Battery Revolution Clubhouse Recording - Batteries in Aviation

0:00Transcript

0:00Well, we're super, super excited for Richard Wang to be here with us today. Richard is the CEO and founder of Cuberg. It's a California-based company developing next-generation lithium metal battery cells. But what's really interesting about these cells is that they've developed a technology that actually has a 70% increase in energy density compared to just conventional lithium-ion batteries. So that really would be unlocking the future of electromobility. And today's topic is related to unlocking electrification of aviation through new battery technologies. So thank you, Richard, so much for being here today. And we're super excited for you to introduce us to your topic. Yeah, thank you. So today I'm going to be talking about the future of batteries in the aviation industry. And the aviation industry is something that Cuberg has been pursuing for quite a number of years now. Really, when we closed our seed funding round with Boeing's Venture Capital Group back in early 2018 is when we really got serious about focusing on aviation as our core market.

1:22And I think this is something that's heard from a lot of battery companies. And I would say aviation is both an industry that is, in some ways, extremely suited for early adoption of new technologies, but also in other ways, a very difficult industry to get into. So definitely some pros and cons. But overall, I think it's a very compelling opportunity, especially for a lithium metal battery chemistry that we're developing. So just briefly about the company. So we got founded in 2016. We spun out of Stanford University out of my PhD work. We're working on a lithium metal battery technology. So that's a lithium metal anode replacing the graphite anode. And we are accommodating the lithium metal anode with a new and unique liquid electrolyte that we have developed. And so this new liquid electrolyte is highly chemically and thermally and physically stable and really designed for optimal lithium metal cyclability. And that is what has allowed us to really take our company forth in terms of developing prototypes and shipping to customers and achieving better and better cycle life and charging rate results.

2:43So the most recent data release we provided a couple weeks ago is a new milestone in our company's history, getting up to 672 cycles, down to 80% capacity retention. And as far as I know, it's the longest lived independently verified lithium metal cell results in the world. So we're very excited about how far we've come so far. But there's much further to go to really get this into commercialization. And so I think that the two sort of maybe foundational principles of Cuberg that really led our strategy on technology and on markets really were related, one, to a huge focus on manufacturability. We actually started our company as a solid-state battery company, ironically. But after about a year of exploring and experimentation, my hypothesis with solid-state batteries were intrinsically incompatible with existing manufacturing systems. And that would create a pathway to commercialization that would be incredibly onerous and expensive. And it really didn't seem to make sense to make a new battery technology that could not leverage all the existing know-how and manufacturing capabilities that have already been developed by the lithium-ion industry and that are continuing to get more and more optimized.

4:08So that's why we ended up pivoting towards pursuing liquid electrolytes, which has allowed us to progress much, much faster to actually be shipping cells to customers and really getting designed into programs. I think the other key aspect that I think differentiates us and I think my observation of why historically battery innovation and battery startups in particular have struggled so much to get products commercialized is this kind of sort of overly heightened focus on getting into either the automotive industry or, you know, depending on the chemistry, the grid storage industry. I mean, these are the two industries that, you know, attract obviously the most attention. They're probably ultimately going to be the highest volume consumers of batteries. And so I think logically that's why many companies pursue them. But if you think about it, even for just a little bit, this kind of strategy really, I think, does not make a lot of sense. It's something that really flies in the face of how technology adoption typically happens, which is to say, you know, typically for any new technology, you have to seek out your early adopters and figure out who are the ones who don't have very high requirements and are willing to pay a huge premium and are willing to overlook some of your flaws because you have fundamentally solved this burning critical issue for them.

5:37And the reality, you know, the reason for that is because early technologies by definition are less mature. They don't have the economies of scale. They're not cost optimized. You cannot compete head to head with something like a lithium-ion battery factory that has been optimized over the past 30 years in terms of the chemistry and in terms of the manufacturing processes and supply chains. And if you look at grid storage and you look at EVs, you know, the commonality between the two of them is these are two of the highest volumes, but also by definition, most commoditized battery industries in the world. And when you look at, I mean, grid storage, I think pretty obviously performance is not really a key criteria. It is a cost game above all else. But even in automotive, energy density is kind of almost like a tertiary performance metric at this point. Fast charge is still important, but really above all else, it's cost of the batteries that is hindering electrification in EVs.

6:38So when you look at an industry with those kinds of dynamics, I think you can pretty quickly realize this is an industry that eventually will adopt new technologies, but it certainly is not going to be one that will pull them in anytime soon. And so our whole company strategy has been focused on what actually is the early adopter market for a lithium metal battery, such as the one we are developing. And I think, you know, equivalently to how really if you look at Tesla, they did not directly go and try to make the mass market Model 3 or Model Y, right? They started with this, you know, fairly mediocre, low volume and expensive roadster. And then, you know, that got them, you know, a little more mature to make the Model S and the Model X. And then after, you know, probably, I don't know, eight or 10 years, they got to the Model 3 and the Model Y ramp up. And even then, their mass market ramp up almost killed Tesla.

7:33And I think the equivalent is happening in the battery industry, where if you don't focus on really being disciplined on your early adopters, no matter how much money you've raised so far, it's going to be very hard to get into the automotive industry. And so our version of, let's say, the Tesla Roadster market segment, in our view, is aviation. Now, you know, the aviation is by no means a perfect market. It has a lot of challenges that shouldn't be overlooked. So to now, you know, talk through some of them today. But fundamentally, if you look at sort of what are the things that can be resolved and cannot be resolved reasonably, it is an unbalanced still, I think, a very sensible application for adopting earlier technologies. And so fundamentally, you know, what aviation needs above all else is higher specific energy. And specific energy combined with very high power as well. So if you look at what is currently in development in the industry, you have a few segments of electric aviation aircraft that dictate battery requirements.

8:42You have essentially small electrified planes. So conventional takeoff from runways and airfields, seating typically up to nine passengers for ease of certification for smaller aircraft designs. The second segment, and, you know, typically can fly maybe, let's say, 400 miles or so. The second segment is a vertical takeoff aircraft. So these are what you would sort of consider air taxis or maybe the cargo equivalent of air taxis that do a vertical takeoff with multiple propellers and then transition into horizontal flight to fly like an aircraft and then also land vertically. And so it's like a hybrid between a helicopter and an airplane. And the unique capabilities really are enabled because of what electric propulsion can do for motors and aircraft design and so forth. And so these two segments are where I think most of the attention currently is in the industry and also where we are most focused. And if you look at, I think, the battery needs, the most demanding battery needs are in that vertical takeoff industry.

9:59Because of the vertical takeoff, you have essentially an extremely high power requirement as you actually take off, typically on the order of, you know, 5C to 6C for 16 to 90 seconds. And then you transition into horizontal flight. And then you're probably cruising at about, let's say, 1C or so for on the order of 30 minutes, let's say, for a typical flight. And then you land also vertical takeoff. This gets more challenging because of all the different certification requirements and safety requirements that are imposed by the FAA and their equivalent in Europe, EASA. And so I think a couple of the things that are really worth calling out that impact how people think about battery design and what adds overhead are, one, the safety of the system, and two, the requirement for emergency landing scenarios and flight reserves. And so first on the emergency landing side, you know, what makes this particularly difficult is, let's say your vertical takeoff aircraft has six propellers. It's not an uncommon design.

