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Good morning grid connections listeners.

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Today we have Ed Bernadon, the host of the future cars podcast, along with being a former
VP at Siemens.

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He currently runs his own consultancy for motor sport technologies.

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It has a remarkable background spanning from the world of high tech manufacturing to the
cutting edge of motor sports.

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He's here to share his insights in the world of motor sports, along with how the space is
pushing electrification in many forms.

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Throughout this episode, we'll discuss the intersection of electric vehicle technology and
motor sports.

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The challenges of scaling, sustainable fuels and how motor sports are embracing
electrification to stay relevant to new generation of fans.

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If you're curious about the future of racing, battery innovation, or the potential of
carbon neutral fuels, this episode is a must listen.

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As always, we'd love for you to share this episode with at least one friend or colleague
who'd enjoy it too.

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And if you're enjoying our podcast, please take a moment to leave a pause review on our
podcast page.

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Your support helps us bring more exciting conversations like this to you with that.

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Enjoy.

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Yeah, Chase, great to be with you.

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yeah, maybe I'll give you little bit of my background, show how this world of technology
and motorsports has sort of come together here.

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just going way back, my parents were both from Italy.

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They actually immigrated to the United States after the war and they settled in
Indianapolis, which is the home of the Indianapolis 500.

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there were no...

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baseball or basketball, football fans in my family, it was all about racing because Mario
and Dready happened to come from the same part of Italy.

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So, and being in Indianapolis, of course, especially in the month of May, racing is what
that city's all about.

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So that was really how sort of I got interested in racing in the first place.

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When I got out of, from Purdue University, I went into the automotive industry, worked at
GM.

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And then now my wife, then my girlfriend convinced me to go to grad school.

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I sort of didn't really want to because I really enjoyed making all that money and having
fun going to bars and all that kind of thing.

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But anyways, I ended up coming to Boston, going to grad school and my first job out of
grad school because I had mainly focused on robotics was making robots to make clothes.

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So this was with the Draper laboratory.

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They're known for their guidance systems and missiles and things like that.

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They decided to get into the commercial business and somehow they picked making robots to
make clothes.

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Yeah, yeah, exactly.

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So it was really, we're really some of the first to work in that area.

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And we developed a lot of expertise for handling flexible fabrics with robots.

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And due to the fact that Draper Laboratory has so many connections in the military and in
defense industry, we said, hey, we could apply technology for manipulating flexible

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fabrics to carbon fiber.

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because it's pretty much carbon fiber starts off as a fabric.

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And that's what we did.

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And we started making machines that actually ended up going into factories for forming
parts for helicopters, Sikorsky, United Technologies, those kinds of companies, as well as

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at the time Ford Motor Company was also looking at doing composites.

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So we went from making machines for making t-shirts and blue jeans, parts for men's suits,
using almost exact same technology for making airplanes.

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The one thing that came out of that was this little piece of software we designed that we
needed to figure out when you shape a piece of fabric into three dimensions or a piece of

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carbon fiber, first you have to cut it out in two dimensions.

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And since carbon fiber is so expensive, knowing the shape to cut out in two dimensions so
it fits perfectly in three was a hard thing to do.

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since we were doing a lot of experiments, we figured there was software out there to do
that.

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There wasn't.

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We wrote it.

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And it turns out people were more interested in that software than they were in the
machines we were building.

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So myself and three other people started a company.

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And initially, it was really software that would predict the 2D shape for any 3D shape you
wanted to lay up for composites.

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And we built that business from about four people to about 80 or so over a 10-year period.

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And our main customers,

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Our biggest customers were in aerospace.

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Anything that had to be fast, light, and very expensive, military helicopter, fighter
plane, they're pretty much made out of composites.

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However, Formula One, they're pretty much, certainly the car body itself, suspension
components, that type of thing, are all made out of carbon fiber as well.

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And although they were a small part of our business, they always got our software first
because racing has this knack

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for taking anything you think is going to work perfectly.

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And they're able to show you every fault and they do it fast.

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It's not like an airplane.

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A new one is designed every five years or so.

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In Formula One, you learn something in one race and you're designing a new composite
component for two weeks down the road.

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So as part of that, we got to really know the Formula One teams.

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over that period of time, a lot of them now are our good, good friends.

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And so we were acquired by Siemens.

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once at Siemens, and this is a typical transition, I think, from a startup of 80 people to
a corporation with 350,000 people, continue to do the composites work.

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it actually, it was a little bit easier.

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Let's just say I had some spare time.

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And in that spare time,

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We used it to develop business and as always I said, this is my chance to really get back
into motorsports with the technology power that Siemens had and so that's pretty much what

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I did and Just as an example of some of the projects the first one was with the FIA which
is the sanctioning body for Formula One rally and all those and what we did was we We took

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autonomous car sensors lidar radar cameras and we mounted them inside

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rally cars and rally cars are these they don't race against each other they race against
time but on dirt and they fly through the air people can walk right up to the track if you

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want to call it that and sometimes even sticking their arms out in the middle so we were
using the sensors these types of sensors to detect spectators like hiding in the bushes

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and the tall grass so that the people running the event could go in there pull them back
to safety that was one we did another project with this

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series called Extreme E that had electric race cars and we helped them convert those to
hydrogen.

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And even some that were related to autonomous cars, not necessarily racing, but another
one where we designed an all composite autonomous car that had the radar actually in the

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skin.

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Anyways, started doing those types of projects.

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And my last position at Siemens was the VP of Motorsports and Racing Strategy, which
really started to bring together all the different divisions of Siemens from

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sustainability in buildings to engineering software to energy and working more closely
with a lot of the F1 teams.

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now I've gone on getting more back into that startup mode, working with startups and
companies in the motorsports and technology industry.

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So drifted away a little bit into textiles and clothing, but you know, that magnet of
motorsports is always there to pull me back.

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Yeah, I mean, I think there's quite a few different great things you brought up with that.

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And thank you for sharing your background.

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I think it's always really fascinating how so much of, especially when you kind of get
into like carbon fiber and that realm, there's actually a pretty large overlap with the

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textile world because of how it's manufactured.

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And it's been a while since I've played around with it, but I actually used to use it
quite a bit when...

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either mocking up stuff or even building kind of some lightweight bodies on cars.

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And it's just a really fascinating technology that a lot of, if you kind of learn more and
more about the history, there is a big overlap there because of like the weaving needed to

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get the carbon fibers just right to make the layups and stuff and a lot of those
technologies.

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So it's really fascinating here that one, you're involved with that.

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But then two, I think especially what you're talking about about that kind of rapid
testing and prototyping needed to really push kind of the limits of the,

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technologies and that you're right it's definitely done in aerospace but it just seems
like as far as the speed at which it's done it and also just kind of the not not just even

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the speed but how the frequency of how it's done in motorsport just still seems to be like
second to none so I think it's so great to see so many of these technologies really be

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pushed there and I think we get a lot of questions to that is motorsport still relevant
especially

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this realm of electrification.

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It seems like it's such a different thing and how can you really take these technologies
that are being tested in that space and like make it so it's something that the average

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consumer can kind of use.

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I think I know this is kind an area we want to talk about about how these events kind of
embrace this and kind of with electrification.

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But I think I'd just be kind of curious to hear your thoughts at a high level.

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anything that you've seen or noticed with electrification and kind of motorsport as far as
like, okay, these are things that motorsport are testing with electrification and what the

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end consumer is actually seeing in products that they can either go buy or having a,
whether it's maybe not the high tier like carbon fiber products they're seeing on the

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actual cars they buy, but there's learning from that that are making their ways down to
the consumer.

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Well, you know, when you think about motorsports, you do think about all these high tech
things like carbon fiber and all that.

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But I think one thing that you have to remember about motorsports is really an
entertainment business.

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And if you're in entertainment, your brand, your perception by people is really, really
important.

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And the average age of the racing fan

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is getting younger and younger like it is for any other kind of entertainment.

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So it's really, really important for the motorsports industry to stay relevant to this new
generation of fans that are coming in.

