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Published on November 22nd, 2019 |

by Nicolas Zart

Lucid’s Atieva Formula E Battery Packs A Punch For Season 6

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November 22nd, 2019 by Nicolas Zart

We haven’t heard much from Atieva lately, the electric vehicle (EV) technology company from Lucid Motors. That’s for a good reason. It is working harder than ever and just announced a new battery pack for Formula E’s 6th season.

The Lucid Motors Air unveiling. Photo by Nicolas Zart

Atieva is the Silicon Valley-based EV technology company held by Lucid Motors. I interviewed Peter Rawlinson, Chief Executive Officer and Chief Technology Officer of Lucid, two years ago after taking a ride in the Air. It was an impressive demonstration of the potential of EVs in general, and specifically the Air, back then in its Alpha stage. Rawlinson has a fascinating background, having worked on the Model S’s architecture. He was Vice President of Vehicle Engineering at Tesla and Chief Engineer of the Model S. He led the engineering of the Model S from a clean sheet to production readiness while building the engineering team. He told me the Lucid Air was the way he wanted to push the envelope further by sculpting the batteries in the car for maximum weight distribution. After that ride, I can say he succeeded in that task with brio. I’ll connect with the team again soon and find out what it is doing and where it is going.

Atieva Packs a Lasting Punch For Formula E
Getting back to today, Atieva just announced it designed the spec battery pack for the entire 24-car Formula E field for the upcoming 2019/20 race season with its partners. We know that the Formula E battery pack was conceptualized, designed, tested, and manufactured by Atieva at its Silicon Valley headquarters in Newark, California.

Atieva acts as Lucid Motors’s technology department. Essentially, Atieva’s prominent role with Formula E means the Lucid Air and future EVs have serious racing DNA electrons running through their nervous systems.

Formula E has also come a long way since when I first interviewed Alejandro Agag and Luca di Grassi in 2014 — a year before the official launch. Today, it is the world’s premier form of electric open-wheel racing. 2019/20 will be the second consecutive season powered by the Atieva-designed battery pack. The big change is that Atieva can power the race with one of its battery packs without it having to recharge or be swapped. Previously, the race cars were limited to a half-race, and thus had to swap cars. The full-race distance comes with increased performance over the course of 14 races next season.

Rawlinson said: “We were delighted with the performance of the pack in Season 5. We are proud that our technology has played a role in advancing this important form of motorsport and we look forward to the upcoming season.”

When Atieva created this powerful battery pack, it relied on its substantial experience and database of battery cells. Its engineers identified the perfect cell with the right balance of energy and power for this specific racing application. The cells went through a battery of simulations — no pun intended — to handle a full race season with the right pack level. Once the correct cell was determined, Atieva’s engineers designed the pack with a unique and innovative trapezium shape to best integrate into the aerodynamic and structural envelope of the race car. They continued with another series of computer-simulated tests and determined key attributes such as thermal management and structural performance.

Atieva says its battery management system (BMS) software was created in-house to ensure the pack performs at its utmost for the duration of the season with no significant degradation. That’s a pretty high degree of engineering with such load on the batteries during the race. As a final note, the packs were manufactured at Atieva’s headquarters.

It’s exciting to hear from Atieva and Lucid Motors again. Something tells me we’re about to hear more from this diligent team that has worked hard behind the scenes to bring us more of the vast potential EVs offer.
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About the Author

Nicolas Zart Nicolas was born and raised around classic cars of the 1920s, but it wasn't until he drove an AC Propulsion eBox and a Tesla Roadster that the light went on. Ever since he has produced green mobility content on various CleanTech outlets since 2007 and found his home on CleanTechnica.

His communication passion led to cover electric vehicles, autonomous vehicles, renewable energy, test drives, podcasts, shoot pictures, and film for various international outlets in print and online. Nicolas offers an in-depth look at the e-mobility world through interviews and the many contacts he has forged in those industries.

