you know, we need to check off that first step as well. 
There's so many duty cycles that are under 200 miles per day. 
Every refuse truck in the United States, school buses, we've 
already well talked about, dredge trucks going from ports of 
entry to distribution centers, very short miles. So, you know, 
we are very focused--and I am only speaking for Lion at this 
point. But we are very focused on active-duty cycles.
    And as both of you know, our real focus is being able to 
hand keys to something, to a heavy-duty vehicle, and have 
somebody drive it that day. This is not years away. This is 
going to fit into your operation today when we hand you the 
keys. And I know both of you have been handed keys and have 
driven our school bus here in Illinois.
    So, I think that is our focus now, but I think in a long-
term view, yes, it will be part of our business plan to look at 
longer range vehicles.
    Chairman Foster. Thank you, and I will remind everyone that 
when we did a lap around your building, I just completely 
crushed Adam Kinzinger for the lap time. I just want--five 
minutes for Mr. Casten.
    Mr. Casten. Yes. Let's make sure we have that on the record 
for posterity.
    The--with all respect to our colleagues, I love the fact 
that it's just Congressman Foster and I, because we really get 
to dig into the details having these multiple rounds, and 
it's--I appreciate going--taking the time.
    I have a big, meaty question on the science and a big, 
meaty question on economics. I want to start with Dr. 
Srinivasan. I'm sorry, I keep struggling to pronounce your 
name. The--25 years ago when I was working as a chemical 
engineer, the conventional wisdom was that the automotive 
sector was going to go from lead acid to nickel metal hydride. 
Lithium ion was this interesting consumer electronics battery 
that didn't really have an application in the auto sector. And 
of course, thanks to all the technological research, we have 
done that.
    We have also basically run down the periodic table, right, 
in chasing sort of lower--higher mass densities, higher 
volumetric densities. We've gone from 200 molecular weight to 
whatever nickel is, 50-something, down to three. Are we at a 
practical limit on mass weight densities with lithium ion? You 
know, is that simple characterization right? And then 
separately, should we be thinking about fundamentally different 
chemistries in grid-based applications where we don't have the 
same weight constraints, as we think about how optimize the 
supply chains?
    Dr. Srinivasan. Maybe I'll start off by saying we 
absolutely have a lot of room left with lithium-based 
chemistries, so we obviously have spoken a little bit about 
lithium-ion batteries, the fact that we have removed cobalt and 
nickel, but if you now move toward the kinds of chemistries 
that we have broadly called solid state, which is really based 
on lithium metal, it fundamentally changes the energy density 
constraints that we're going after. It allows us to not only 
use lithium metal instead of using graphite, which allows us to 
increase energy density by a factor of 30 to 40 percent, but it 
allows us to go toward cathodes like oxygen and sulfur cathodes 
that are much higher energy density than today's sort of 
transition metal oxide chemistries.
    So, if you look at raw numbers--and I will be very careful 
here, because sometimes--energy densities are not what actually 
one can get. But in theory, one should be able to get 
significantly higher energy density, maybe as much as an order 
of magnitude compared to lithium ion. In practice, that is 
going to be very hard to do, only because these chemistries 
like oxygen and sulfur are very difficult to control, but we 
think there is a possibility of going somewhere between 2 to 
2.5 x energy density increase based on these new chemistries. 
So, that is the first thing I will say.
    The second one--and you picked on a very important point, 
which I think when we look at the grid, I was telling you some 
numbers before where we might end up requiring 5-terawatt hour 
or 10-terawatt hour of energy density for batteries for the 
grid. We need to think about a diversified set of supplies, and 
one important constraint we can remove is the energy density, 
volumetric and gravimetric. We don't have to worry about that. 
We have to worry a lot about, I think, multi-decadal lifetimes. 
Solar panels last 25 years, your battery cannot be replaced 
every 8 years. You have to think hard about safety. It is going 
to be extremely important to have very safe batteries.