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I was on a, I had a guest on the podcast, name was Bob Bell.

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He was the team principal, the leader for the Formula One team that won the championship.

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was, think 2005 and six.

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It was the Renault Formula One team.

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And I asked Bob Bell, said, Bob.

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What's going to happen when if Formula One becomes electric in 2030 or beyond?

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What's going to happen when the roar of the engine goes away?

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The diehard fan.

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And Bob said, that's not going to matter.

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All those guys are going to be dead by then.

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And so the this idea of being relevant to your audience and the audience would appeal to,
I think, forces motorsports to align with those needs.

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And I think

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Everyone is concerned about sustainability.

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Everyone is concerned about more efficient use of energy.

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And so you're seeing in Formula One, for instance, in the 2026 rules, you're going to have
a 50-50 engine, which is half electric and half internal combustion.

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Still a thousand horsepower, but half of it's going to be electric.

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Right now it's about 1585, still around a thousand horsepower.

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So you're seeing that.

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There is this commitment in Formula One to net zero by 2030.

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And a lot of that has to do with travel logistics and those kind of things, not just the
car itself.

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But of course, I think that one of the best examples of electric technology, EV
technology, is the Formula E series.

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And those are all electric vehicles.

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It's been out there for about 10 years or so, maybe a little over that.

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And they've done a lot of work in development of different types of technology.

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think probably one of the most in things that are related, say, to battery efficiency,
type of thing.

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So 800 volt systems, battery energy, power management software, those types of things,
which have moved in the commercial sector.

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And in fact,

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We've got, let's see, Nissan, Mercedes, BMW, Renault, Audi, Jaguar, Maserati, Porsche, NIO
are all companies that at one time or another have had teams in Formula One.

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The other thing is they try and keep a focus on sustainability.

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And the first is they run their races in cities, not on specifically built racetracks,
that type of thing.

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That's Formula E, that's EV propulsion in racing.

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There's a new series, relatively new, within the last four five years, which is called
Extreme E.

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Now, that is a really interesting series because for one, they have no spectators.

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So I guess you could think of it as an online series and moving spectators, hundreds of
thousands of people.

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to different cities.

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There's a lot of greenhouse gases that occur just from doing that.

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However, so theirs is a, it's a, they stream the events and their electric SUVs that race
in areas that are challenged by climate change to bring attention to those areas.

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So for instance, they may run in an area, they ran for in an abandoned coal mine in
Scotland.

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They did a race there.

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They did races in Sardinia and Italy to bring attention to the wildfires that had been
hurting the environment.

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Senegal, glaciers in Greenland, the rainforest in South America.

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When they move their equipment, they move it by ship rather than by 747s and that kind of
thing.

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All the cars, all that kind of thing.

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And they are now even taking that series and transferring the drive train from electric.

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there's going to be a transfer to the power generation to hydrogen.

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So that's what I think are, you know, a really, really, really good example.

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the same guy, Alejandro Agog, that started Formula E, started Extreme E.

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He also started a new series just this year called E1, which is electric boats.

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being from Boston and a fan of the Patriots, Tom Brady owns a

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one of the teams and of course won the first race.

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And I remember speaking with Alejandro.

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I said, you met Tom Brady.

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How exciting.

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He goes, I've never met anyone that's so competitive as him.

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But that's an example.

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I mean, you have people like Tom Brady getting into the sport.

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It's all electric driven and even NASCAR and NASCAR will probably never have an electric
drive, at least not for the foreseeable future in their main series, but they have in

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development right now.

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And in fact, it's already been tested an electric version.

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of their car that runs at, that may run eventually say at a feeder series.

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So it's the traditional role that motorsports has always taken.

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And I think now it only makes sense for them to do it in this realm of electric vehicles
as they've done everywhere else.

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I I completely agree and I think what is really interesting about the realm of motorsport,
especially with electrification, is it does do all that and kind going back to your

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original comment about being entertainment, it does definitely do that.

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And it also kind of provides to people watching just the fact that electrification does
work.

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We have electric cars in reality that sure you can buy anything from a Nissan Leaf to like
some fully loaded Tesla or Lucid or even electric Porsche now.

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But this kind of shows

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it can also be really fun.

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It's not just kind of the more average experience, but there's a lot that electrification
can really provide with that.

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I think what you're talking about around, especially like the example of trying to get rid
of a lot of the greenhouse gases and stuff like that by looking at other supply chains,

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because I think what you're talking about is so accurate and spot on is people don't
realize, they think about Formula One or a lot of motor sports as just the racing and like

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building a race car.

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But the actual logistics between events and getting all of these things between the series
are just unbelievably mind-blowing.

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And then to themselves, truly impressive, like the efficiency of the logistic teams and
trying to get all these things set up in advance and then having it prepped and then

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having the cars and then actually racing that weekend and hoping that the car itself
doesn't break down and how much like people think of like the car breaking down being the

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big thing, but there's so many things that have to go right before even the race and even
the car arriving.

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for these scenes to be successful that is a big challenge in itself to try and get those
more.

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Not necessarily always electrified, but yeah, kind of go to that conversation around
greenhouse gases and try to make it a cleaner and more efficient system.

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But I guess one of the other things I'd really like to talk to you about is how we've kind
of looked at that, what going beyond racing and some of the team players in this and how

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they're embracing kind of electrification and that, what are you seeing as someone who's
been in motorsport that really stands out to you, not just in the obviously

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we talked about logistics, but kind of about the whole infrastructure around charging,
around the products that are kind of coming to the market for the consumer.

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Is there anything that you've seen in your conversations or just kind of indirectly
experienced where this is clearly becoming a big thing for them to make these changes and

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embrace it in a new way?

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You know, like I was saying, I think traditionally motorsports has always taken that role
to be the leader in development.

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And, you you said something just a few seconds ago that I thought was interesting is when
the Prius came out and there was a plug-in hybrid, but it was the first realm into the

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world of electric for many people.

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And they prided themselves.

193
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You know, I'm not sure if everyone's going to agree with this, but they pride themselves
in being a very ugly car.

194
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And he almost

195
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If you're going to be an electric car, you had to be ugly.

196
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so that you, everyone would know.

197
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Yeah, yeah, everyone had to know that you were a pioneer.

198
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You were an early adopter.

199
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And, but now if you look like take the model S Plaid, the zero to 60 for model S Plaid can
beat a formula one car.

200
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Now it's not the now an electric car with all its weight is not so good on the turns.

201
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Right.

202
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So you, you, you're not going to see a model S winning an F1 race, but if you were doing a
drag race and I think they're there, I've seen some things online.

203
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I can't vouch.

204
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They were 100%.

205
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But they did a nine 11 versus a model S I think it was, trailering a nine 11 and it could
still beat the nine 11 on, on, on a quarter mile or whatever it might be.

206
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So.

207
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I do think that the impact on commercial, if you want to call it, or the consumer, is
probably a better way to put it, is this melding of performance with EVs, rather than

208
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being a early adopter Prius owner, if you want to call it that.

209
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That's really evolved over the last 10 or 12 years.

210
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And it's a sign that electric vehicles are coming into the mainstream.

211
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I do think though that there's a lot of things that motorsports has done in terms of
innovation that we really take for granted.

212
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We, we forgotten came from motorsports.

213
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And I think, I think the first winner of the Indianapolis 500 was the first to use a rear
view mirror.

214
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So that came from racing seat belts, disc brakes, anti-lock brakes, radial tires.

215
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And in Formula E.

216
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The 800 volt systems, the ability to run at higher voltages, silicon carbide inverters,
which are way more efficient.

217
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And I think, as I mentioned before, there's some strict rules in Formula E as to how many
battery packs you can use and the ability to manage that battery pack in such a way that

218
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you can get the most energy out of it, I think, are things that will immediately

219
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work their way, or certainly over time, they've already actually worked their way into the
commercial world.

220
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Now they do have some interesting things in Formula E.

221
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Some of them they tried and then they took them away, for a time there was a chance if you
drove over a section of the track, it would actually give you a power boost.