11:14You have to assume that you can suffer a motor failure and, of course, still be able to land reliably in an emergency landing. And so if you have six rotors, one fails, you have to turn off the opposing one for symmetry to still balance your aircraft. So if you go from six to four, that means your batteries then have to supply 50% more power to those four motors so that they can still sustain. I think actually the other scenario that's even more aggressive is you have a battery failure and one of your battery packs fails and goes out of commission, then your other batteries have to then supply a lot more power for that emergency landing. So these emergency landing profiles typically take you up to 8C or 10C, very, very high power rates for a couple minutes at a time. And then this is combined with the other challenge that you need to maintain a what's called a flight reserve. And so I don't remember the exact time, but I think on the order of like 20 minutes or 30 minutes, depending on sort of what regulations you're flying under.

12:19And essentially the idea is on any normal trip, you have to land with that much ability to fly even longer in case you have challenges landing and you have to find an alternative landing site and so forth. And that means you cannot use the full SOC of your battery. Typically, you only use about 60% to 70% at most in a typical flight. And so when you add all these layers on, you really start eating away at what kind of energy density a lithium-ion cell can really provide. And so if you look at sort of the current-gen lithium-ion cells that can deliver that level of power, typically you're finding energy densities in the kind of 250, 260 watt hours per kilogram at best on a cell level. And then given that you cannot use 30% to 40% of the energy, and then given the packaging requirements, which I'll get into, this ultimately makes the usable energy really not enough. And so when we look at a lot of the aircraft programs that are in development today, obviously everyone out of necessity is test flying with lithium-ion batteries because that's the only thing that's available.

13:29But if you look at aircraft designs and you look at how much of their mass is going to different components, the three sort of buckets are the airframe itself, the battery, and then your cargo and payload. And the challenge with a lot of these systems is their mass fraction looks something like, I don't know, 50% airframe, which is already pretty good. And then maybe 40% batteries because they need that many kilowatt hours to fly a useful range for the business models that they want to build. And then you're left with maybe 10% of your aircraft mass as actual payload, whether it's paying passengers or cargo. And just conceptually, if you think about it, if you had like a 10% mass fraction or even like a 15% mass fraction, it's just really not an efficient way of running a transportation system. Because you're not mostly, you're just flying around the pilot and you're flying around the batteries and you're flying around the airframe. You're not actually carrying that much useful cargo that's generating real value.

14:35And so that's the real significance of battery energy density and why there's such a strong drive towards next generation chemistries is we can increase the payload fraction and carry more cargo or carry more passengers. That allows you to have fundamentally a much more valuable service per mile flown and per kilowatt hour consumed, which then amortizes and reduces all of your operating costs, whether it's the cost of the pilot and the sort of amortized cost of the batteries, the cost of the electricity, the amortized cost of the airframe. You're getting much better utilization overall out of the entire system. And so fundamentally, that's why a really, really great battery that has both very high energy and very high power is what is really demanded by the industry. Now from here, that's kind of the fundamentals of it. But then it gets more difficult because you could say, okay, well, let's say, you know, Cuberg has this 670 cycle looking metal cell. And, you know, we're getting, you know, we will be getting close to 400 watt hours per kilogram in a commercial cell design.

15:34You know, this seems like, you know, our first principles should be good enough. You know, what's missing. And I think, you know, what's really the other huge challenge in this industry is certification and specifically what's called type certification, which is certification with the design of the all the systems in your aircraft for safety and reliability. And particularly so in the battery industry. This is an area that the regulatory authorities don't have a lot of experience with. And the experience that they do have is primarily coming out of the batteries on the lithium-ion batteries in the 787 that caught fire maybe, you know, eight or nine years ago. And the regulations that they ended up writing were really based on the response to that incident of essentially a very, very small lithium-ion battery on a big commercial airliner catching on fire during charging due to manufacturing defects and internal short circuits. And that regulation ultimately was designed in a very stringent way. And, you know, a number of the industry players didn't quite agree with how the regulations were drafted.

16:37But at the end of the day, it was a pretty small battery and it did not really move the needle so much on aircraft design. So people accepted these regulations as, as let's say, onerous as they are. And now, now the issue is that is the only regulation really that the FAA, for example, has on batteries. And now looking to apply the same regulation towards gigantic propulsion batteries that are 40% of your entire aircraft weight. And at a point where if you apply the same kinds of certification requirements, it becomes nearly impossible to actually have a useful aircraft, especially with a lithium-ion level of cell energy density. I think this is one of the other reasons why the industry is so keen to adopt a more advanced battery technology is because there's so many challenges with certification. And even more than this challenge is there's so much ambiguity and uncertainty with the certification pathway. Out of necessity, many companies that we know are actually pursuing what's called, to my understanding, a proprietary means of compliance.

17:43And so rather than just reading the standards that are on the books, they're going one-on-one with the FAA and with the assets to negotiate their custom requirements and proving that custom requirements are also equivalently safe. And so this has led to essentially a lot of confusion in the industry, a lack of standardization on what really is safe or is not safe, and really a big divergence of both how different companies are pursuing certification and designs, as well as also a divergence between the U.S. and Europe on certification approaches. And so Europe with EASA has actually taken their own approach on eVTOL and on battery certification, which is also quite challenging to meet in its own right, but also different in some significant ways from what the FAA has previously drafted. And so between all these sort of unknowns, the kind of key area where this really impacts battery design is really the module integration of individual battery cells, because that module packaging of how you stack all your cells together and ensure reliability and ensure safety and ensure propagation resistance, if you have cells going to thermal runaway, that is the critical sort of piece of battery technology beyond just the cell, which you also need to really get towards a certified product.

19:10So it's a pretty significant development effort and one that, you know, in our belief is most effectively done if you integrate cell development and module development. And so we are currently cross-iterating on cell and chemistry developments along with module developments to really get to the most optimal systems level solution in a way that's not possible if you have a company that's either only developing cells or only developing modules, which is more typical in the industry. And then our intent ultimately is to develop this fully sort of efficient module containing our lithium metal cells and ultimately get it through certification. So specifically through what's called a TSO, which is the equivalent of certification for a component of an aircraft. And so ultimately, if you can have this TSO battery module, that becomes then the building block that the aircraft OEMs can fairly readily adopt and integrate into their systems with much lower bar on retesting and validation and so forth. And we believe that's ultimately what will really unlock this industry because, one, it'll help the OEMs solve all their battery certification headaches, something which they are not naturally good at compared to their talents at aircraft design.

20:32And it will fundamentally deliver substantial weight reduction, which really allows these companies to achieve the ranges and the payload capacities and business models that they want to build to really realize the potential of electric aviation. I think that, you know, final couple of points sort of on what else is needed in aviation batteries that also make it difficult. So it's definitely not a trivial industry to get into. But the other two aspects are production certification and I would say kind of fleet management. So production certification is another requirement from the FAA and YASA to basically show that your manufacturing processes and supply chains are fully traceable and stable so that we can be assured that the product that you have passed certification with will stay the same and will not shift because of undetected changes in materials design or quality lapses or any other potential manufacturing issues. I heard the story yesterday from an aircraft company I was visiting that the FAA came in to look at actually the gloves that the inspectors were wearing, the nitrile gloves.

21:55And they look at, you know, the code on the gloves and it's like, you know, the code that they had specified with, which is the standards part number for that glove. And then they had a different glove at one point, which was the large size version and it was dash L. And the FAA was not okay with the dash L because it was different from what they had promised in their specification. So it's like extremely nitty gritty and detail oriented. So it requires a unique approach to manufacturing systems, which also is something that's a fairly sort of a different type of investment and mindset from standard battery manufacturing systems. And then the final aspect of this is really, I would say, the sort of fleet aspects of this. So how do you manage the batteries in your fleet? And ultimately, what is the impact of the batteries on the economics and on the carbon emissions of electric aviation as a whole? And so the batteries are easily 30 to 40 percent of the weight of the aircraft.