    So, I do think that as we look at the grid, we have to 
start thinking about chemistries that are low cost, are based 
on, say, water-based so they are not flammable, and that's 
where I think some R&D really is needed for us to get to the 
kinds of chemistries that move away from lithium. Today, there 
is a tendency to use lithium for both applications only because 
it is available. The economics are such that it is the one that 
makes the most sense, but I think we do have to start thinking 
about it from an R&D perspective, especially for applications 
on the grid side.
    Mr. Casten. I want to pivot onto my big, meaty economics 
question. Mr. Baguio and Mr. Nevers, the--we're sitting here 
looking at this COMPETES Act that we're hopefully going to get 
through the Senate that's going to bring, you know, $57 
billion, something like that, to re-onshore domestic 
manufacturing. We are seeing a whole lot of companies who are 
saying, you know, my lesson from COVID is these supply chains 
are too brittle. I need to bring more manufacturing back 
overseas, and we are seeing that in our economic numbers that 
for the last year and a half and for the foreseeable future, 
we're creating jobs a lot faster than we're creating workers.
    I don't know how that doesn't lead to significant wage 
inflation, and everybody who has a job is pretty excited about 
that. Everybody who has to buy things from people earning 
higher wages complains about that, right? And I'm wondering how 
you, as you look at sort of the economic landscape, do you see 
that--I mean, how do we skin that cat? Do we basically say 
we're going to accept higher wages and therefore higher cost of 
consumer goods, and we're going to have a marketing solution 
how to fix that, or are we going to say, this 30-year trend 
toward--let's just offshore everything because it's cheaper, 
regardless of the consequences that we're not going to be able 
to separate that. How do you--I mean, we think about that a lot 
in our job. How do you guys think about that tension?
    Mr. Nevers. Thank you for that simple question, 
Congressman.
    I would say we're trying to onshore as much as possible, 
and that means everything from battery production, vehicle 
production, to charger production. I would also say that one 
thing Congress could help with would really be streamlining the 
visas for skilled workers, and there are a couple reasons for 
that. Not just because you need someone for the job, but if you 
think of it this way, bringing in the right skilled worker 
might help keep more jobs in the U.S. So, that's probably what 
we're looking to do is push for greater access to international 
workers that have the skills so we can onshore. So, I think 
that's sort of the key enabler is being able to bring in the 
skilled people so you can keep all the rest of the jobs here, 
and onshore as much as possible.
    Mr. Baguio. Yes, and I guess one component that maybe isn't 
real evident out there, but what we're trying to do is start 
earlier with the worker and work with STEM (science, 
technology, engineering, and mathematics) programs at the high 
school level and even middle school level in some cases. As you 
both know, the city of Joliet has the Nation's oldest junior 
college in the United States, and we are working closely with 
them to identify that worker at a very early stage, because 
workers that are just now entering the work force for the first 
time are very excited about EV. This is their reality where it 
may not have been the reality for us on the panel here. But 
starting early, developing some of those skills, whether it is 
manufacturing, whether it is engineering, early on and really 
creating that work force and steering them toward us as opposed 
to other things is part of a strategy that I think is going to 
work in this new, exciting field.
    Mr. Nevers. And if I may, I can get back to you later on 
some of the details that we, too, are working with both 
universities on training.
    Dr. Amanchukwu. I can add something very quickly.
    Not only do we start them young, but the changes in the 
transportation industry is going to affect those who are 
already in internal combustion engines. So, how do you reskill 
workers? How do you provide certificate programs? So, a lot of 
people who have already been trained on one technology to then 
equip them to be able to move on to a different technology, and 
that is also an important part of the portfolio.
    Mr. Casten. Thank you. I yield back.
    Chairman Foster. Now, if you talk about the very non-
applied research, I'm--you know, things like transformative 
chemistries. Of all the papers that you read coming in, you 
know, what fraction come in from Europe, from the United 
States, from China, from Asia, the rest of Asia as a whole? And 
also, what fraction of them are sort of hidden inside stealth 
mode companies?