222
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Yeah, and it kind of goes to that entertainment level for sure.

223
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I always thought that was an interesting kind of marketing thing and I kind of thought it
was innovative and I respected it for what they were doing.

224
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But I do understand why a lot of people kind of found it a little too video gamey.

225
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then yeah, you could vote.

226
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I think this was pretty early on too where you could vote for certain drivers and who...

227
00:22:02,549 --> 00:22:09,541
Yeah, whoever had like the highest, which I mean from a marketing, kind of social media
engagement, I thought was kind of clever and interesting way to do it, to leverage what

228
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they could be done.

229
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But right, overall, it may take out some of the reasons that people were actually watching
it to begin with was trying to see a more, I don't want to say even playing field, but

230
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seeing kind of the drivers drive and then also like see what the technology was capable
of.

231
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while it got people engaged, also kind of sometimes maybe gave them an unfair advantage or
just kind of took it out of what the racing is supposed to be.

232
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But you're right, like they've changed from like how there were multiple cars and then
they'd swap between the cars and then how they'd charge the cars between the races.

233
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And it really is interesting to see how that's evolved too and that they can have these
battery packs and charge them like they did.

234
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Well, and again, so you tune in, you see, look at this, this interesting thing where you
can charge the car on the road.

235
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I didn't even know you could charge a car on a road.

236
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Wow.

237
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Is that something that can even be done?

238
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And it probably opens up eyes for people as to, well, listen, racing now, when can I drive
into my garage and actually charge my car?

239
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You know, I was,

240
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A friend of mine asked me about, is there any plugin hybrids that you recommend?

241
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And I always thought a plugin hybrid was really good because it takes away the range
anxiety.

242
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And most of time you never drive more than 30, 40, 50 miles in a day.

243
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And most of them can cover that.

244
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Be nice if they did at least a hundred or something.

245
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But, but then I went online to investigate and I find these articles that say plugin
hybrids will never be popular.

246
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And one of the reasons was.

247
00:23:52,241 --> 00:23:57,903
people hate to have to plug it back in every night to get their 40 miles back.

248
00:23:57,903 --> 00:24:06,745
And I'm thinking, well, if I had an electric, sounds like, cause my wife has a Tesla and
she plugs hers in, but she doesn't have to plug it in every night.

249
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She'll plug it in once, maybe plug it in again in two weeks.

250
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So the idea of being able just to drive into your garage and the next morning, you get
your 40 miles back without having to get out and plug it in is actually.

251
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might be an interesting way to get people to drive more on electric drive, even though
you've got that in a plug-in hybrid, you've got that internal combustion engine as backup.

252
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Yeah, I I found...

253
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I've definitely found, I think personally for me, I either prefer a fully electric or a
fully combustion platform like electric as a daily driver even.

254
00:24:42,197 --> 00:24:52,537
Now there's some fun driving electric vehicles out there too, but then having kind of a
combustion for the weekend and like, for example, I mean, I have a 1987 Land Rover

255
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Defender 90 that we used to like go off-roading and do stuff with.

256
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And I think last year we put about 4,000 miles on it, but then we put 30,000 miles on our
Model Y.

257
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And sure, the Land Rover gets like 10 miles per gallon, but I was even trying to figure
out like, okay, at 10 miles per gallon, 4,000 miles per year versus the 30,000 we did on

258
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the Tesla, even like the MPGE and all these things that are kind of nebulous, but are
trying to build these equivalents for people to understand, it still was like such a big

259
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improvement over kind of the plug and hybrid, if we had just had a plug and hybrid over
and try to charge it electric as much as we could.

260
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What I think is so interesting is my experience with plug-in hybrids are, it's exactly
that.

261
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That there's a lot of people who are curious and they may not be ready or may not be
living somewhere or have kind of a lifestyle that quite works with having a fully electric

262
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where you can charge it overnight or something every time.

263
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And it's definitely been a really interesting kind of stepping stone to watch some people
I know who have gotten them.

264
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Some have had kind of a...

265
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I say a bad experience, pretty quickly they see people who had a fully electric car and
they're like, in retrospect, maybe I didn't feel comfortable or confident doing that, but

266
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that is probably what I should have done because charging this thing's kind of annoying
because it actually charges slower than my friend's Tesla.

267
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so there's kind of these like weird little interesting things that I never really expected
that were kind of idiosyncrasies like.

268
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Someone I know got a...

269
00:26:32,845 --> 00:26:42,770
The Volvo plug-in hybrid, they love the Volvo overall, but the issues they've had were
some sort of thing with the battery and like the systems talking together so they had it

270
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taken to service.

271
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And then what was interesting was her husband has a Tesla Model Y.

272
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And so when she plugged it in, she expected to get like 11 kilowatts.

273
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And even though the battery is so much smaller and it charges at seven kilowatts, the
Delta between time to charge up that 40 miles of range versus the

274
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pack of the Tesla turned out to be pretty different.

275
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so it has been really interesting and I think it is there's definitely a need for the
technology and definitely space for it.

276
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But it is kind of fascinating to me and I think it's something we see with like a lot of
the early Chevy Volt owners.

277
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They love the Volt but the vast majority of them pretty quickly realize like over this
past year I maybe use that combustion engine once or twice and if it had just been all

278
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electric it would have been fine.

279
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Maybe I'd go charge if I went on a long road trip, then there's yeah, they're just all
these kind of interesting things like in practice it pretty quickly

280
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And I think so many people just don't like cars and don't like dealing with cars.

281
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And pretty quickly, when you realize you don't have to do oil changes anymore, you don't
have to do a lot of these other things that the shift to electrification is actually a

282
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pretty big net benefit.

283
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Assuming you can charge it or have access to like level two charging regularly, it's a
pretty easy switch.

284
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But like you're even saying with like with the Tesla or a lot of electric vehicles now in
that price point and that size,

285
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Is it ideal to probably always have them plugged in?

286
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Sure.

287
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But you can go a few days.

288
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You can kind of have a setup where it's not plugged in every night and you're not going to
be doomed or worrying about it.

289
00:28:24,731 --> 00:28:29,777
Versus like if you want to be running on electric with a plug-in hybrid, there's kind of
present cons of that.

290
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Well, and you said it too, is that if the goal, if the number one thing that keeps you
from getting an electric car is range anxiety and not knowing if you can plug it in and

291
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having, like for instance, a Soul Race go-kart, I have a go-kart trailer.

292
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And I'll tell you what, I have an old Honda pickup that I use to tow that thing.

293
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And I might use it a dozen times per year.

294
00:28:56,473 --> 00:28:59,776
And it's not a very expensive truck and it's, you know, still runs.

295
00:28:59,776 --> 00:29:05,100
But the mileage on that truck is cut in half as soon as I put that trailer on it.

296
00:29:05,100 --> 00:29:07,883
And that's exactly what's going to happen to that.

297
00:29:07,883 --> 00:29:13,147
If I tried to tow it with an electric car, I wouldn't be able to get to a track that's 200
miles away.

298
00:29:13,147 --> 00:29:22,435
But I think in general, if you can, if you can afford it, a new used, a used internal
combustion engine car that you use occasionally for that longer trip is one way to do it.

299
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I think another thing too is.

300
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is the plug-in hybrid and the design of the plug-in hybrid.

301
00:29:28,097 --> 00:29:32,297
Right now they're 50, 75, why not 150?

302
00:29:32,297 --> 00:29:36,657
Or maybe 200 and make that internal combustion engine smaller.

303
00:29:36,657 --> 00:29:39,127
Because you really need that on the highway.

304
00:29:39,127 --> 00:29:40,817
You need it for that long trip.

305
00:29:40,817 --> 00:29:50,191
And if you look at the amount of horsepower, in fact, I tried to do some digging on this,
is exactly how much horsepower do you need to keep a regular sedan moving?

306
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at 55 miles per hour.

307
00:29:51,512 --> 00:29:54,369
And it's not very much, although I couldn't find exact agreement.

308
00:29:54,369 --> 00:29:58,833
I'd have to do the calculations on my own or have someone do it, but it's it's.

