What tonsillectomies taught me about electric vehicles

My sons – along with 500,000 other children – had their tonsils removed this past year. This “routine" procedure has a low probability of complication, but the risk is not zero. Though tonsil retention may not yield a fatal outcome, families like ours opt to accept this modest risk, schedule surgery, and invest in a week of ice cream and Netflix.

The appeal of resolving a daily stress – like trouble sleeping – wins out over the remote risk of extreme outcome – like surgical complication.?These trade-offs – though acutely personal in the waiting room – impact many choices in modern life – like how to think about buying an electric vehicle (EV).

When we first invested in South 8 Technologies in 2021, we did not fully realize the power of this logic for the EV market. South 8 was developing novel lithium-ion battery technology to solve for the low-probability risk of EVs catching fire and the high-impact benefit of faster charging in cold weather environments for EVs.

At the time, we thought the fire risk would drive the greatest interest. Across 2017-2022, approximately 120k Chevy Bolts were recalled, and in a few instances, people were directed to park their cars outside of the garage due to fire risk .?Yet, in the same period, electric vehicle adoption steadily grew in the United States, even accelerated between 2021 to 2022 – following and during three successive major Bolt battery recalls. Despite many headlines about EV fire risk, EV sales marched onward. Buyers looked past the limited risk of a complication to the everyday delight of their EVs.

As it turns out, fires did not stop people from buying electric vehicles, but cold weather gave buyers chills.?

When the weather turned cold last winter, we saw a flurry of headlines about the challenges of EVs, with a focus on high-probability and low consequence pain points: EV range, reliable charging and reduced performance due to cold weather. Unlike the remote risk of fire, these daily discomforts impacted buying interest by consumers enough to cause the first downward shift in research firm JD Power’s forecast on EV adoption.

In addition to addressing one of the chemistry challenges of EV batteries, South 8 also addresses one of the psychological challenges. By making charging more predictable from summer to winter, EV drivers get more consistency - enabling confidence to manage charging anxiety. To support this effort, the Department of Energy awarded South 8 over $3 million as part of the EVs4ALL initiative .

Science gave us the confidence to put our children through their surgeries last month, and hopefully science will help give EV buyers the confidence to continue to drive the energy transition.

FWIW,

Whitney

P.S. If you want to meet the CEO of South 8, Tom Stepien will be at the HTVD conference in Washington DC from May 7-8.? Come say hi!