    So, if you would just sort of give, you know, a quick guess 
as to what--you know, when you read an interesting paper, where 
does it come from these days?
    Dr. Amanchukwu. I guess I can start. That's a tough 
question and I do not have numbers, but I think when we read 
interesting papers, they actually come from everywhere now, not 
just the U.S. The U.S. used to lead the number of innovations 
that came out, but that comes from everywhere in Asia, in 
China, in Europe also. And that's a good thing. I think that's 
an important thing for the transition. If only the U.S. 
transitions, we are still suffering from climate change 
problems. The entire world has to transition together.
    But one thing that we have seen is that there has been 
greater investment in Asia and Europe on these technologies 
than we've seen here in the U.S., especially in the fundamental 
research and R&D. So, that's where we need more support, 
because we have world-class universities, we have world-class 
researchers that can bring in talent from everywhere. But how 
do we actually get them to work on battery and electrochemical 
related challenges?
    Chairman Foster. Compared to, say, social media startups or 
Wall Street or crypto----
    Dr. Amanchukwu. I wouldn't blame them. They pay more.
    Chairman Foster. It's a cultural problem that somehow all 
the rewards in our economy go to the people with social media 
startups rather than the people that design the integrated 
circuits that make the whole thing possible. And the same thing 
is true of, you know, so much of our economy, you know, at the 
very end of the value chain, somehow that's where all the 
rewards come, and I struggle with that a lot.
    Dr. Srinivasan. Some quick thoughts to that. I want to echo 
what Dr. Amanchukwu said, if you go back 20 years ago, I used 
to be editor of a journal where most of the papers used to be 
from the United States, Japan, and maybe Europe. Today, it has 
changed pretty dramatically. There's a lot of papers from all 
over the world, especially from China. That's just the reality, 
and that has been happening as a trend every year for the last 
2 decades, I would say.
    I will note, however, when you look at the startup culture, 
it does feel like United States still has that sort of real 
entrepreneurial spirit where we see a lot of ideas, especially 
compared to Europe where we see a significant amount of lower 
sort of, I would say, you know--going after things in more of 
the sort of manufacturing. That is what we are seeing a lot 
more in Europe. So, the U.S. still continues to have that kind 
of, you know, sort of the entrepreneurial spirit where they're 
trying to take technologies from lab to market. My 
understanding is this is also increasing in Asian countries. 
There's a lot of emphasis there where they're trying to look at 
startups and new innovation, so I think we are going to see--we 
are in a world where competition is worldwide. We are seeing a 
lot of different things that are happening.
    But the last point you made, Congressman Foster, I will 
note that in the last two years, something has changed in the 
battery industry. We are now seeing a tremendous, you know, 
talent has become a huge issue as we've all been talking about 
here. So, we see a lot of people looking at the energy sector, 
asking is that a way for them to get the riches, especially in 
startups. We've seen a lot of these special acquisition 
companies that have gone public and there's been a lot of 
stocks that have been issued to these companies, and to the 
employees. So, we are seeing the beginnings of a trend where we 
see, I think, the earlier carrier people choosing energy over 
software and seeing the financial incentives are going in that 
direction. I don't know if that's going to be a long-term 
trend, but certainly something that looks encouraging.
    Dr. Amanchukwu. And just to quickly add, even those who are 
working on software, working on software for energy 
applications. So, how do you use--if you look at an electric 
vehicle, it is software-driven. Your battery management system, 
how do you predict battery lifetime as Dr. Srinivasan 
mentioned, all of that also uses expertise that has been 
developed for artificial intelligence for deciding is it a cat 
or a dog? Those technologies can translate to material 
discovery, and so, there is that--and young people are very 
interested in moving to energy storage, or just energy in 
general.
    Chairman Foster. Yes, and so, there is a lot of sort of 
shared intellectual space between, you know, the study of how 
different proteins may bind together and the interactions when 
you get an ion inside a cathode. So, there's--and it's much 
more computational. It's not like old style thermochemistry 
where you've got a big vat of this at this temperature and 
doing something.