309
00:29:58,833 --> 00:30:00,988
Most of the energy is just trying to get it up to speed.

310
00:30:00,988 --> 00:30:02,660
And then once you're at speed...

311
00:30:02,660 --> 00:30:06,014
that's what the electric part is really good at doing with all the torque.

312
00:30:06,014 --> 00:30:11,060
Once you get to 55, you might need 50 horsepower, 100 at the most.

313
00:30:11,060 --> 00:30:12,021
It's somewhere.

314
00:30:12,021 --> 00:30:17,147
So so why not a 60 horsepower tiny little motor that you kick in?

315
00:30:17,147 --> 00:30:22,977
Now, you're not going to be able to go 90 or 100, but hey, it's a simple motor.

316
00:30:22,977 --> 00:30:25,697
kind of the interest we're seeing from a lot of automakers.

317
00:30:25,697 --> 00:30:33,117
And this is already kind of happening in China, but what they call the EREV, where it's
essentially a large battery pack.

318
00:30:33,237 --> 00:30:41,817
And it's kind what you're talking about, where it's like 90, maybe 95 % of the time, it's
pretty much an electric vehicle that is kind of towing around a small little gas

319
00:30:41,817 --> 00:30:42,267
generator.

320
00:30:42,267 --> 00:30:51,931
But when you're trying to do a long trip or towing, then the small kind of gas generator,
I mean, it operates more like a locomotive where it's essentially

321
00:30:51,931 --> 00:31:03,891
electric motors doing all the movement, all that power, and then it's only the generator
will kind of kick in where necessary to either fill up the battery or kind of make that

322
00:31:03,891 --> 00:31:08,511
electricity to power the motors once the battery is completely depleted.

323
00:31:08,911 --> 00:31:18,731
I mean like even Scout Motors, that was one of the options for their new recently revealed
vehicles was kind of either a fully electric or this kind of battery range extender

324
00:31:18,731 --> 00:31:20,291
version which

325
00:31:20,723 --> 00:31:28,196
I think there's definitely a use case for it, especially if you like to do a lot of
overlanding, off-road trips into really remote places.

326
00:31:28,237 --> 00:31:31,298
It's a pretty nice feature to have.

327
00:31:32,278 --> 00:31:34,089
And I think there's definitely a market for it.

328
00:31:34,089 --> 00:31:39,862
It wouldn't surprise me if we start seeing again where people just as battery ranges and
stuff increase longer term.

329
00:31:39,862 --> 00:31:46,545
But yeah, I think it's totally a good use case for people who tell a lot or go into really
remote places.

330
00:31:46,605 --> 00:31:50,587
And then when they don't need to, and it's still a huge delta

331
00:31:50,587 --> 00:32:00,787
as far as what is emissions and how much they're using gas and all this stuff and so it
kind of gets things kind of going the right direction anyway and I think for a lot of

332
00:32:00,787 --> 00:32:09,567
these people use the the advantage too is then instead of it being kind of a plug-in
hybrid setup or can be kind of actually a little more complicated and you need a really

333
00:32:09,567 --> 00:32:14,247
advanced sometimes

334
00:32:14,777 --> 00:32:16,457
transmission and all these things.

335
00:32:16,457 --> 00:32:17,697
It's still just electric motors.

336
00:32:17,697 --> 00:32:19,447
All you're doing is electricity generation.

337
00:32:19,447 --> 00:32:22,257
So you still actually have far less parts.

338
00:32:22,257 --> 00:32:26,747
You have a much better, I think, driving experience and a much more linear acceleration.

339
00:32:26,747 --> 00:32:29,177
All these things that are kind of great about UVs.

340
00:32:29,177 --> 00:32:30,597
And then, yeah, you get the range.

341
00:32:30,597 --> 00:32:33,057
And then if you're towing, you get all that torque and stuff.

342
00:32:33,057 --> 00:32:42,457
And you fill up after 400 miles, which really isn't much different, if not even better,
than a lot of large pickups when you're towing.

343
00:32:42,557 --> 00:32:44,047
Well, and I think you've hit it right.

344
00:32:44,047 --> 00:32:47,617
This whole idea of the range extender and you mentioned the Scout.

345
00:32:47,617 --> 00:32:57,277
And if you go way back, well, somewhat way back to the BMW i3, which was one of the first
electric cars out, that was a pretty much an electric car.

346
00:32:57,277 --> 00:33:00,157
And then they'd say, there's a little range extender.

347
00:33:00,157 --> 00:33:05,997
I think I forget the size of the range extender, but I think it was like 800 CC was a tiny
little motor.

348
00:33:05,997 --> 00:33:10,579
Now that car getting back to composites was at all composite body, which

349
00:33:10,621 --> 00:33:12,461
looking back is a little bit crazy.

350
00:33:12,461 --> 00:33:16,411
I who's going to make an economy car out of the most expensive material in the world?

351
00:33:16,411 --> 00:33:17,721
So that didn't make any sense.

352
00:33:17,721 --> 00:33:29,001
I always like to say, because that was still in the days when we were working on composite
software, but I like to say that BMW learned what not to do with the i3 when making an

353
00:33:29,001 --> 00:33:29,761
economy car.

354
00:33:29,761 --> 00:33:31,028
I carbon fiber is good.

355
00:33:31,028 --> 00:33:38,874
anyone asks me for a recommendation for an around town electric car, that's usually one of
my first recommendations is just to get one of those used.

356
00:33:38,874 --> 00:33:40,915
They're pretty fun to actually drive.

357
00:33:41,236 --> 00:33:42,777
Yeah, yeah, they're good price.

358
00:33:42,777 --> 00:33:45,279
They're incredibly safe.

359
00:33:45,339 --> 00:33:47,220
The amount of like...

360
00:33:48,535 --> 00:33:57,810
ratings and what that thing can get into from an accident standpoint for being essentially
a small city car and be a much safer vehicle than even much larger vehicles.

361
00:33:57,810 --> 00:34:00,752
I think it's an awesome vehicle and you're totally right.

362
00:34:00,752 --> 00:34:01,992
It was one of the

363
00:34:02,751 --> 00:34:11,341
It was one of the best examples of like R and D of a large automotive company going kind
of wild and thinking, this will eventually kind of pencil out for us.

364
00:34:11,341 --> 00:34:14,186
And maybe it will, but, unlikely.

365
00:34:14,186 --> 00:34:15,827
And it just seems like it was too.

366
00:34:15,907 --> 00:34:20,749
The timing was definitely way off for them as a company to try and figure out how to put
that in there.

367
00:34:20,749 --> 00:34:31,855
But, it's, it's just been, I think those are just fun, great little, they're funky looking
and they are like the epitome of a car designed by an engineer versus like something

368
00:34:31,855 --> 00:34:32,687
that's like sexy.

369
00:34:32,687 --> 00:34:42,764
and aesthetic but it it's a very impressive vehicle and if you don't really care about the
aesthetics and you just want a small little easy driving city car they are phenomenal.

370
00:34:42,941 --> 00:34:46,861
Well, you you mentioned safety and the carbon fiber.

371
00:34:47,201 --> 00:34:53,841
So carbon fiber and the carbon fiber monocoque got into Formula One in the 80s and in
early 80s.

372
00:34:53,841 --> 00:34:57,341
By the end of the 80s, pretty much everyone had carbon fiber monocoques.

373
00:34:57,601 --> 00:35:00,181
if you look, Formula One started in 1950.

374
00:35:00,181 --> 00:35:02,731
So you got the 50s, the 60s, and then the 70s.

375
00:35:02,731 --> 00:35:10,747
And throughout those decades, roughly each decade, about 15 people, 13 to 15 people

376
00:35:10,747 --> 00:35:14,480
race car drivers actually lost their lives driving in Formula One.

377
00:35:14,480 --> 00:35:22,026
And then in the early in the 70s to the early 80s were the years where the horsepower like
went crazy.

378
00:35:22,067 --> 00:35:29,273
The cars back then had horsepower to weight ratios that are almost 50 to double what they
are now.