22:57They are also one of the biggest sort of economics drivers, both positive and negative of aircraft operation. And they are also actually because of the sort of manufacturing impact of batteries and the carbon impact of manufacturing, one of the significant sort of drivers of carbon emissions associated with electric aviation. And so if you look at, for example, the cost argument, ultimately, cost comes down to a few factors. It comes down to your dollar per kilowatt hour. It comes down to how many cycles you can sustain. But it also comes down to energy density in a very significant way. And the reason for that is what I discussed previously, which is that higher energy density allows you fundamentally to utilize your aircraft and your batteries in a much more efficient way by actually carrying more people and more cargo. That's much more valuable than, let's say, the batteries themselves. And so reduction in battery weight is fundamentally a substantial sort of economic argument to make the business models of these aircraft OEMs more attractive.

24:06So it's kind of those three pillars that really drive the economics of electric aviation. And in terms of the carbon impact of aviation, a pretty significant portion, kind of 30 to 40 percent of sort of the estimated carbon impact of electric aviation. You know, it's going to be low, obviously, much lower than current aviation, sort of on par with even driving an EV around per mile. But the manufacturing impact of batteries is one of the most significant elements. And Hubert, as part of Northvolt, we are a part of Northvolt, which is a leading European manufacturer of automotive grade batteries at a gigafactory scale. Northvolt is also pioneering, really, the lowest carbon content batteries in the world with sustainable sourcing of materials through to 100 percent clean energy powering their factories. And also a very prominent recycling effort for managing end of life cells and reclaiming all the metals from these batteries. They're already in operation. Their gigafactory is putting out the first commercial cells that they're going to build one of the world's largest recycling facilities for batteries in the next year.

25:19And it's not it's not a pipe dream anymore. The recycling works. They've proven it out more than 95 percent reclamation rates of the critical metals. And it's economical as well. Like ultimately, having recycling actually is a significant competitive advantage because it stabilizes their materials costs in an era where material scarcity is an increasing challenge for cell manufacturers. And so all these elements that I talk about are equally or even more critical for electric aviation because aviation uses batteries on such an intense level with such a large portion of your vehicle's carbon impact coming from your batteries. And so the ability to have cleaner manufactured batteries and with an end of life recycling solution so that after your battery runs for about a year and it goes through its cycles and it reaches end of life, you have a way to actually reclaim that and put it into new batteries. Ultimately, it's ultimately really close the loop on the circularity and emissions piece to really make sure electric aviation has the maximum possible beneficial impact from a carbon perspective.

26:21So I think that the sort of couple of things that I've talked about to wrap up here are that aviation is a very attractive market for next-gen batteries fundamentally because the product market fit is excellent. And there's a strong willingness to pay for innovation and there's a strong willingness to pay for innovation and for new technology because of the value of the weight savings that is delivered. But it's also by no means a trivial industry to get into for all the reasons that I talked about. You really have to be very dedicated and focused on entering this market to really get it right. And I think the other theme is really that there are a lot of things you need to do, right? And fundamentally, this is an industry where having a vertically integrated battery supplier is a significant competitive advantage because it's not enough just to develop a chemistry. It's not enough just to develop a cell. It's not enough just to develop a module.

27:18You also need the sort of traceable, clean manufacturing. You need the recycling. All of these have to come into it to truly have a sort of holistic solution for the aviation battery question. And that's really the business that we are trying to build here with Kuberk and with Northvolt. Ultimately, when you look at the impact of batteries on this nascent field, our thesis is really that the batteries are as critical to electric aviation as the jet engine was and enabling the jet airline era. Because fundamentally, it is completely about the batteries. That is the single biggest risk in determining how this industry proceeds and how fast it gets ramped up and ultimately how much impact it really has. Does it remain a niche form of transportation that only serves wealthy people or that only serves very short flights? Or does it actually truly realize the full potential that people are hoping for and transforming how people move around cities and also regionally? So, yeah, I think I'll stop there.

28:28And I'm happy to take questions and guide the discussion where people want. Thank you so much, Richard. I think this was an absolutely fascinating introduction of the topic. And also, I loved the introduction of your journey, starting with Kuberk and fascinating how you started on solid-state and then stuck with the lithium metal and liquid electrolytes. Go through the acquisition you also mentioned. Super fascinating. And, yeah, I think from my side already, lots of questions. I wrote a few down. But I know there's also quite a few in the audience and already some of them already put them in the chat. So, feel free to keep doing so. And if you'd like to ask a question also in audio, feel free to just raise your hand. And we might also ask some of you to join us on stage as well. But maybe just a really quick interlude just in between just who we are and like, you know, what we're doing here. So, you see Miriam and myself, we're co-hosting this session and that's part of the Battery Evolution Clubhouse Club.

29:27As you can see in the title, this has been running for 52 sessions by now. And we love to feature, you know, amazing individuals such as Richard, but also discuss all kinds of battery topics. We had sessions on recycling, as Richard also mentioned. We had sessions on all kinds of different technologies, different, you know, policy questions. So, yeah, it's a really great platform to discuss all of these important topics. And also there is a recording of this, as you can see also in the title. And these are part of the Battery Insiders podcast. And you can find this podcast pretty much anywhere you listen to your podcasts. So, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Android, all these other platforms. So, yeah, maybe just as a quick word in between. And now I just want to really invite everyone who has a question to raise your hand and cap up on stage. And while we're waiting to some people, if they want to come, maybe I can just start off with one question because I found it really fascinating.

30:21You spoke about, one, you spoke about C-rates. And just for people here, but new to the battery field, maybe, you know, C-rate is a way to kind of, you know, more easily say kind of what is the charging and discharge rates we're using for these batteries. And you mentioned numbers. I think I wrote it down here. I think you mentioned in usage about 5 to 6 C. So, this will be, I think, 6 C will be then 10 minutes of charge or 10 minutes discharge in this case. And then you mentioned even, you know, for some of these emergency situations, the battery has to be able to handle like 10 C or 8 to 10 C. So, that's about 6 minutes of the discharge or 6-minute charge. So, that's quite high for people in the industry. If you look at electric vehicles, at least the numbers I know, usually about 1 C or so. So, I was just curious because you mentioned also these over 700, or no, 600, I think, 72 cycles you mentioned with 80% capacity, which is awesome, as you said.

31:14So, did you test already these kind of higher C scenarios? Is this like more lower C rates? I'm just curious to understand where you're standing on these current requirements at this point. Yes, yes. So, there's a great question because there are many, many different ways to measure cycle life, especially in aviation where you have all kinds of different profiles, you know, standard flight profiles, emergency profiles, longer DODs, shorter DODs for different kinds of business models. And all that impacts really the sort of effective cycle ability that you get. So, our cycle life measurement was our nominal cycle life, which is, I think, typically how other battery companies also report cycle life. So, that was a 100% depth of discharge, so 0 to 100%, with a C over 2 charge, 2R charge, and then a 1C discharge. So, this is like pretty standard sort of nominal cycling rates that you can use to compare with other chemistries and also to compare with lithium-ion cell spec sheets.

32:16But, you know, to your point, like this is kind of the nameplate cycle life, but ultimately, of course, what customers care about is sort of how many flights can you really do. And so, you know, what we find is, you know, that the mapping happens in a very, let's say, non-obvious way for a few different reasons. You know, one is, of course, your point that the, especially the landing is very power hungry, and especially if you need to do an emergency landing, you need, that means you need to reserve a high level of power even at end of life to do an emergency landing. And so, when you think about, let's say, capacity loss, as you lose capacity, you're having less and less, for the same amount of flight, you're having less and less reserve SOC left, which means resistance is increasing over time because of your SOC shift. In addition to that, typically, cells will just build up resistance over time, which also leads to sort of more and more challenges with that emergency landing.