    Dr. Amanchukwu. Thermal chemistry did power the industrial 
revolution, so it's played an important role in energy 
transition.
    Chairman Foster. And I guess catalysts were always like 
that. There was always microstructure to be understood.
    Anyway, I am now down to 10 seconds, so I'll turn it back 
to you.
    Mr. Casten. So, the power of good staff, they are reminding 
me of areas that I should have followed up on earlier.
    Mr. Nevers, I understand, if my notes are right, that back 
in 2019 I think one of your colleagues answered the question I 
was asking Dr. Srinivasan earlier. They said that the--over the 
life cycle, factoring in manufacturing and fuel use, that an 
electric vehicle was 40 percent lower CO2 emissions? 
I see you nodding your head, so hopefully that's jogging 
memory.
    Do you--I'm curious if that used the GREET models, and to 
what degree that assumption was based on a grid mix, and so as 
the grid cleans up, how much does that come down?
    Mr. Nevers. Well, thank you for the question, Congressman.
    I'll get back to you on the GREET model aspect.
    Mr. Casten. OK.
    Mr. Nevers. I'll have to get back to you on that, but I 
would point to a new study that came out last year from the 
International Council of Clean Transportation, and they 
actually revised those numbers. And now, it's 60 to 68 percent 
more efficient than an ICE, and that--when you talk about fuel 
mix, that's life cycle. That's average life cycle in the U.S., 
so that includes battery development or battery production, 
vehicle production, and fuel. And that's marginal--that's a 
marginal delta to ICEs.
    Mr. Casten. I'm assuming you're making some assumption 
about the mix of fuels that form the power on the grid that 
you're using to charge that?
    Mr. Nevers. Yes. So, the paper came out last year, and it 
used a national average.
    Mr. Casten. OK.
    Mr. Nevers. And I could forward that paper to you. 
Interestingly enough, there was another study done just 
recently. I think it was the Center for Automotive Research and 
maybe Ford that showed that some of the larger vehicles like 
pickups, when you displace gasoline pickup with an EV, you 
displace about 1-1/2 times more CO2 than the similar 
passenger car. And why that's important for us is 70 percent of 
our customers are first-time EV buyers, so you're really--
you're going at the market that really is the heaviest 
polluting chunk, if you will, and displacing those vehicles one 
at a time really--it's not just the 60 percent. It's the 1-1/2 
on top of that.
    Mr. Casten. OK.
    Mr. Baguio, I understand that you started your career as a 
bus driver? Do I have that right?
    Mr. Baguio. I did. Yes.
    Mr. Casten. I'm assuming a diesel bus, probably.
    Mr. Baguio. It was a diesel bus, yes.
    Mr. Casten. It's got to be kind of cool that you now have 
something without a tailpipe on it that you're taking out.
    Have you guys--we're talking about CO2, but 
shifting to the criteria pollutants, you know, there's no 
shortage of research that not providing idle diesel buses, you 
know, especially in urban areas, not only has health benefits, 
but huge economic benefits because people live longer lives. 
I'm wondering if anybody--and this could be for you, given your 
history, or any of the rest of you through this. Have we looked 
at what that offsetting economic gain that comes from not 
having the health costs of particulate pollution and everything 
else that comes with that out of the back of the idling school 
bus?
    Mr. Baguio. Yes. I can tell you that I did start my career 
as a school bus driver, you know, driving a route in between my 
college courses, and it was a great job. Eventually I became a 
general manager of large vehicle locations. So, you know, at 
one point I was in Los Angeles operating over 300 buses for the 
school district there, and you'd walk in at six in the morning 
and you would have that many diesel buses starting all at once. 