379
00:35:29,353 --> 00:35:32,896
And as a result, safety became more and more important.

380
00:35:32,896 --> 00:35:38,871
And the carbon fiber monocoque, if you've seen some of the crashes that they have in
Formula One.

381
00:35:38,909 --> 00:35:43,191
and you see carbon fiber going all over the place and then just walk out.

382
00:35:43,191 --> 00:35:47,633
And the reason for that is if you look at a crash structure, made out of steel or
aluminum.

383
00:35:47,633 --> 00:35:51,554
It's basically a crash beam that would crumple.

384
00:35:51,554 --> 00:35:56,977
And as it crumples, it absorbs energy to with carbon fiber.

385
00:35:56,977 --> 00:36:07,821
You've got like in the monocoque, there's hundreds, know, dozens and dozens of layers, of
little pieces of carbon fiber that are in effect held together by epoxy.

386
00:36:07,983 --> 00:36:18,548
And to tear those layers apart requires so much energy that by that all the energy gets
used up and the driver on the inside stays safe.

387
00:36:18,548 --> 00:36:27,962
And that's why your i3, even though it's a little teeny car, is probably one of the safest
cars to drive in.

388
00:36:28,903 --> 00:36:34,765
another thing that I guess eventually if we can figure out how to make carbon fiber a
little bit less expensive.

389
00:36:34,910 --> 00:36:40,001
You would see it working its way down into more lower price consumer vehicles.

390
00:36:40,001 --> 00:36:48,375
Well, and I think it was really interesting because it seemed like BMW was trying to do
that because then you start seeing like their, or not their Ivo, but like their five

391
00:36:48,375 --> 00:36:49,535
series and seven series.

392
00:36:49,535 --> 00:36:57,899
And they kind of mentioned, we did this thing and it's made out of carbon fiber and it
makes it stronger and it saves 20 pounds.

393
00:36:57,899 --> 00:37:06,283
And it was just really interesting where it's like, clearly them as a company, we're
trying to figure out how to best leverage all this money that they've spent building a

394
00:37:06,283 --> 00:37:09,915
really interesting, cool product, but how do they get it to a point where they can

395
00:37:09,915 --> 00:37:19,672
scale it and now you've kind of just seen that even go away unfortunately and it would it
be it's a hard challenge to figure out to kind of find those weights critical weight

396
00:37:19,672 --> 00:37:22,376
savings that justifies that price delta.

397
00:37:22,845 --> 00:37:26,989
And they spent billions and billions and they had a factory.

398
00:37:26,989 --> 00:37:28,530
had automation.

399
00:37:28,610 --> 00:37:41,321
And the one thing with carbon fiber is the more complex curvature you have, more complex
shapes you have, the harder it is to make them without manual.

400
00:37:41,321 --> 00:37:43,343
Formula one cars are made manually by hand.

401
00:37:43,343 --> 00:37:45,003
There is no automation.

402
00:37:45,384 --> 00:37:51,099
There is automation in aircraft like the Boeing 787 though is robotically made the entire,
but that's

403
00:37:51,099 --> 00:37:53,852
the fuselage, but it's a nice flat.

404
00:37:53,852 --> 00:37:55,132
It's a tube.

405
00:37:55,393 --> 00:38:00,738
There is no tubes in Formula One or even in an i3.

406
00:38:00,738 --> 00:38:02,409
There's cars just by their nature.

407
00:38:02,409 --> 00:38:03,821
They're small, they're compact.

408
00:38:03,821 --> 00:38:05,072
There's a lot of curvature there.

409
00:38:05,072 --> 00:38:10,226
Look at the shape of the passenger cell of an i3 versus a Boeing 787.

410
00:38:10,226 --> 00:38:15,330
And it's probably one of the greatest challenges ever to do that cost effectively.

411
00:38:15,691 --> 00:38:17,913
but anyways, they gave it a try and

412
00:38:17,913 --> 00:38:26,945
it at least shows the power of carbon fiber and again, some of the technology for
motorsports and how it can affect the commercial world.

413
00:38:28,045 --> 00:38:28,596
for sure.

414
00:38:28,596 --> 00:38:41,686
And I'm kind of curious, like, the lessons learned from that and what we're seeing now
with BMW kind of going into electrification, it does seem to be that they've taken a

415
00:38:41,686 --> 00:38:42,937
pretty big step back from that.

416
00:38:42,937 --> 00:38:44,919
They spent a lot of money, obviously.

417
00:38:45,159 --> 00:38:47,421
And I'm...

418
00:38:47,714 --> 00:38:57,910
It's interesting that to me so many cars now are so heavy, electric or not, or even
hybridized, how heavy a lot of cars have gotten.

419
00:38:59,607 --> 00:39:06,249
Now with electrification coming out, we are starting to see EVs lighter than their gas.

420
00:39:06,249 --> 00:39:13,291
I I forget what like the new BMW 3 starts at, but it's like, it weighs more than a model
3, which is a fully electric.

421
00:39:13,291 --> 00:39:15,811
And there's little nuances, sure.

422
00:39:15,811 --> 00:39:23,537
But like for what is traditionally been like the performance light, go fast vehicle in
that sedan space.

423
00:39:23,537 --> 00:39:26,664
And you're seeing this not just with BMW, that's just when it kind of stands out.

424
00:39:26,664 --> 00:39:28,805
I think got a lot of attention, but.

425
00:39:29,291 --> 00:39:32,823
a pretty big step away from lightness.

426
00:39:32,823 --> 00:39:38,106
yeah, some of that you could say is due to safety and other kind of regulations that have
kind of added complication.

427
00:39:38,146 --> 00:39:49,833
But I'm curious to like, and almost kind of surprised that we haven't seen more speaking
like innovation in motorsport, like leveraging design that tries to minimize weight.

428
00:39:49,933 --> 00:39:53,876
And of course, a big part of that is the battery causing that weight difference.

429
00:39:53,876 --> 00:39:56,197
And we're starting to see improvements there, but like,

430
00:39:56,279 --> 00:40:05,715
This is kind of the realm where I've been surprised with a lot of the legacy auto
manufacturers of not seeing more innovation around weight savings or like how to better

431
00:40:05,715 --> 00:40:18,702
use this, these learnings to create more, I wouldn't say necessarily more competitive
product, but it'll definitely make the product more efficient and kind of give them that

432
00:40:18,783 --> 00:40:22,589
less than you use less batteries and you get more range out of it.

433
00:40:22,625 --> 00:40:34,094
Well, I think in racing, when it comes to the car body itself, there you can afford to use
carbon fiber, you're not so much worried about the labor and all that.

434
00:40:34,535 --> 00:40:43,021
But a lot of these innovations that are more subtle, and I think weight reduction is one
of those, you don't really see weight reduction.

435
00:40:43,082 --> 00:40:45,423
And let's go back to the i3.

436
00:40:45,423 --> 00:40:52,409
When the i3 was coming out in the 2000s, the whole automotive industry said, my God,
everything is going to become carbon fiber.

437
00:40:52,413 --> 00:40:53,913
We got to do carbon fiber.

438
00:40:53,913 --> 00:40:56,053
then suddenly steel.

439
00:40:56,053 --> 00:40:56,913
my God, steel.

440
00:40:56,913 --> 00:40:58,153
That's we got to get rid of that.

441
00:40:58,153 --> 00:40:59,373
That's for sure too heavy.

442
00:40:59,373 --> 00:41:01,873
It's carbon fiber versus aluminum.

443
00:41:01,873 --> 00:41:02,863
All right.

444
00:41:02,863 --> 00:41:05,793
So now aluminum and carbon fiber are battling it out.

445
00:41:05,793 --> 00:41:18,733
if when when BMW went from the I3 and eventually to the six series, I think it was in the
seventh series for a while, they're calling it carbon core, but really had only like four

446
00:41:18,733 --> 00:41:20,909
or 5 % carbon fiber.

447
00:41:20,909 --> 00:41:21,773
Yeah.