His favorite taglines are: “There are more solutions than obstacles.” and “Yesterday's Future Now”

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Published on November 21st, 2019 |

by Frugal Moogal

Tesla (Competition) Deathwatch: Gottlieb

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November 21st, 2019 by Frugal Moogal

As I noted in my prior article, when I wrote the first article in this series, I intended to take a quick historical look at one industry and then move on to diving into some of today’s automakers to see what risk the EV revolution had to their business. I still do intend to do that, but the comments in the first article pointing out flaws with the Kodak comparison made me want to do some further dives into historical industry disruptions.

To be clear, none of these are perfect comparisons because none of them show the auto industry transitioning from one major technology to another, as the industry really hasn’t had any giant shifts like that.

ICE to EV Production? It’s a Minor Change!
Today, I’m going to look more at the argument that many commenters pointed out — that transitioning from internal combustion engines (ICE) to electric motors is really not that big a deal the same thing, and therefore shouldn’t cause a threat.

That’s exactly what Gottlieb pinball believed in the late ’70s. Before I explain what happened there, a bit of pinball history is necessary here…

Gottlieb was founded in 1927 to produce pinball machines, having its first major hit in 1931 with Baffle Ball. Early pinball machines didn’t resemble today’s pinball machines at all, as they did not have flippers and were about plunging the ball and trying to land the ball in particular areas of the game, and you would count your score at the end to know how well you did. As the games progressed, both Gottlieb and other manufacturers advanced by doing things like counting your score for you using lights, and including mechanical devices that with a well plunged ball would interact with the ball.

In 1947, Gottlieb changed the pinball world with the introduction of its game Humpty Dumpty which introduced the flipper. For the first time, players could directly control the interaction of a mechanical device and the ball. The flippers on Humpty Dumpty were unlike modern pinball’s flippers, pivoting upward using the inner side, but it was a phenomenon.

Between its start and 1977, Gottlieb produced 525 (or more, as the early machines between 1927 and 1947 have extremely spotty records) different pinball machines, and was the unquestioned leader of the industry. If you ran an arcade, Gottlieb was the pinball manufacturer you wanted machines from.

That all changed rather suddenly in the late ’70s due to a shift within the industry that seemed minor. The industry had discovered solid state (SS) electronics, and certain manufacturers had started to incorporate those instead of the traditional electro-mechanical (EM) way of doing things, where the game would be filled with relays and switches to keep score.

The easiest way to tell the difference is an EM game has score reels or individual lights in the backbox, whereas early SS games look like they have calculator displays.

On the right is an example of one of Gottlieb’s EM offerings, 1971’s 4 Square. You can see an example of the score reels on the game beside it. By contrast, this is what displays on a SS machine look like (if you know your pinball industry, this machine isn’t technically a pinball machine, but it uses SS pinball parts):

At this point, you may be asking, okay, what’s the big deal? Gottlieb quickly developed SS parts and stuck them in machines, and all was well, right?

In 1975, the year the first SS pinball machine was released in an extremely limited way, Gottlieb sold 46,139 pinball machines, all EM. By contrast, one of its largest competitors, Bally, sold 26,560, also all EM. Gottlieb outsold them by over 73%. It wasn’t even close.

But Bally started looking at incorporating the new SS technology, while Gottlieb figured it could wait and incorporate it after it was proven. The next year, Bally had a surprise hit with Captain Fantastic and the Brown Dirt Cowboy, which sold 16,155 coin operated machines and boosted its entire output to 50,011 total machines. Gottlieb still outsold them, selling 55,635 machines.

If Captain Fantastic hadn’t been such a big hit and instead sold an average number of games (Bally’s other 9 releases sold an average of 3,762 machines), Bally would have sold 37,618 machines and Gottlieb still would have outsold them by nearly 50%. The market was expanding thanks to an explosion in arcades thanks to the coin operated video game revolution, and both companies were investing in production to meet that demand.

But Bally was investing in bringing its SS games to fruition, and Bally’s numbers above include its first SS machine, selling 1,500 copies of the game Freedom.

These sales didn’t worry Gottlieb, which had dominated the EM world and figured it would continue to do so, since the change from EM to SS was as simple as dropping in a few electronic board sets while the machines were basically identical.