33:20And so, when you look at, I think, what typically limits cycle life in a flight profile, it ends up being this emergency landing requirement of like 8 to 10C while you're at a relatively low SOC at the end of your flight, like 30% SOC left. And so, part of this is also, most likely companies will pursue an adaptive cycle life. And as your battery ages, you will then reduce the amount of time you're flying that you're rating your battery for so that you can preserve enough SOC so that you still have the power to deliver your emergency landing. So, that's why I like the definition of cycle life is fuzzy because like, honestly, like at the end of the day, it would be this highly sophisticated sort of adaptive flight use. On the other hand, there is also a positive in that when you do limited DOD cycling, we do see significant increases on the other hand in the longevity and stability of the battery.

34:16And so, this allows you to sort of, that kind of counteracts the sort of negative impact of the very high power requirement on landing. So, you know, I guess to summarize, you know, we also get several hundred cycles with typical flight profiles right now. Actually, with, you know, some shorter flight profiles, we get more than a thousand flights under our battery currently. But cycle life certainly is something, you know, we continue to work on as we get to our first commercial flight. Richard, I also had a question regarding the adaptive cycle life. So, as degradation occurs, you'd mentioned cycle life changes. And so, how does that impact the certification requirements or in a practical sense, what sort of testing is required to get certified, you know, for safety, for applications in flight, maybe for longer flights? Is it that you would need to run your batteries or your modules in longer flights over a period of time? So, right. So, the whole question of certification is a, it's a very complex one.

35:35And so, you know, the sort of additional complexity in the topic we're discussing on, you know, adaptive flying and how do you manage your battery to get the most use out of it is complex because you then start to introduce questions on battery management systems and software systems. And software systems that, in this case, you know, clearly would end up being mission critical in some sense. Because obviously, you can't do an emergency landing anymore. Then you have exceeded your design envelope. So, and the thing about software is it's incredibly difficult. I'm not an expert on this, but from my understanding, it's incredibly difficult and onerous to develop software for the aviation industry, especially flight-critical software. And especially after the 737 MAX, the FAA is even, I think, more paranoid about software. And so, you know, this is an area that we are still investigating as to kind of what are the requirements needed past certification. And then how would you actually then implement, let's say, a smart way to charge your batteries or a smart way to use your batteries during flight without, let's say, conflicting or running into challenges associated with certification and ultimately with reliability.

36:52I don't think anyone has answered this in the industry yet, or at least not that I've seen. Because I think with certification, I think the challenge here is it is a fairly ambiguous terrain. And so the certification for batteries, for the most part, is very physical in nature. They don't really talk about, you know, how should you cycle your batteries and under what conditions and, you know, how this impacts everything. It's more kind of like we're assuming your battery is going to fail. It's going to catch on fire. Induce, you know, this number of thermal runaways and show us it's not going to take down the rest of your path in your aircraft. And so, like, that kind of worst case engineering is helpful because it almost sidesteps the question of, you know, do you have issues? Because intrinsically you need to build in resiliency to failures. But I think the whole sort of aspect of the software side of it on how you operate your batteries is pretty fuzzy still.

37:48I think there's – but clearly like an area with a lot of opportunity and worthwhile solving ultimately with the authorities. Thank you so much, Richard. We've got quite a few questions actually in the chat. And also we've invited some speakers who have raised their hands. So we'll start with one of the chat questions from Ken. He's asking what are the barriers to implementing lithium metal batteries if they can perform at that performance level of 70% longer? And do you see that these batteries can be used in electric vehicles? Yeah, so I think I answered a little bit of that in the sense that it really is – goes beyond the cell. I mean, the cell is obviously the core of it. But it goes beyond the cell to really looking at model design and how do you integrate these cells into a battery module and package that ultimately passes the certification requirements. So really model development and certification are the two big focuses for us right now.

38:49As to the EV question, yes, they could certainly also be used in EVs. We are working with some very high-performance automotive brands for our early foray into automotive where you do have a better product market fit because they care more than the typical EV does about energy and power. But I think we're going to take our time getting into the EV space because, in our opinion, sort of premature entry into the EV space is what has killed many, many better battery startups over time. So the mass market stuff, I think, is still quite a ways off because, honestly, at the end of the day, there are more important problems that can be solved with advanced batteries. I mean, it's aviation. It's also long-haul trucking. It's maritime transportation. Those are areas where you can actually solve a much bigger problem compared to the existing solution, whereas an EV is always going to be an incremental improvement. Fantastic. Fantastic. Thank you so much, Richard. And then I think Roger has a few questions.

39:54Good to see you, Roger. Yeah, hi. Thanks, Richard. Really, really interesting, really insightful overview of it all. I'm just looking at vertical aerospace who floated in the states on the market a while ago. I've got pretty good valuation. And I know because I went along to an event of theirs in London recently. They've got $5 billion of orders for their vertical aerospace craft, which is kind of nuts. It's hard to comprehend. But their battery partner they announced recently is Mollicel. And I'm just going to read you a bit from Aviation Today, which kind of confirmed what you explained. It's not a long passage. It's just a couple sentences. But I think it's useful just to reconcile what you said with what they're saying. They're using cylindrical lithium-ion cells. They're not very specific on what chemistry exactly. But they say the main advantage of Mollicel's battery cell, according to the company's representative, is low impedance, referring to both internal resistance and reactants. The low impedance battery cell technology is well suited for applications requiring a high rate of power discharge during the takeoff and landing phases, as well as fast charging capabilities to increase ridership capacity.

41:09Since the battery cell is designed for high power discharge and fast charge, the lifecycle thus is much better compared to high impedance types of energy cells. I mean, there's a lot more they go on to explain. But what fascinates me is much of what you said in regard to the challenge and the fact you now have companies at market, even with pretty impressive order books. And so it kind of in one way feels like we're there already, but we're kind of not. So, yeah, it's a fascinating moment in time for sure. But my main question above all of that was, do you think we'll see specialist battery manufacturers, cell manufacturers, specifically for aviation, given a lot of what you've outlined and explained? Do you think there'll be a divergence between the people that look after that market compared to the people that look after electric vehicles, you know, cars and stuff? Or do you think that'd be the same? Yeah, yeah. Good question and a great, great topic to touch upon.

42:15I think, you know, I do think that the partnership that Vertical did with MolliCell was pretty smart because I would say a company like MolliCell. MolliCell does make some of the highest performance cylindrical cells on the market, as far as I know. So I think they're a decent bit better than anything I've seen from Samsung or LG, for example. And they are, you know, a little more premium, a little more specialist, but that makes sense for what you want in an aviation product. So I think, you know, that was a pretty wise partnership. You know, that being said, though, the aviation industry is one that is filled with a lot of hype. And, you know, I won't name specific names. Different companies are at different levels of that spectrum of what do they assert publicly about what they can develop in a certified aircraft and what is actually, you know, physically possible according to the laws of physics and the supply of existing battery cells.

43:13And I think the reality that you will see is as you actually get through certification, nobody's through certification yet or even close to it. As you actually get through certification with a certifiable design, which most companies don't have, the actual performance and operating range and payload of those aircraft are going to come down a substantial amount versus what they have promised in public. And that is the core challenge is that as these certification requirements work their way through the aircraft designs, it becomes very hard to actually close the design with a lithium-ion battery, even a very good one like for a MOLLE cell. And that's something that is not really being realized yet. You know, as to the orders comments, you know, it is in this industry as in others, it is actually very, very easy to get orders if you make big promises. But, you know, delivering on those orders is really the key point. It's the execution that is the most difficult aspect, whether it's batteries or aircraft.