448
00:41:21,773 --> 00:41:24,013
the 6 Series had no carbon fiber.

449
00:41:24,013 --> 00:41:26,913
In the meantime, aluminum is getting better.

450
00:41:26,913 --> 00:41:34,573
But then, and now if you look at the materials that are in cars, especially at the lower
end, steel has come back.

451
00:41:34,573 --> 00:41:38,783
what they've done is, know, the steel business is a big business.

452
00:41:38,783 --> 00:41:40,413
They're not just going to sit back.

453
00:41:40,413 --> 00:41:47,133
And they went from just having mild steel to press hardened steel, to advanced high
strength steel, super advanced.

454
00:41:47,133 --> 00:41:49,681
And some of those steels are more expensive.

455
00:41:49,681 --> 00:41:56,983
but they start to approach the stiffness to weight and strength to weight ratio of
aluminum.

456
00:41:56,983 --> 00:42:04,445
now, certainly in the lower cost cars, because steel is way more cost effective than
aluminum.

457
00:42:04,445 --> 00:42:08,426
Forget carbon fiber, it's never going to be in a car under $30,000.

458
00:42:08,426 --> 00:42:12,087
But steel is working its way back in.

459
00:42:12,407 --> 00:42:14,008
But you don't notice that, I think.

460
00:42:14,008 --> 00:42:19,361
And that's what makes possible some of these

461
00:42:19,857 --> 00:42:27,770
That helps reduce the cost of an electric car because if you're going to put that big
heavy battery in there, first of all, the batteries are just heavy, so you got to move

462
00:42:27,770 --> 00:42:29,561
them around, make it as light as possible.

463
00:42:29,561 --> 00:42:39,206
But the other problem you have, you've taken that battery and you've put it at the bottom
of the car and now you got to still make that car stiff.

464
00:42:39,206 --> 00:42:42,167
And so you've got to make that battery pack.

465
00:42:42,407 --> 00:42:44,368
You can't have all that dead weight in there.

466
00:42:44,368 --> 00:42:47,215
It has to contribute to the strength and stiffness of the car.

467
00:42:47,215 --> 00:42:50,366
And you have to protect the battery at the same time.

468
00:42:50,366 --> 00:42:55,827
So innovative designs that are more lightweight, but still give you strength and
stiffness.

469
00:42:55,827 --> 00:43:03,150
And I think Tesla has had some patents in this area where they use aluminum casting as a
single piece for the whole car body.

470
00:43:03,150 --> 00:43:05,690
And the battery pack is the integral part of it.

471
00:43:05,690 --> 00:43:10,732
These are the things you never see when you buy a car, but they are happening.

472
00:43:10,732 --> 00:43:11,892
They are happening.

473
00:43:11,892 --> 00:43:15,631
There's always a drive for weight, but you have to do it in a cost effective.

474
00:43:15,631 --> 00:43:17,717
And that's the real challenge.

475
00:43:19,161 --> 00:43:25,941
Well, and I know, I mean, there's a lot of reasons and benefits for that, obviously, some
of its range, but also the lighter it gets.

476
00:43:25,941 --> 00:43:32,231
And this is one of the things I know we want to talk about was just kind of the reductions
of energy being used.

477
00:43:32,231 --> 00:43:41,921
And so like metrics for greenhouse gases and those being used in racing, we've kind of
mentioned a little bit about like hydrogen, but I know this was kind of a topic you wanted

478
00:43:41,921 --> 00:43:43,461
to talk a little bit about.

479
00:43:43,461 --> 00:43:48,921
I'm curious to kind of hear your thoughts about this in general in this space and what you
kind of see.

480
00:43:49,125 --> 00:43:59,199
as the future maybe in the next couple years and then maybe what the next decade looks
like because there's been a lot of talk of what some of these new technologies are and how

481
00:43:59,199 --> 00:44:02,921
soon or how to what scale they can be implemented.

482
00:44:03,441 --> 00:44:11,706
Well, just going back to some of the time I spent at Siemens when I was the head of their
motorsport strategy.

483
00:44:11,887 --> 00:44:15,840
Siemens used to be big into sponsoring Formula One in the 2000 McLaren.

484
00:44:15,840 --> 00:44:26,577
I think it was in the mid 2000s, but now completely gotten away from it because in part
because of sustainability and the bad rap that motorsports has gotten.

485
00:44:26,697 --> 00:44:32,431
And motorsports has realized this and within the last five, six, seven years, they've

486
00:44:32,481 --> 00:44:42,595
They've decided they have to do something about the reputation that motorsports has,
because like we spoke about earlier, that's really, really important for them to maintain

487
00:44:42,595 --> 00:44:46,827
the Formula One or whatever any kind of racing series brand is.

488
00:44:47,047 --> 00:44:55,951
so what you have to do is before you can improve your sustainability, have to understand
what your sustainability is.

489
00:44:55,951 --> 00:44:58,692
What are the emissions that you have now?

490
00:44:58,692 --> 00:45:00,473
Where are they coming from?

491
00:45:01,021 --> 00:45:05,101
There's this group called Lab of Thought that did a comparison now.

492
00:45:05,101 --> 00:45:13,501
Now the Formula One has been working on their Net Zero by 2030 program for a while now.

493
00:45:13,501 --> 00:45:19,001
they've taken the measurements they've made of their missions and they compared it to
cycling.

494
00:45:19,001 --> 00:45:24,301
So cycling would be Tour de France, Giro Italia, in Spain has a thing called Voleta.

495
00:45:24,301 --> 00:45:31,031
And so they looked at the entire series of cycling versus a Formula One

496
00:45:31,031 --> 00:45:33,983
annual racing series and all the events they do.

497
00:45:33,983 --> 00:45:43,971
And if you looked at the emissions that they had, cycling was seven times greater in CO2
emissions than the entire Formula One series.

498
00:45:43,971 --> 00:45:53,679
Now, if you look at the actual event itself, the cars, they are less than 1 % of the total
emissions that you get from the Formula One series.

499
00:45:53,679 --> 00:45:56,657
But the car does emit more

500
00:45:56,657 --> 00:45:58,559
greenhouse gases and a cyclist says.

501
00:45:58,559 --> 00:45:59,339
So that's for sure.

502
00:45:59,339 --> 00:46:01,761
But it's a teeny, teeny little slice.

503
00:46:01,761 --> 00:46:17,625
The majority of that comes from and I think it's close to 75 % comes from moving people in
teams and broadcasting equipment, moving all the equipment that the cars need to do the

504
00:46:17,625 --> 00:46:21,458
pit stops in the garages and media centers, whatever it is.

505
00:46:21,458 --> 00:46:23,780
That's like 75 % of the emissions.

506
00:46:23,780 --> 00:46:25,337
And if you look at cycling,

507
00:46:25,337 --> 00:46:29,820
Sure, the bicycles are great, but they've got chase vehicles.

508
00:46:29,981 --> 00:46:33,164
And they're moving these events all over the place.

509
00:46:33,164 --> 00:46:40,681
And I think that's where you end up getting this increase in the 7x increase recycling.

510
00:46:40,681 --> 00:46:47,807
Now, I think the most significant thing about all this is motor sports has to change their
reputation.

511
00:46:47,807 --> 00:46:52,667
And the only way to do that is one, and the FIA, the Sanctioning Body is taking the lead
on this.

512
00:46:52,667 --> 00:46:59,482
is they've gone in and they've done a very thorough job in measuring where they are right
now and what their emissions are.

513
00:46:59,482 --> 00:47:06,828
When the lab thought that this comparison to cycling, only the Tour de France had actually
measured what their emissions were.

514
00:47:06,828 --> 00:47:09,289
So they had to estimate what the other ones are.

515
00:47:09,289 --> 00:47:16,694
And I think that shows the commitment that motorsports has in this area.

516
00:47:17,596 --> 00:47:19,617
I think, for instance,

517
00:47:20,209 --> 00:47:25,910
I mentioned 50 % electric drive and the new rules that come out in 26 for Formula One.