In 1977, Gottlieb sold 53,288 machines. Bally? 43,330. Just from the numbers, it seems that Gottlieb made the right choice, as it maintained its lead, but there was trouble brewing. Gottlieb’s numbers were spread out over 20 different machines that averaged sales of just 2,664 per machine. Only one of their machines was a SS game, Cleopatra, which sold 7,300 copies, its second best seller of the year.

Bally managed to sell its 43,330 machines over just 7 machines, averaging 6,190 sales of each machine. Four of those machines were EM games that totaled only 2,100 sales. Just three machines made up the other 41,230 machines sold, all SS machines. Bally averaged production runs of 13,743 for each SS machine it made. Gottlieb had never made 13,743 of any machine in its entire history.

1978, Gottlieb sells 52,444 total machines over 18 designs, Bally sells 86,613 machines over 7 designs. The average Gottlieb SS design sold 9,074 machines. Bally sold an average of 12,373. All of Bally’s machines were SS. Only five of Gottlieb’s were.

1979, Gottlieb sells 46,550, Bally sells 81,967. Four years after Gottlieb had dominated Bally sales, Bally dominated Gottlieb sales by over 76%, a wider margin than that year. And why?

It wasn’t because the product changed much. Gottlieb felt it just needed to stick a slightly different tech under the hood of its machines. After all, it had always had the most desirable titles, with the best designers and gameplay. Many of the people who operated pinball machines originally told Gottlieb they didn’t want to buy the new machines because they didn’t know how to maintain them. Bally told them they would make more money while being easier to maintain. In fact, it’s fascinating to draw some parallels between today’s EV shift and this flyer for Bally’s Evel Knieval game. A couple of highlights:

“At the factory replacement of complex cables, numerous soldered connections and dozes of relays with simple, compact, positive-action SS components-by world famous electronics manufacturers — assures dependable quality beyond the range of electro-mechanics. And positive inspection methods, adaptable only to electronics, insures delivery of pinball games as perfect as the human mind can produce.

The operator quickly sees an electronic EVEL KNIEVAL the greater reliability of performance which is characteristic of electronic pinball by Bally. He sees the amazing simplicity of routine maintenance and play adjustment. He sees the uncanny, speedy and positive ability of push-button self-test methods built into Bally electronic pinball. He sees the computer accuracy of total coin-chutes accountability and other new accounting advantages that are only possible with electronics. He sees the convenience of replaceable modules when prolonged and profitable play requires replacement. He sees increased earnings through nearly zero down time for maintenance.”

No one figured the change would happen that quickly. The parts were the same other than the boards. They used the same flippers, mechanical assemblies, featured the same buttons, plungers, and coin slots as the EM games did. In fact, Gottlieb often made EM versions of the same games they released as SS titles, expecting the sales for EM to recover.

Here’s an example of 1978’s Close Encounters of the Third Kind as an EM game, and here’s the same game as a SS game. The SS game outsold the EM version by a rate more than twenty to one, but in an attempt to not hurt their EM sales, they didn’t really push the benefits of the SS electronics as they could have, barely mentioning the difference between the two games on the third page of the flyer.

Comparing to Legacy Auto
This may be the best comparison to what I think will happen in the auto world.

Operators buy pinball machines to earn money for multiple years. It’s not rare to find pinball machines from more than 20 years ago today still earning money. It’s extremely rare to find any EM games outside of individual collections, and that trend started very quickly after the introduction of SS machines.

Pinball machines to operators are an asset that lasts a long time. In the above photo, which I (poorly) took at an arcade I found earlier this year, the Addam’s Family pinball machine on the left is 27 years old, and the Attack from Mars in the middle is 24 years old. Even the Spider-Man is 12 years old. This is not an asset that operators use for a year and flip.

Gottlieb mistimed the market shift to SS by one year. This resulted in the company losing market dominance it had enjoyed for decades within three years. Gottlieb also invested tons of resources in many different designs, including continuing to design EM games instead of just focusing on the new SS games.

Gottlieb stuck what was essentially a new drivetrain into its old pinball designs figuring that wouldn’t i..