A Solution for EV Range and Conflict Minerals? ONE’s Mujeeb Ijaz Has Answers
What if your next EV could go 600 guilt-free miles on a single charge? ONE’s Gemini battery makes it happen.
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Even the biggest EV haters have to admit, the technology is getting better—and fast. The top-selling EVs go more than 300 miles on a single charge, and some, like the Tesla Model S Long Range, even top 400 miles on a single charge, while the Lucid Air can easily exceed 500 miles of range.
But despite our best efforts to dispel the myths and provide the facts, some still worry about range or call out that the batteries themselves are problematic, due to the reliance on rare-earth minerals (namely cobalt) sourced from countries and companies with questionable labor practices. The largest and most troubling source of cobalt is the Democratic Republic of Congo, which we first reported on back in 2009. In 2021, The Economist estimated that the DRC produced between 60 and 70 percent of the world's supply of cobalt.
For this and the problem of range, Our Next Energy (ONE) founder and CEO Mujeeb Ijaz has a solution. Several, in fact, as we discover on this episode of The InEVitable.
This is a fun and free-flowing conversation, which is something of an amazing feat given the complexity of the what Ijaz and his company are trying to achieve. If you think the latest advances in battery chemistry are dry and boring, you've never had someone with Ijaz's charisma, intelligence, and passion break it down plain and simple. Which is what he does, first by tackling ONE's record-breaking 752-mile road trip in a converted Tesla Model S and then by explaining his company's potentially game-changing battery lineup and the benefits of lithium iron phosphate (LFP) battery chemistry over the more the dominant lithium-ion cells used in EVs these days. Spoiler alert: 600+ miles of range won't just be through LFP but a unique doubling down of technologies, something Ijaz calls an "anode-free" battery, and how they work in conjunction with an LFP battery.
Sound too good to be true? What's the catch, you're asking? Is it cost or that this technology is far off in the future? We're not spoiling anything by telling you that ONE's new battery pack will be coming to a BMW iX EV very soon, as we wrote about in the summer of 2022 and confirmed in our chat. We're angling to be first to drive ONE's iX, so watch this space.
Until then, if you want to know more, start right here with this episode of The InEVitable or watch on our YouTube channel. If audio is your thing, download it at Podcast One or wherever you listen to your podcasts. Then do us a solid, tell your friends, post about us on Twitter tagging Elon, and don't forget to give us a five-star review.
I used to go kick tires with my dad at local car dealerships. I was the kid quizzing the sales guys on horsepower and 0-60 times, while Dad wandered around undisturbed. When the salesmen finally cornered him, I'd grab as much of the glossy product literature as I could carry. One that still stands out to this day: the beautiful booklet on the Mitsubishi Eclipse GSX that favorably compared it to the Porsches of the era. I would pore over the prose, pictures, specs, trim levels, even the fine print, never once thinking that I might someday be responsible for the asterisked figures "*as tested by Motor Trend magazine." My parents, immigrants from Hong Kong, worked their way from St. Louis, Missouri (where I was born) to sunny Camarillo, California, in the early 1970s. Along the way, Dad managed to get us into some interesting, iconic family vehicles, including a 1973 Super Beetle (first year of the curved windshield!), 1976 Volvo 240, the 1977 Chevrolet Caprice Classic station wagon, and 1984 VW Vanagon. Dad imbued a love of sports cars and fast sedans as well. I remember sitting on the package shelf of his 1981 Mazda RX-7, listening to him explain to my Mom - for Nth time - what made the rotary engine so special. I remember bracing myself for the laggy whoosh of his turbo diesel Mercedes-Benz 300D, and later, his '87 Porsche Turbo. We were a Toyota family in my coming-of-age years. At 15 years and 6 months, I scored 100 percent on my driving license test, behind the wheel of Mom's 1991 Toyota Previa. As a reward, I was handed the keys to my brother's 1986 Celica GT-S. Six months and three speeding tickets later, I was booted off the family insurance policy and into a 1983 Toyota 4x4 (Hilux, baby). It took me through the rest of college and most of my time at USC, where I worked for the Daily Trojan newspaper and graduated with a biology degree and business minor. Cars took a back seat during my stint as a science teacher for Teach for America. I considered a third year of teaching high school science, coaching volleyball, and helping out with the newspaper and yearbook, but after two years of telling teenagers to follow their dreams, when I wasn't following mine, I decided to pursue a career in freelance photography. After starving for 6 months, I was picked up by a tiny tuning magazine in Orange County that was covering "The Fast and the Furious" subculture years before it went mainstream. I went from photographer-for-hire to editor-in-chief in three years, and rewarded myself with a clapped-out 1989 Nissan 240SX. I subsequently picked up a 1985 Toyota Land Cruiser (FJ60) to haul parts and camera gear. Both vehicles took me to a more mainstream car magazine, where I first sipped from the firehose of press cars. Soon after, the Land Cruiser was abandoned. After a short stint there, I became editor-in-chief of the now-defunct Sport Compact Car just after turning 30. My editorial director at the time was some long-haired dude with a funny accent named Angus MacKenzie. After 18 months learning from the best, Angus asked me to join Motor Trend as senior editor. That was in 2007, and I've loved every second ever since.
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