518
00:47:26,449 --> 00:47:29,452
100 % renewable fuels, e-fuels.

519
00:47:29,452 --> 00:47:34,113
Now, these will be carbon neutral fuels will be used by the year 2026.

520
00:47:34,113 --> 00:47:37,354
So pretty much all their major series would be using that.

521
00:47:37,354 --> 00:47:41,215
So a lot of big steps, I think, are being taken there.

522
00:47:41,215 --> 00:47:49,777
And again, even thinking about things like extreme E that's running events in areas that
are challenged by climate change.

523
00:47:49,925 --> 00:47:59,741
And if you do go to the events, actually there will have, and even on their broadcast,
they'll have climate scientists come in and give talks about what's going on in that area.

524
00:47:59,741 --> 00:48:12,418
And so they're using the profits and really they're seeing it's very important to take the
resources they have and use it as a platform in this area of sustainability.

525
00:48:12,739 --> 00:48:15,320
again, you got to sort of peel the onion away a little bit, right?

526
00:48:15,320 --> 00:48:16,583
Look underneath to.

527
00:48:16,583 --> 00:48:18,357
to see what's really going on.

528
00:48:18,357 --> 00:48:24,249
But I think that motor sports is definitely stepping up there and now it's time for
cycling to do the same.

529
00:48:25,635 --> 00:48:27,870
No, I think that's a great comparison.

530
00:48:28,963 --> 00:48:37,577
You know, you're not the first one I've heard say that, that is like something that
probably a lot of people don't think about or fully realize that that would be the

531
00:48:37,577 --> 00:48:39,478
difference in those two.

532
00:48:40,058 --> 00:48:51,253
You did mention e-fuels, and I'm kind curious for your thoughts on that because there's
been a lot of talk about e-fuels in general for the past decade at least, maybe longer.

533
00:48:51,253 --> 00:48:58,987
And I think recently it does seem like motorsports been kind of the one talking about it
again, and it seems

534
00:48:58,999 --> 00:49:08,650
like it makes a lot of sense for that space to kind of keep going with the combustion side
of stuff, but it also seems like it's going to be way more expensive than traditional gas,

535
00:49:08,650 --> 00:49:15,597
which I mean, bracing gas, even of the non-E fuel type is always usually more expensive
than this stuff.

536
00:49:15,718 --> 00:49:18,620
And so I'm kind curious on your thoughts about

537
00:49:20,121 --> 00:49:29,335
Do you see kind of e-fuels, and I think it's totally fine if they're really just in
motorsport and in the scheme of what motorsport pays for and deals with, your fuel price

538
00:49:29,335 --> 00:49:34,788
is going up a little bit, really isn't that big of an expense compared to building the
actual car and all these other things.

539
00:49:34,788 --> 00:49:40,821
But do you see e-fuels having much of a chance at scale beyond?

540
00:49:40,821 --> 00:49:48,194
Because it seems like we hear that one is just the increased cost of what it takes to make
it and kind of how to do this ethically.

541
00:49:48,194 --> 00:49:50,105
But then it just also sounds like

542
00:49:50,105 --> 00:50:01,076
unlikely to ever be something that gets at scale to bring the cost down significantly
enough to be something beyond motorsport, which personally I totally get that and I'm okay

543
00:50:01,076 --> 00:50:02,261
with it just being a motorsport thing.

544
00:50:02,261 --> 00:50:10,106
I think it's kind of great to see that going and then embrace it at least in that way, but
I'm just kind of curious on your thoughts about that or anything you've heard or what that

545
00:50:10,106 --> 00:50:11,293
might look like.

546
00:50:11,293 --> 00:50:13,893
I think you raise a good point.

547
00:50:14,353 --> 00:50:16,433
Well, it's hard to predict the future.

548
00:50:17,013 --> 00:50:19,413
what's going to be in 10 or 15 years?

549
00:50:19,413 --> 00:50:26,353
mean, I think the first Formula One race in 1950 had drum brakes, which fade.

550
00:50:26,353 --> 00:50:27,372
It's all sorts of...

551
00:50:27,372 --> 00:50:30,013
And within a year or two, this is the 50s.

552
00:50:30,013 --> 00:50:31,653
Now they had disc brakes.

553
00:50:31,913 --> 00:50:33,423
who needs those in cars?

554
00:50:33,423 --> 00:50:34,913
And they're expensive.

555
00:50:34,913 --> 00:50:36,373
I mean, they're hard to make.

556
00:50:36,373 --> 00:50:40,285
And next thing you know, they're used because the cost came down when you're...

557
00:50:40,285 --> 00:50:46,587
when you're producing in mass, and they are safer, especially in wet conditions and things
like that.

558
00:50:46,587 --> 00:50:52,688
So e-fuels, so, well, first of you gotta look at them in two ways.

559
00:50:52,688 --> 00:50:55,999
One is, what are they really doing in terms of carbon emissions?

560
00:50:55,999 --> 00:50:58,310
And I think also the cost.

561
00:50:58,310 --> 00:51:09,455
And Porsche built a plant in Chile, and what they did was, have to, first you gotta create
hydrogen, and you do that with electrolysis.

562
00:51:09,455 --> 00:51:16,829
Electrolysis is not cheap when it comes to the amount of electricity it needs to take all
that hydrogen out of the water.

563
00:51:16,829 --> 00:51:28,416
And so they put a bunch of wind turbines on the mountains of Chile and they were able to
make green electrolysis, I guess you could call it, that then was combined with CO2 that

564
00:51:28,416 --> 00:51:30,057
was scrubbed out of the atmosphere.

565
00:51:30,057 --> 00:51:32,008
And now you've got a carbon neutral fuel.

566
00:51:32,008 --> 00:51:37,273
I think there might have been methanol in the middle of the process, but eventually you
had a carbon

567
00:51:37,273 --> 00:51:38,254
neutral fuel.

568
00:51:38,254 --> 00:51:40,825
And in fact, at that point, it's carbon positive.

569
00:51:40,825 --> 00:51:42,476
You take in the CO2 out.

570
00:51:42,476 --> 00:51:51,531
Then what Porsche wanted to do and what they're doing is then they'll take this fuel and
then if they have these things called Porsche Experience Centers, where for those that can

571
00:51:51,531 --> 00:51:54,223
afford it can go drive a very expensive Porsche.

572
00:51:54,223 --> 00:52:04,665
And now you can do that and actually be carbon neutral because you've taken carbon out of
the air in Chile and you're probably redepositing it at Silverstone.

573
00:52:04,665 --> 00:52:12,461
in the UK or something like that, it truly is carbon neutral, but it's very, very
expensive.

574
00:52:12,569 --> 00:52:13,209
Right.

575
00:52:13,209 --> 00:52:22,909
Well, and I think even you actually did a really good job of describing the process, but I
think anyone listening to that process can kind of understand that there's so many steps

576
00:52:22,909 --> 00:52:26,749
to get through that it's like, how can you.

577
00:52:26,777 --> 00:52:30,397
In what world could you do that in a cost effective way?

578
00:52:31,077 --> 00:52:38,007
But I think it is also really cool and impressive that obviously that's such a big thing
at Porsche and they are an innovator in a lot of ways.

579
00:52:38,007 --> 00:52:44,507
And I think it's really cool to see them go that far along the process to really try and
make it work.

580
00:52:44,507 --> 00:52:54,817
they have, but yeah, as we're kinda talking about, to do that at scale and the price, I
don't know if that makes sense, but I think there's argument to be made.

581
00:52:55,193 --> 00:52:57,433
that it's really cool to see that.

582
00:52:57,433 --> 00:53:09,993
And like I said, when you start getting into that realm of motorsport, whether it be at
scale for like entertainment, like a Formula One or for personal gas price, okay, it went

583
00:53:09,993 --> 00:53:15,353
up a little bit in the scheme of like having gone through race tires and all this stuff.

584
00:53:15,353 --> 00:53:22,653
It's not that big of a Delta of what you're spending anyway, that if we see more and more
of

585
00:53:23,107 --> 00:53:26,341
kind of private and large scale race and go that way.