44:11There have also been plenty of battery companies that sell lots and lots of batteries, but in theory, but, you know, money doesn't change hands until you actually execute. That's really the true test for aviation companies. And nothing against vertical specifically. They seem like a very good company, but just the general comment on the industry. Yeah. You're specific. Yeah. Yeah. So I just want to say, I think you're right in that business of orders, you know, being an aspect of valuation, because, you know, look around the electric vehicle market. There's lots of companies now, certainly a number I think we could all mention, that have tens, if not hundreds of thousands of orders of a given vehicle. But, yeah, it's yet to either appear or much more other than either renderings or a sort of one-off demonstration vehicle. So, no, I mean, that's a very good point. Yeah. The one other thing I just quickly wanted to say, and I don't want to diverge and go off into a different thing, because this is a specific conversation in a particular group.

45:04But I'm on the advisory board of Val Miftikos' business, which is focused on Zero Avia, that is, which is focused on not batteries at all. And Val has fantastic knowledge and experience. He's a PhD physicist. He's a very smart guy in batteries, but took the approach that for the type of aircraft and the range that they're going to fly, not e-vto, by the way. And this will be converting existing aircraft. That the way to go was very different from batteries. So, yeah, it's fascinating. Anyway, look, I've taken up enough time. There's plenty of other people that want to talk. But thank you, Richard. Really enjoying this. This is a very interesting discussion. Thank you. Yeah, absolutely. And I think the point on hydrogen is a good one as well. I think there will certainly be a space in aviation for hydrogen, too. It's going to be in different segments of aviation. We'll end up pursuing different forms of electric propulsion and decarbonization. And so hydrogen, it really is a complementary technology to batteries.

46:13At the end of the day, if batteries are good enough, batteries will always be the cheapest, most efficient solution for electrification. But there are some segments that are just impossible to electrify with batteries. And that's where you get into hybrid electric. And that's where you get into hydrogen fuel cells and so forth. That's really, really interesting. And Mark, I know you've got some questions on recyclability, so the floor is all yours. Thank you. Thank you, Richard, for your presentation. I learned a lot about aviation and the use of batteries in aviation from your talk today and the certification process. But my question is about the recycling, which you, of course, brought up and how you're integrating the recycling from the start into the process, rather than as an afterthought in the design of the manufacturing and recycling onsite to mitigate supply challenges with that. So my question is, are you using, I guess, what technologies are you using? Are you using a third party? Are you doing it in-house?

47:19That's the first question. And then the second question is, have you designed your batteries such that it can be more easily remanufactured or reused in a different segment or recycled to end of their life? Yes. So on the recycling question, this is not something we're developing internally. We definitely don't have enough resources to pursue all these things. And this is the beauty of being part of a much larger parent company. So we are leveraging, basically, the recycling capabilities developed at Northfold in Sweden. They spent a lot of money and a lot of effort developing the process, which, my understanding, is some sort of hydrometallurgical process where you dissolve the materials and then sort of extract up. Extract out the individual metals in solution is my kind of layman's understanding of the process. But we are just simply using their process. We're not developing our own. As for the second question on design for recyclability, I'll admit this is something, especially when we first got started, that really was not in our minds.

48:26I would say we, let's say, fortuitously landed in a scenario where it does seem like it's pretty recyclable. And the main reason for that, I would say, is because we've designed our cell design and chemistry for high levels of manufacturing compatibility with lithium-ion cells. And so the cathode we use is the same NMC cathode you have in a lithium-ion cell, so the same kinds of compounds and the same crystal structures. And the cell design is also very similar because it's manufactured in the same way, the same separator as well. And so at the end of the day, because so many things are – and it's a liquid electrolyte, it's not a solid electrolyte. And so because we've designed it for manufacturability, it happens that then a lot of the recycling processes that have been developed with lithium-ion batteries also do seem quite compatible with our lithium-metal chemistry because of those manufacturing similarities. So it's kind of like two sides of that same point. Whereas if you look at solid-state batteries, they're going to be very different in terms of how you manufacture them.

49:25And then consequently, they are also expected to have significant recycling challenges with a solid electrolyte, particularly being a challenge to extract out and separate from your valuable nickel and cobalt and so forth. I'm curious. Thank you. I was thinking second life also just as a third thought. I don't know if you've thought about that regarding your electrolyte batteries. Yes, yes, absolutely. It's not only us. A lot of the aircraft OEMs are also thinking about second life. A lot of them are envisioning sort of a second – and it's because aircraft have such a high requirement on that crazy power on emergency landing and on safety and reliability. So they're going to be taken out of the aircraft much earlier in their full life compared to, say, an end-of-life EV battery. So, you know, and it's going to be a fantastic battery, a super high-performance battery. So I think a second life in aviation seems much more likely than most other types of second life applications that haven't panned out as much so far.

50:28A lot of people are thinking, okay, we'll put this into some sort of grid storage application at the airport, and then maybe we could have the second life batteries powering, let's say, fast chargers that are charging up the aircraft. I think that's certainly a possibility, but I think it doesn't even still capture the full value potential. And so this is another area where we're working with the broader Northvolt team on market development because they are serving many, many different segments of mobility and grid. And our view is there are higher performance uses of that second life aviation battery, which is still an amazing battery at the end of the day, compared to just putting it on the grid. So one idea we have, for example, is long-haul trucking. Long-haul trucking is an area that's pretty cost-constrained, but they're also very, very sensitive to battery weight because it directly impacts cargo capacity and range. And so if you could put a lower cost second life battery, but still a battery that's extremely advanced and high performance and lightweight into a long-haul truck, you could actually unlock a pretty valuable second life use of those aviation batteries.

51:33Thank you, Richard. I wish your company success. Thank you. Thanks a lot, Mark and Richard. And Swivam, would you like to go next? Swivam, are you here? Otherwise, we can go to Mia in the meantime. Mia? Yeah, hi. Hi, Richard. It's so great to hear the presentation. So you mentioned traceability and that being really important as part of the manufacturing process. I actually worked for Northvolt last summer in Sweden a couple of times. And I was just really curious where Cuberg is toward digitalization and traceability. Yeah, I'm also a computer science student, which is why that aspect of it is pretty interesting to me. Yeah, absolutely. So we have a lot of, let's say, data science systems. These are currently more oriented on the R&D side of it to enable rapid iteration and design of experiments as we continue improving our cell chemistry. That being said, we are increasingly moving into the sort of supply chain traceability and digitalization efforts. This is another area where it is highly beneficial to be part of a larger parent company because we don't need to invent all of these different elements from scratch.

53:03Northvolt is, of course, already doing a significant element with digital systems in how they track supply chain and how they track quality and yield and process and so forth. And so we actually adopted an early version of the Northvolt manufacturing data systems for use in our pilot line. And our longer term goal is to adapt sort of a future version of the Northvolt systems for our full manufacturing system and then adapting it, obviously, for aerospace requirements that are unique to this industry. But this is an area where we, it's kind of the bread and butter of what we do. We're a very data oriented company, maybe not unusual for startups, at least. And then, you know, layering on the sort of systems and architecture for Northvolt allows us to build this in a much more efficient manner. Okay, that's super interesting here. I worked on specifically the trace team. So I'm wondering if you've heard of them or I know that they have a lot of internal products, but.