All of your employees walking into that environmental certainly 
affected our ability to keep people at work and health issues, 
and we're still really understanding what the--you know, how 
magnified that was because of the environment. And your 
mechanics and all those other folks. So, there's certainly an 
impact in when you walk into, like, a Twin Rivers School 
District in Sacramento, California, where they are well on 
their way to converting to all zero emission, the environment 
for the worker every morning and afternoon is very different 
from what I experienced in the mid-'90's. There was also--
someone smarter than me, an eighth grader in the Miami-Dade 
School District did a science project measuring diesel 
particulate inside the bus, outside the bus, in the classroom, 
and the worst air that her and her friends were breathing was 
inside that school bus going to school and going home. So, 
there's impacts on health. There's impacts on learning. A lot 
of things that can be measured economically certainly.
    So, you know, making this transition to EV even more 
important.
    Mr. Casten. Has anybody tried to quantify that? I mean, 
we--I spent a lot of time trying to get people to understand 
that we subsidized the fossil fuel sector in ways that distort 
capital allocation that we get away from it, and you know, to 
the extent that Medicaid is subsidizing the diesel fuel 
industry, it distorts markets. I'm wondering, has anybody tried 
to quantify those numbers and figure out, like, what is the 
scale of that cost we are accepting as a society?
    Mr. Baguio. We have not done that at Lion Electric, but we 
do pay attention to organizations--non-profits like CalStart 
and the American Lung Association, the American Medical 
Association has done some things. But I haven't seen that, you 
know, dollar for dollar what are the impacts. There are 
certainly measurable statements in the, you know, loss of life 
and things like that.
    Mr. Nevers. If I may, Congressman. EPA is looking at new 
round of rules, 2027 and beyond for light duty and medium, 
heavy-duty vehicles. This would be hopefully in the regulatory 
impact analysis. Having worked there before, it's real easy to 
put in zeroes, and that's what you get for EVs. You put in 
zeroes for pollution. So, yes, we don't have those numbers 
either, but we're really excited because we have 100,000-unit 
contract or agreement with Amazon, and those are largely going 
to be displacing stop and go gas and diesel vehicles in some of 
these areas. So, maybe that would be a good question for some 
folks over at EPA, you know, what is the real-world air impacts 
of electrification, especially some of the urban areas?
    Mr. Casten. I know I am out of time, but I see Dr. 
Amanchukwu, so if Chairman Foster will allow, I would welcome 
your response.
    Dr. Amanchukwu. It's very quick. So, the Energy Policy 
Institute of Chicago is doing that research on trying to 
quantify the impacts of pollution and how that can be used for 
justifying the electric transformation.
    Mr. Casten. OK, thank you.
    I will yield back.
    Chairman Foster. When we talk about, you know, securing the 
supply chains, does that mean securing the supply chain in the 
good old US of A, into North America into the free democracies 
of the world? I guess--well, where does Rivian and Lion 
Electric, where do you view a secure supply chain as coming 
from? How are you handling that in your strategic planning?
    Mr. Baguio. Obviously in our near-term plan, there is still 
heavy dependence on cells coming from the Asian market in 
general; however, you know--and again, to just to reiterate 
what an important topic is we're discussing today, but there's 
also efforts in Canada as we're opening battery manufacturing, 
working with both Quebec--province of Quebec and also Canada to 
identify sources that--mining sources that are going to feed 
that battery manufacturing. It is certainly part of our long-
term goal, and also do that here in the U.S. We were looking at 
Joliet as strictly vehicle manufacturing, but we were really 
looking at probably having some battery manufacturing happening 
there as well to close that gap between the 20,000-vehicle 
capacity that we'll be building down the street versus the 
17,000 vehicles that our battery plant will supply in the 
Province of Quebec.
    So, you know, again, it's a phased process. We have to go 
where the batteries are so we can get these vehicles into 
people's hands, but looking at a North American, Central 
American, even in some cases, South American source has to be 
part of our longer term.
    Mr. Nevers. I would just add we're all for, I guess they 
call it ally shoring or leveraging existing diplomatic power, 
if possible, and really, that goes beyond just availability. It 
goes to sustainability and transparency. So, as part of our 
mission, we wouldn't want to--and I don't want to speak--but I 
think we all agree, we don't want to outsource just to find out 
later that maybe there was an issue with said outsource because 
there wasn't transparency or it wasn't done in a sustainable 
manner.
