Bill Gates and BMW Back Pakistani-American Mujeeb Ijaz's Battery Startup
By Riaz Haq
CA
Our Next Energy (ONE), a two-year-old Michigan startup founded by Pakistani-American Mujeeb Ijaz, has received $25 million in initial investment from Bill Gates' Breakthrough Energy Ventures and German automaker BMW. Storage battery technology is a key area of innovation to bring about clean energy revolution. Mujeeb Ijaz has engineered a way to achieve longer ranges for electric vehicles from lithium-iron-phosphate (LFP) batteries, a more stable but less powerful chemistry than the nickel-based batteries currently used by most automakers. Mujeeb's brother Mansoor Ijaz made headlines in 2011 when he wrote a Financial Times Op Ed regarding his conversations with Husain Haqqani who was serving as Pakistan's ambassador in Washington. Mujeeb's father Mujaddid Ahmed Ijaz was a Pakistani experimental physicist and a professor of physics at Virginia Tech.
Mujeeb Ijaz, Founder CEO of Our Next Energy (ONE)
Mujeeb Ijaz, Pakistani-American founder and CEO of ONE, is a 30-year veteran of battery systems technologies. He has worked at Ford Motor Company and Apple. Mujeeb holds 31 US patents in the field of battery technology and energy management systems. He is a graduate of Virginia Tech. Mujeeb recently demonstrated a prototype of its new battery in a Tesla Model S, driving 752 miles (1,210 kilometers) on a single charge.
ONE’s key innovation is the way it designs battery packs. Ijaz, a veteran of Apple’s secretive car project, said he’s landed his first customer, an EV startup that makes medium-duty delivery trucks, according to Seattle Times. He declined to name the customer but said production will start in November 2022. The growth of the electric-vehicle market has brought challenges for the industry, including a shortage of batteries and soaring prices for raw materials such as nickel and cobalt, the latter of which is fraught with ethical issues. Nickel, the metal the auto industry largely relies on today to provide power and range, is prone to fire, a risk the industry is spending billions to control.
Another notable leader revolutionizing the auto industry is Sajjad Khan, Pakistani-German, who is leading German luxury carmaker Mercedes-Benz's entry into the electric vehicle market with six new all-electric “EQ” models, according to media reports. Sajjad Khan was born in Karachi and graduated from NED Engineering University with a degree in computer science.
Silicon Valley is at the forefront of this clean energy revolution led by Tesla. Tesla is more than an electric car company; the company also supplies solar panels and batteries. Other automakers are also taking their cues from Tesla. China's BYD Auto has only recently been surpassed by Tesla in production volumes. Auto giants General Motors and BMW are both building electric cars and planning to build "gigafactories" like Tesla's to manufacture battery packs for vehicles and homes. Pakistan is building up renewable power generation capacity. The country has also recently announced its National Electric Vehicle Policy that offers incentives to transition to clean energy.
Bloomberg estimates that batteries and electric transmission account for about 40% of passenger cars’ costs. European demand is met by mainly Japanese and South Korean battery makers like Panasonic, LG Chem Ltd, and Samsung SDI Co In the US, Tesla has built its own battery cells at its Gigafactory to manage costs and satisfy demand for the cars it produces. Chinese demand for battery packs is met by BYD.
High-capacity battery pack costs have dropped nearly 40% since 2015, according to Wood Mackenzie data as reported by the Wall Street Journal. The prices of lithium and vanadium—two of several key raw materials that are used in such batteries—also have declined over the past year or so.
Battery storage costs have fallen nearly 90% in the past decade, according to NextEra Energy. Cost reductions are expected to continue to only $8 to $14 per MW-hour by 2022, or about a penny per kW-hour. For perspective, the average kW-hour of electricity costs about 13 cents for retail users.
NextEra Energy forecasts that post-2023, wind plus energy storage costs will be $20 to $30 per MW-hour, and solar plus energy storage will be $30 to $40 per MW-hour. Natural gas is expected to match the solar-plus-storage costs.