54:08Yes, I'm not. Yeah, it's closely connected to that project, unfortunately. But I think we are working with the whole data team that was previously led by Landon that's developing a lot of those systems. Okay, gotcha. Yeah, it was, it was super interesting to be able to visit their factory and see how like a specific cell they could use like a QR code and see exactly like all the specs about it. Yep. No, that's. Even going down to the sheet to sheet traceability, I think is the ultimate vision. Oh, cool. Yeah. Well, thank you. That's awesome to hear. Thank you so much, Mia. Mariano. Okay. Hello, Richard, Mara and Simon. Thank you for the fantastic lecture. I had a couple of questions, Richard. You explain many challenges, of course. You explained when somehow the part of the batteries you, let's say, solve. Maybe case study plays with 40 kilowatts hour and many cyclists. I have a question about the model integration. You say that it's very relevant for the certification.

55:30On that, I had the idea, if that is so important, model certification, did you search also a battery swapping option that could be on models? That's one question. And the other question is also from the cells itself. Did you, maybe I don't understand your correct, but is this a possibility to have hybrid cells that give high power cell in one chance? And the other, that's when you are with the navigation, then it's another kind of cells. It is the best for that requirement? Thank you. Yeah. Good question. So for the battery swapping, this is ultimately not really our decision to make because this is more of an aircraft architecture question. Most companies are not doing battery swapping because they believe the weight overhead is excessive and not worth the tradeoff of, let's say, faster sort of turnaround time on the ground. The one company that I do know is doing battery swapping that has announced publicly is Volocopter in Germany. So interesting to see. I don't think it's clear which one will ultimately win out, but both approaches are being applied.

57:00The benefit of battery swapping is that you are much gentler on your batteries because you can put them on the ground and charge them slowly and not stress them out because they're not limiting your turnaround times anymore. So it does have benefits in terms of how you treat your batteries, but with, of course, mechanically more overhead. Most of the aircraft are designed for good serviceability, though, because the idea is probably within a year, given high utilization rates, your batteries aren't end of life and you have to swap them out. So from a maintenance and service perspective, the models are designed for easy serviceability. Your second question is about sort of hybrids, like hybrid cells, two different energy power cells and power cells. So this is not something that I think has typically been done in the industry. And including in aviation, I have not seen anyone pursue it. I think typically because it's believed that the overhead required isn't sufficient. It isn't sufficient to warrant the sort of improvements that you get.

58:05I think. I think. So the lithium metal cell that Cuberg is developing in some sense can do both very well. And the reason for this is fundamentally that we have such a lightweight anode that the energy density implicitly is already very, very high, even though we design actually our cell design to be a very high power design. And so internally, if you say like if you compare it to a lithium-ion cell, you would say the Cuberg cell is absolutely a high power cell exclusively. But we are still able to also get very good energy because of the chemistry innovation by using lithium metal anode. And so that's that's the benefit of just advancing the technology is you're not stuck in the original trade space of really, really compromising on energy versus power and being in an area where you don't have enough of either potentially. Yeah. Thank you. Thanks, man. And Richard. Nothing to you. Let's try it again. Hello, everyone. Can you hear me?

59:09Yes, we can. Yes. Okay. Fantastic. Thank you, Richard, for that great overview. I was wondering if you could provide a quick overview on the challenges of designing your battery modules and tax with the cells that you're designing right now. How are these challenges different from conventional lithium-ion cells? You've already hinted at some of the safety requirements in the DO 311A and also some on the software functional safety side of things. But how are you deriving the performance and mechanical requirements for potential customers? Because the different aircraft that are being developed right now are on different regions of, let's say, a Regoni clock, right? And they have very different fast charge requirements as you just mentioned some time ago. So how are you approaching deriving the requirements and providing mechanical design on the module side? Yeah. I think this is a great question because it's something that we also ask ourselves all the time. So I think the first aspect of your question was really, I think, more about what are the differences in integrating lithium metal cells into a module that we are seeing for aviation that's not typical of lithium-ion?

1:00:29And I think the two areas are that lithium metal cells and really any sort of more advanced chemistry tends to have more swelling on a relative basis because you don't have that whole structure of the graphite to host your lithium ions. So you have more swelling and somewhat more sensitivity to face pressure applied on your cell. And so that changes a bit of how you design your intercell materials to accommodate the swelling. But nothing crazy, but it is different. The other area is really the propagation resistance. And any battery will need propagation resistance in aviation. But the specific thermal runaway failure modes for lithium metal cells is also somewhat different given you have a lithium metal anode rather than a graphite anode. And so that also causes you to change your model design in different ways to accommodate for lithium metal more often. So those are the two areas, big areas, that we are working on as we develop our own module. I think as to the question of, let's say, module standardization, I think this is critical and also difficult to do.

1:01:35And so it's critical. And we've really pushed for a standardized cell for aviation as well as a standardized module. And the reason for this is that aviation is for a very long time, probably at least through 2030, a pretty low volume industry. And so in such a low volume industry, it really doesn't make economic sense to design custom products and make custom manufacturing lines for every different customer. Because at the end of the day, it's going to be wildly expensive. And we're not going to be able to make a business out of it. We need to drive towards standardization as an industry, even though right now we're still pretty far away from it. So we are doing our part to drive that standardization with our customers. And implicitly, we're going to four or five of our top customers and collecting their aircraft level requirements and seeing what is that sort of common set of requirements that we could design into in a module. And it's not always, you know, there is no perfect common set because intrinsically people have different aircraft designs.

1:02:38Some people have really, really different aircraft designs. Some people are doing CETOL. Some people are doing VTOL, as you said, you know, meaning energy or power. So it's impossible to find a perfect common set, but you can still do your best to figure out what is at least kind of the standard battery that can maybe at least serve 70 or 80% of the market decently well, even though it's not perfectly optimized for a single customer. And I think when you look at our customers, I think they also tell us that they really do want, I mean, everyone would like a perfectly tailored solution, but realizing that economically, it does make more business sense to go towards a standardized solution that benefits from greater economies of scale. I think at the end of the day, I think there is a vision that at least you could have a standardized cell and potentially standardized module for the industry as a whole. But I think that's also, I think it's an attractive vision because especially in aviation, the volumes are low, but it's also, I think, a very ambitious and uncertain vision because at the end of the day, a lot of aircraft have very different designs.

1:03:47Perhaps, perhaps as designed really do standardize the way that, you know, a 737 looks very similar to an A320. Perhaps eventually, you know, in a couple more decades, we'll get to that point in electric aviation. And then you could say, okay, just as you have one jet engine that works or one format of jet engine, you could have one standard battery that works as well. But I think we're still quite a ways away from that as a sort of industry standard. Okay. I think it's a really great comparison to compare them to jet engines. As a quick follow-up, I'm wondering if you have any rough numbers on the voltage of these battery packs. I don't think I've seen any particular numbers on current voltage for aircrafts. Is there a rough range that you're working on? I think a lot of the ones we've seen are sort of in that 400-volt range. I think similar, I think, to my understanding, to like a Tesla voltage. I think some people are looking at 800 volts, but less common.

1:04:50But I think, you know, it's similar to EVs, I guess, high-level. All right. Great. Thanks. Basim, have you got a question? No, I'm enjoying the discussion. I'm working in hard aerospace, which is working with electric aviation. So it's a really interesting discussion. I was on Earth Board before, so it's very interesting. So I'm enjoying the discussion. I have a couple of comments, but that I can take later. Maybe more important questions, if you would like. We've got some time, so please, the floor is all yours. Thank you. So I just have a couple of comments on, for example, what was mentioned regarding the power and energy-optimized batteries. For example, there is a big difference when we are talking about VTOLs versus CETOLs. So maybe there is a lot of companies talking about VTOLs, and then there is a big hype about, like, there is a lot of power. But when you talk about conventional aircraft, we don't need that much power as we need for VTOLs.