    So, the extent we can onshore that's great, and ally 
shoring, I think, is important. I guess the question would be--
back to the Subcommittee would be is there a way we can develop 
allies with the strategic goal in mind? We've done it in the 
past, obviously, you know, looking at different countries and 
why we're there. Why couldn't we do the same for these 
resources?
    Chairman Foster. And I think that you are right that that's 
something that government really has a role in. You know, we 
have to decide where our incentives should apply to, you know. 
Should they be the free democracies of the world, which would 
be my preference. I have to say, I'm very impressed at the 
Biden Administration's stance toward that. They are saying we 
have to make our economy, you know, really not reliant on 
countries that we don't--shouldn't be trusting from the 
strategic point of view, or a human rights point of view. And 
the difficulty is how we set up the government incentives to 
make sure that you don't get your clocks cleaned by countries 
that offshore to cheap and abusive production facilities.
    Go ahead.
    Mr. Nevers. Yes, I just wanted to add, we don't want to see 
this as a race to the bottom where companies are going to, as 
you mentioned, Chairman, to basically the country with the 
lowest common denominator in terms of environmental or human 
rights.
    Dr. Srinivasan. Maybe make three quick points here. First 
is the Federal Consortium for Advanced Batteries, which was 
championed by the Department of Energy that brings together 
DOE, DOD (Department of Defense), Commerce Department, State 
Department, other agencies, as really thinking about a holistic 
view on how to have a secure supply, including the sort of 
collaborations with allied countries. That's the first thing I 
wanted to point out.
    The second point I wanted to quickly make is that for 
security, one needs a diversity of materials. So, the problem 
with cobalt and graphite is that they're concentrated in one 
country. So, having materials that have a wider availability in 
the world--nickel, for example, is one of them, actually--can 
provide us an opportunity to think about this from a secure 
way.
    The last thing I'll quickly point out is that last year, 
the Argonne National Lab along with the DOE and the Department 
of Energy started a consortium called Li-Bridge which is really 
aimed at bridging the supply chain gap. It's a public/private 
partnership, and part of the public/private partnership is 
looking closely at where this road mapping exercise is going to 
go, and which part of the world do we have those kinds of 
materials. So Li-Bridge will be talking to this FCAP group and 
sort of making sure we are coordinating with the Federal 
Government so that we provide a view on what industry thinks 
the future is going to be, and how the Federal Government may 
be able to help us as we go to that future.
    Chairman Foster. Well, when you figure that out, let us 
know. You know, trying to optimize the Federal subsidies for 
the right set of things is an ongoing challenge.
    Let's see. At this point, I am done with questions. Mr. 
Casten, do you have additional?
    Mr. Casten. Well, I will leave--maybe to put the question 
back to you all. You guys have been very generous with your 
time.
    The--you know, this transition to clean energy broadly 
strikes me as being both enormously optimistic, because all the 
transitions make us--we have more money in our pockets because 
we don't have to pay for fuels anymore. We have cleaner air. 
We're creating all these jobs. And pessimistic because it is 
creating a tremendous wealth transfer from those parts of the 
world that have depended on resource extraction to those parts 
of the world that depend on having access to cheap energy. And 
that should be easy, but there are politics involved there.
    There's a report I see out today that Blackstone has said 
that global decarbonization is a $50 trillion investment 
opportunity, and while the politics sometimes make it hard for 
government to lead, we can at least follow. And I'd love any 
closing thoughts that any of you have, if you were in our 
shoes, what would--given where capital is flowing, given how 
exciting and entrepreneurial this market is, if you could ask 
for one thing from Congress to sort of fix and make sure that 
it flows in a way that delivers the kind of social outcomes we 
want, what would you like to say to us?
