Drilling Deep: Battery technology racing ahead; so is the price of diesel

Several significant steps on the road to electric vehicles just in the past few months

Photo: Jim Allen/FreightWaves

On this week’s Drilling Deep podcast, James Frith of Bloomberg NEF brings his expertise in battery technology to the show and discusses some significant technological developments in battery technology just in the past few months. How rapidly are we moving toward cost-competitive batteries?

Also on Drilling Deep, host John Kingston talks about the record set just a few days ago: 16 consecutive weeks of increases in the weekly DOE/EIA retail diesel price, used as the basis for fuel surcharges. With refineries in Texas still struggling after the cold snap, will this tighten diesel further?

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John Kingston

John has an almost 40-year career covering commodities, most of the time at S&P Global Platts. He created the Dated Brent benchmark, now the world’s most important crude oil marker. He was Director of Oil, Director of News, the editor in chief of Platts Oilgram News and the “talking head” for Platts on numerous media outlets, including CNBC, Fox Business and Canada’s BNN. He covered metals before joining Platts and then spent a year running Platts’ metals business as well. He was awarded the International Association of Energy Economics Award for Excellence in Written Journalism in 2015. In 2010, he won two Corporate Achievement Awards from McGraw-Hill, an extremely rare accomplishment, one for steering coverage of the BP Deepwater Horizon disaster and the other for the launch of a public affairs television show, Platts Energy Week.