1:05:58So that would mean that maybe we don't need high power. Maybe that will give us a better life expectancy and durability requirements different than CETOL. And that will make a problem for Richard because, for example, we need to make a cell which is optimized towards one versus the other. So that would be one thing that I don't know how the industry will go in that direction. Which part will you serve more? Will you serve the VTOLs with high power and or CETOLs with lower power and then different durability targets? So that is one of the things that's maybe interesting. Yeah. So we currently take, I would say, a bit of a portfolio approach to our customers. And what I mean by this is this industry is so early and uncertain that, you know, you cannot bet everything on one customer success because, you know, one is, okay, we don't know if VTOL or CETOL is going to be the predominant volumes this decade. And we certainly don't know which specific customers are going to make it or not make it.

1:07:03So we kind of have a portfolio of customers with different, let's say, parameters that are attractive. You know, so there's sort of the technical parameters, customers for which our product is a great technical fit. There's kind of business parameters, like which customers have more money to pay for engineering services and so forth. And then there's also the bet on which customers are more real and pragmatic and will actually get to volumes in a realistic timeframe. And so it's kind of a balance of all these different factors to have to build up this customer portfolio. So I think as to the specific question on VTOL versus CETOL in terms of cell designs and chemistry designs, you should get longer life because you don't have these emergency landing requirements in CETOL. So that is certainly nice. And I do think CETOL has a much clearer path to certification, which is also nice. That being said, CETOL also gets, I think, for whatever reason, much less attention and investment compared to the VTOL community, because I guess VTOL is a totally new mode of transit with, you know, potentially, you know, very, very large volumes, whereas CETOL was kind of a replacement for existing, at least, you know, people see it as a replacement for existing aircraft designs.

1:08:20So I think VTOL will like to get a certification faster and have an early lead would be my prediction. But then with VTOL catching up and exceeding it by sort of late in the decade in terms of aggregate volumes. I think that the one point to make, though, is everyone at the end of the day cares about fast charge, whether it's VTOL or CETOL, because they want to turn around that aircraft in, you know, 20, 30 minutes on the ground, potentially. So even if you don't need a lot of discharge power, you probably still need pretty fast charging. And that still leads you into a territory that, you know, at least looks like something like a balanced, you know, energy power cell. I don't think a pure energy cell will ultimately make sense, even for a CETOL application. The other aspect is also just DCIR. And, you know, does that make sense as well for a management perspective? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I agree with you.

1:09:18I mean, as I work with CETOL, not VTOL. So, yes, from a charging perspective, you still need power. It's not as high as the discharge required by CETOL, by VTOLs. But, yeah, it's also high. And one more thing is that the industry now for, as most of you know, the aviation industry is really, if you can say, legalized. There is a lot of requirements, a lot of you need to go through a long path for certification. And now when it comes to electric aviation, I mean, it's still not very clear known path. There is a lot of things that then the authorities are trying to look at how to solve this problem, how to solve that. There is a lot of discussions on lots of new means of compliance coming up as drafts. And we discuss them together. We try to find what's the best solution. So, I think in the next maybe 10 years, the industry will shift a lot towards something. I don't know what will be this thing, but towards something which will be clearer than now.

1:10:18So, it's also a bet for battery manufacturers. What will you do? For example, for thermal propagation, which designs will you take? Will you take which bet will you take that will be accepted by FAA versus EASA, for example? Because they are not 100% aligned, you know? Yes, exactly. So, I mean, we are starting to build up a significant certification expertise in-house as well and having those negotiations directly with both authorities. Because I think, to your point, the regulations are so immature and currently not harmonized. And so, it really does, at this point, still require really just direct, you know, one-on-one engagement to figure out that sort of common pathway. Yeah, same here. Yeah, we are in the same situation as well. So, it's hopefully in a couple of years, we will understand exactly how it will and it will shape everyone. But still, it's a bet. I think it's a much harder bet than electric for automotive. I come from automotive originally. So, it's much harder bet in aerospace due to the authorities and how to certify a plane is much harder than a car.

1:11:27So, I hope that my company will be one of the companies that will go through that and will succeed. And I don't know if you have any questions. Thank you. Thank you. Fantastic. Thank you so much. And also, I think someone I just saw is Divik. Divik, very good to see you again. Do you have a question? Hi, Simon. Good to see you. I don't know how much I've missed this, but, I mean, like, fortunately, today I said, okay, let me go back onto Clubhouse. Very interesting conversations. Well, I mean, it's not a question per se, but which I wanted to put to Richard. But, Basim, since you were talking about it, you also did speak about the fact that, you know, a hybrid battery pack with this power and energy cell, which helps in cruising and so on and so forth, right? I mean, even if you, I mean, you've already extrapolated it to an aviation industry where there is no real precedence that has been set in the automotive industry where a hybrid battery has been successful.

1:12:26I mean, how would you want to defend the fact that if it's not successful in, I mean, here also you're looking at acceleration and cruise, right? So, if it's not successful on gasoline, I mean, I just want to get your thoughts on how do you foresee that being the line for an aviation industry itself? Okay. Yeah. Maybe I was not clear in that. Sorry, sorry. Go, Richard. So, yeah, I think Basim was saying more hybrid in terms of energy and power cells. And it sounds like your question, Divik, is on hybrid electric with combustion. Oh, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, Richard. In fact, mine was clearly to a hybrid cell where it's an energy cell and a power cell, right? Oh, okay. And you're using a power cell for your acceleration and otherwise you're using it for cruise, right? I mean, that's what you said, right, Basim? Yeah, but I think maybe I was not clear in that. My point is that that is maybe applicable or can be really studied in depth when it comes to VTOLs due to the fact that you need a high power, sudden high power for this discharge power to take off.

1:13:31But when you talk about CTOLs, yes, you still have high power and you need high power at low SOC due to that you need to be able to go around. So you need to be able to take off. You need to be able to reach your destination. You need to be able to land the plane. You need to be able to do something called go around, meaning that you need to have the same takeoff power you had in the beginning by the end of the state of charge. And then you need to find another alternate airport with a specific requirement when it comes to how many miles or how many minutes. And then you need to be able to land. So that's not very applicable for CTOLs, but when it comes to VTOLs, maybe it will be an idea that you have a battery only used for optimized for just the takeoff for the VTOL. But that is something that needs to be studied. This may be, as Richard was saying in the beginning, maybe it doesn't make really much sense when you study it.

1:14:23But I don't think it makes much sense at all for CTOLs. But VTOLs, maybe. It's something that maybe that needs to be studied. Right. No, I got that. But no, my question was, I did understand what you said. But my question was, this has not even happened in automobiles, right? I mean, even in automobiles, your acceleration are where your surges are. So, you know, there's a very strong case for a power cell in an automobile application. I mean, I'm just setting a precedence. I mean, EVTOL or a CVTOL is something which is a little far off, but I've not seen that happen in the automotive industry itself. So is there a reason as to why it's not really taken off? I mean, the whole hybridization of a battery pack? I don't remember exactly which company, but one company maybe came two months ago with some kind of a concept like that, where you have half of the battery as power optimized, half as energy optimized.

1:15:19But I'm not remembering which I need to, I don't know if someone from the panel remembers which company came with that design. It was some time ago. I'm not sure when it will reach a proper product. But when you look at energy optimized versus power optimized and where you draw the thin line, right? Because it's not, I don't know, maybe Richard can or others can talk about it deeper. It's not a clear black and white anymore. So it's not like you have a, you can maybe, yeah, you have a floor return. Yep. Yep. I mean, I think you're probably talking about our next energy, which does a hybrid battery design, but it's not as far as I can tell an energy power hybrid. It's a chemistry hybrid with LFP and then a more advanced next gen chemistry. And it's more like a utilization argument that you use the LFP, even though it's lower energy density, because it's cheap. You can cycle it so many times and then you have your high energy as more of like a range extension.