    Mr. Baguio. I'll start with that response, and I think a 
lot of what's happening or what we're seeing happening now 
especially with the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act that 
we're seeing the Federal Government in an unprecedented way 
really take action for zero emission technologies. But what I 
would like to see, the ask would be to really curb funding for 
legacy fuels, fossil fuels. I think we've decided as a society 
which direction we're going, and whatever we can do to get 
there faster. We're trying to overcome over 100 years of fossil 
fuel culture, and it is going to take that initial push. But at 
companies like Lion and others like us, we understand that this 
investment means we get out range up, we get our prices down, 
and not just achieve parity with the legacy fossil fuels, but 
improve upon that performance.
    So, you know, we would like to see continued unprecedented 
investment in this sector also, but also holding us accountable 
to achieve that eventual goal of giving something back better 
to the society of the United States that performs better than 
what we've just settled for for the last 100 years.
    Mr. Nevers. Thank you for the question. It's really hard to 
pick, but I guess that my ask would be an easier one, and that 
is first, do no harm, and when it comes to, for example, 
discussions around adjusting the 30D tax credit, do not exclude 
those manufacturers that have orders, have customers expecting 
a tax credit, but if there are some changes to that credit or a 
cap, it could really disincentivize future investment and 
future startups. So, that would be my concern there. First, do 
no harm on 30D.
    Dr. Srinivasan. Maybe I'll quickly say something that I 
said in my earlier remarks. I view the energy transition as a 
two-prong problem, short term for the supply challenge, get 
these batteries out there, get us decarbonization as quickly as 
possible. But also as long term, to be sustainable, carbon-
free, or completely sustainable materials supply, secure supply 
kind of a world.
    And that second one requires long-term R&D. The first one 
requires more, I would say, combination of long-term and short-
term R&D, and so, having a steady ship that sort of lasts those 
10, 15, 20 years where all of these are incentivized would 
probably be the most important thing for us to ensure that 
we're able to move the transition and so that we don't end up 
with some fit starts or where we go in one direction and then 
have to change direction again.
    So, I would say that steady ship is probably the most 
important thing.
    Dr. Amanchukwu. Again, just echoing my earlier testimony, 
increase funding support to--for basic and fundamental science 
will always make the U.S. ready for whatever transition. Once 
we have the fundamental and basic research science happening 
here in the U.S., and building talent. Talent is key. It 
doesn't matter--any industry that comes, if you don't have the 
talent, you will not be able to sustain that industry. Those 
two things are key, two things from the Federal Government. So, 
increased funding for the NSF and the Office of Science at DOE, 
and building talent especially.
    Thank you.
    Mr. Casten. Thank you.
    Chairman Foster. Thank you, and I guess I'll just close 
with agreeing violently with all of you, especially the last 
point. When you read one of those really impressive papers from 
some place you've never heard of before, we want to be able to 
hire that person and bring them into the U.S., and if they're 
some student, we want to--and we've trained them, we want to 
staple a green card to their Ph.D. thesis. It is something that 
we're hoping to get into the COMPETES Act to really make that a 
permanent U.S. policy, which would be transformative.
    You know, we're about to reach the point where the total 
cost of ownership of electric vehicles will be less than 
internal combustion vehicles, and that was only possible 
because of decades of federally funded research, and incentives 
to bootstrap the business. I think we should remember that 
lesson because it's only once we've convinced the world that 
zero emissions technologies are cheaper than fossil fuel 
technologies that we're going to be able to win the battle for 
climate change, not only in the United States which can afford 
to decarbonize our economy, but in the rest of the world we're 
not going to want to burn fossil fuels because zero emission 
vehicles are cheaper.
    So, I want to thank you all for your part in that battle, 
and with that, we are looking forward to the Committee visit to 
Argonne National Labs, and we will be adjourned.
    [Whereupon, at 12:45 p.m., the Subcommittee was adjourned.]

                                Appendix

                              ----------                              


                   Answers to Post-Hearing Questions



                   Answers to Post-Hearing Questions

Responses by Dr. Venkat Srinivasan


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