1:16:24So that was more hybridization of energy densities. And that, I mean, that certainly is not going to work in aviation because you just need as much energy as possible. But I don't think it's actually an energy power hybrid. And I feel like at least my speculation on this in the EV industry is that the needs for power and energy are not so different that the tradeoff ends up being worth it. In the sense that like the power that you need is not so great that you end up with a cell that's like, you know, three times lower in energy density than an energy cell. It's like maybe, you know, 20% lower. And increasingly, you know, there are cells that actually do both pretty respectably well without having a significant energy hit with newer materials and cell design. So I feel the kind of energy power tradeoff is becoming less of a tradeoff over time as cell designs improve. And then with looking metal as well, you know, it's even less of a tradeoff.

1:17:18So it doesn't seem like we're moving in that direction because I guess cells and materials are getting better and you don't need to trade. The tradeoff isn't so sparkly anymore. Got that. Thanks, Richard. Thanks, Basin. Fantastic. Thank you. And I also love a bit of side chat here. I think it's good. We have some very knowledgeable people definitely in this room on the panel as well. So with this, we're pretty much in our last 10 minutes. So now there's a question. Is there anybody here has any other additional questions? Heinz, do you have another one? Yeah. Hi, guys. Daniel is my real name. Sorry for my nick here. Yeah. I currently work for Lilium and I'm in charge for the battery testing operations there. So obviously, I cannot talk about this in specific, but I would probably be able to answer some more like general questions. What is important with regards to battery designs? We talked, I think, a lot about chemistry and the need of being like very left, right up in the corner of the Ragona plot, having like really high power and energy density.

1:18:27I think every battery engineer knows that this always goes a little bit in conflict with safety requirements. Therefore, I think personally, at least that is my personal opinion, not my company's opinion, that like hybrid architectures where we would have energy optimized cells and power optimized cells and the ability of the battery pack itself to actively route power. And having different states of charge within the battery. This, I think, especially for the diversion scenarios where you have to prove go arounds, as Basam said, will be very important to have like certain high power battery systems, which allow you to carry out safely emergency scenarios. And I think there are certain battery architectures like multi-level level architectures of batteries where you would at least be in theory able to use very different rated cells. So very high C-rate cells and very low C-rate cells, but high energy density cells. So I personally think, and another challenge I see in having structural integrated batteries, I think at least parts of the battery should be structured and be part of the structure in the aircraft.

1:20:00And maybe other parts of the battery should be swappable, at least for the VTOL space, to minimize also the service times on the ground to recharge the vehicle. I think there's some smart ideas around, but I have, to be honest, not seen a lot of aerospace company really carrying out the battery challenge, as I would love to see this as a battery engineer, to be honest. I cannot agree more. I cannot agree more. Really. I also was thinking about structural batteries for a long time, and I don't think that companies are going in that direction. I think because a lot of companies are really worried about certification. And a lot of the battery designs is basically a box in the box in the box to try to minimize the risk of the certification when it comes to thermal propagation. So I am all in as a battery engineer, also all in for structural batteries and trying to swap what we can. I don't think we can, I don't believe that we can swap like big batteries also for mechanical, as Richard said, and also when it comes to maintainability and serviceability and that you will have to, open and close something that if you will do wrong, it can be dangerous, you know, that kind of scenarios.

1:21:23But I totally agree with you. Yeah. Yeah, I agree. Yeah. I also want to thank everybody here, especially Richard, Morris and Simon for this nice room. And I also want to shout out to Roger. Hi, Roger. Haven't you seen in a while? Hope to see you soon again. Yes, absolutely. Likewise. It's been too long. Fantastic. Thank you, Daniel. And thank you, Roger. Mayanna, did you have one other thing you want to add? Yeah, it's about regulation. You explain, Richard, that the regulation is immature. Yeah. I see that risk, let's say, because if you are, you need to choose as you develop, no? You need to choose. But if you are aligned for the further future regulation, that's okay. But if you're not, then maybe it's a high risk. Okay. Then the other option from the perspective of regulation. Did you think that regulation comes up down to the battery? As you explain the traceability of the manufacturing and the robust of all that flows? Or what are your thoughts on the future needs of regulation?

1:22:47Thank you. I think. So if I understand your question correctly, it's what are the future needs of regulation to regulate batteries properly? Yeah. But about your thoughts and what, did you think it's a huge reach of Cuberg thinking about the new common regulation, the future? Or did you think that it not go so down that maybe you choose something else on Cuberg that maybe the future regulation doesn't allow you to use? Right. Right. Yeah. Yeah. That probably was a risk for a lot of the electric aviation companies because they all got started five or more years ago. And a lot of them have designed aircraft really not knowing what kind of requirements would be needed to go through certification. And I do think you see a lot of that with some of the earlier players that already have significant amounts invested in aircraft designs and that are butting up against the realities of certification. With Cuberg, I mean, I guess we're fortunate in some sense in the sense because we are only just now starting our certification journey where the regulations, while they're still in disagreements, are I think becoming more mature over the next couple of years.

1:24:13And I think we have an opportunity and it feels like the right time to drive that discussion with the industry and with the regulators to get towards a harmonized set of regulations. I think the position with EASA at this point is reasonably clear. You know, you could debate whether it's the right regulation or not, but at least it is reasonably clear. I think the two areas of significant opportunity are for the FAA to propose something beyond just DO311A that could make sense for the industry. And really, I think for harmonization to happen between FAA and EASA because having diverged standards really will serve no one at the end of the day. It becomes impossible to design a product if you have two very different sets of certification requirements. But I think those are the two big opportunities. And I think there's, I mean, there's, it seems like there's political elements to this. I think the FAA always believes, and historically they have been the leader in setting certification standards and with EASA following.

1:25:19And I feel with now FAA, with the recent issues they've had with the 737 and also falling a little behind on electric aviation, EASA has sort of taken a step forwards. And now, but I think the FAA still believes, I suspect this is not from any conversations with the FAA currently, but from what I've heard, the FAA still believes they will ultimately write the regulations and EASA will conform to those regulations. So, so I think there's an interesting political element here as well as to how we get to harmonization, but, but, but it must happen because otherwise really it is not to the benefit of anyone at any geography. Okay. Thank you. Brilliant. Thank you so much, Richard. And I think with this, we're pretty much at the end for today. And, you know, we spoke about this before time really tends to fly. And I think we have covered quite a lot today from, you know, like, again, as I mentioned, your story, you know, from, from your startup, but also kind of covering the requirement for aviation, introducing the topic of battery powered aviation.

1:26:23And I think also with all the great panelists and participants here really covered a lot of topics from, from rates to recycling to traceability and of topics in between. So this just really lets me to, to thank Richard for this fantastic introduction and also be here for all of our questions. And I think that's, that's really, really appreciate it. And I think that's, that's really, really appreciate it. As mentioned, you can also find the recording on the battery insiders podcast. If you just look for battery insiders on Spotify or anywhere else, you listen to your podcast, you're going to find it there in a few days, as well as a reflection of this session, my, um, Richard and I will do right after this session as well. And maybe then it just allows me to give a quick glimpse in our next session. So we have these sessions once a month at the moment. So the next time we're going to have it on the third of September.

1:27:13And there's also one other event I want to mention in September, which is our battery associates battery day or annual flagship event. Um, you can find information about it on battery dot, sorry, battery day dot info. And you will get to the registration page and registrations are free. So, um, for free to, to sign up for that and find lots of interesting discussions on there as well. As with this, just for today, I'm going to say a big thank you to Richard and everyone who shared their questions and insights today. And see you all very soon.