586
00:53:26,341 --> 00:53:33,159
I don't think it's going to be as heartfelt as like maybe the average race and going to
the pump.

587
00:53:33,159 --> 00:53:36,572
And I think that's kind of cool to see that that is an option.

588
00:53:37,559 --> 00:53:38,810
for people to stay in the space.

589
00:53:38,810 --> 00:53:48,364
think there will be, I know it's kind of, it seems premature to use it as an antidote, but
a lot of people compare like what the future of motor sport might be would be like to

590
00:53:48,364 --> 00:53:53,617
horse racing, where it's like, yeah, people still have horses, but it's a very expensive,
very small niche endeavor.

591
00:53:53,617 --> 00:54:04,181
I don't know if it's going to be that small, at least not anytime soon, but it is kind of
a way to kind of fill that gap and also make it, I think, check a lot of the boxes that

592
00:54:04,181 --> 00:54:07,643
people that have been concerned about the space have can now

593
00:54:07,643 --> 00:54:19,727
say that yeah in that example perfectly that it is a actually not carbon carbon negative I
guess with everything that's being done yeah yeah

594
00:54:19,727 --> 00:54:30,014
you raise again, another good point, which, which they, there's a saying in motor sports
is if you want to make a million, then start with two, and then you'll end up with one.

595
00:54:30,014 --> 00:54:33,977
nobody, very few people that are engaged in motor sports.

596
00:54:33,977 --> 00:54:40,761
I mean, we see Formula One and IndyCar and NASCAR, and those people, many of them, not all
of them are making money.

597
00:54:41,242 --> 00:54:44,164
But there's, that's just a tiny, that's just the tip of the iceberg.

598
00:54:44,164 --> 00:54:45,381
There's so many people that just,

599
00:54:45,381 --> 00:54:53,063
race for fun or race semi-professionally and they are spending a lot, a lot of money to
just enjoy, enjoy a sport.

600
00:54:53,063 --> 00:54:54,363
And that's like horse racing, right?

601
00:54:54,363 --> 00:54:59,135
If you want to win the Kentucky Derby, you're, spending a lot of money getting those
horses to where they can do that.

602
00:54:59,135 --> 00:55:00,665
And the same goes for a race car.

603
00:55:00,665 --> 00:55:06,887
But in the end, which has really been somewhat of a theme of what we've been talking about
here.

604
00:55:06,887 --> 00:55:14,949
It's motivated Porsche with their high speed experience centers to at least look at
e-fuels.

605
00:55:15,037 --> 00:55:23,957
Now, I think at a minimum, it jump starts us towards knowing if e-fuels will ever, if
they're ever going to make it or not.

606
00:55:23,957 --> 00:55:33,177
Just like BMW learned what not to do on the i3 when it comes to making an all composite
fighter plane, you know, commuter car, right?

607
00:55:33,177 --> 00:55:35,097
With the same construction as a fighter plane.

608
00:55:35,097 --> 00:55:38,357
I think you'll probably start to learn, you know what?

609
00:55:38,357 --> 00:55:44,305
It's never going to go under $50 a gallon or 25 or whatever the number is now, or maybe it
will.

610
00:55:44,305 --> 00:55:55,879
than I thought it would be I'd have to look it up again But I while you were talking about
I did Google it quickly and it it went live in 2022 and I I don't remember the Specific

611
00:55:55,879 --> 00:56:01,301
per gallon price, but I believe it's like eight dollars a gallon Which I could be wrong.

612
00:56:01,301 --> 00:56:07,312
I could be wrong, but I think that's what I'd heard last I was trying to confirm that but
even at eight dollars a gallon.

613
00:56:07,312 --> 00:56:09,113
It's not cheap, but like

614
00:56:09,703 --> 00:56:11,501
Well, what's gas in California?

615
00:56:11,501 --> 00:56:21,521
a set of Michelin tires and all these other things, it's like, and yeah, like you go to a
lot of racetracks now that have fees and all this stuff and good or bad, it's just like

616
00:56:21,521 --> 00:56:27,631
everything else, it's gotten more expensive, but it's not like buying uranium expensive.

617
00:56:27,631 --> 00:56:36,921
It's not like a hundred bucks a gallon, but I, and maybe I'm incorrect, but I believe last
I heard it was like eight to $10 a gallon, is still crazy, but.

618
00:56:37,433 --> 00:56:38,823
for a lot of things isn't that far.

619
00:56:38,823 --> 00:56:49,679
mean, like you can go buy gas for boats at a lot of places and they'll charge you like six
bucks a gallon just because they're the only place you can buy the gas from.

620
00:56:50,833 --> 00:56:52,901
And same with like aviation gas.

621
00:56:53,095 --> 00:56:55,376
Porsche E fuel costs.

622
00:56:55,998 --> 00:56:56,790
Trying to see.

623
00:56:56,790 --> 00:56:58,420
I thought it was more than that.

624
00:56:58,420 --> 00:57:00,281
You can edit some of this out,

625
00:57:03,035 --> 00:57:03,937
You're correct.

626
00:57:03,937 --> 00:57:05,738
Okay, so I did find this.

627
00:57:05,959 --> 00:57:06,881
This looks...

628
00:57:06,881 --> 00:57:07,769
liter.

629
00:57:08,089 --> 00:57:16,759
Well, this looks like a pretty credible source and I'll try and get a link to it in
today's show notes, but it says, Persia will first use eFuelz in special products,

630
00:57:16,759 --> 00:57:19,629
including, and this was, think, from last year.

631
00:57:19,629 --> 00:57:31,489
It currently costs $45 per gallon to make, and this was from June 20th of 2023, but it is
projected to cost less than $8 per gallon by 2026.

632
00:57:32,389 --> 00:57:36,801
So, not a steal, but yeah, it's coming down.

633
00:57:36,801 --> 00:57:38,684
gallon is not bad, right?

634
00:57:38,684 --> 00:57:42,489
Gas is six, what is it, five or six dollars in California?

635
00:57:42,497 --> 00:57:49,037
Yeah, yeah, who knows maybe e-fuels in California would be 10 bucks, but yeah.

636
00:57:49,037 --> 00:57:49,427
to eight?

637
00:57:49,427 --> 00:57:51,361
You don't do that overnight.

638
00:57:51,361 --> 00:57:52,122
for sure, for sure.

639
00:57:52,122 --> 00:57:57,229
And a lot of that is scale, but like I said, is that what everyone at the pump can afford?

640
00:57:57,229 --> 00:58:00,412
Probably not, but it makes it being a pretty,

641
00:58:00,857 --> 00:58:13,867
realistic option for a lot of tracks to even offer if they can do it to that level, just
because like I said, aviation gas or even gas you get for boats isn't far off that.

642
00:58:13,867 --> 00:58:20,217
It's just that they charge a premium because they have it in such supply or they're the
only places you can get it from.

643
00:58:20,217 --> 00:58:26,041
So it's like if it's around eight to 10 bucks longer term, I think it definitely doesn't.

644
00:58:26,423 --> 00:58:32,391
by no means is like a deal breaker for the sport or people who want, like you said, want
to do it personally or professionally.

645
00:58:32,391 --> 00:58:37,524
Well, you know, one thing to think about is to say, OK, I'll give you two challenges.

646
00:58:37,524 --> 00:58:39,325
You pick one and you have to invest in it.

647
00:58:39,325 --> 00:58:43,247
Challenge one, bring the price from eight dollars down to four.

648
00:58:43,247 --> 00:58:46,169
I'll give you ten years or two.

649
00:58:46,169 --> 00:58:53,473
Build an infrastructure to charge every electric car in the entire world in ten years.

650
00:58:53,473 --> 00:58:57,074
Now, because you got your infrastructure already for the e-fields.

651
00:58:57,134 --> 00:59:01,256
If you put it that way, that's an interesting proposition.

652
00:59:03,031 --> 00:59:11,378
Yeah, I think it is kind of, there's interesting points to both those sides because you
can kind of say the thing about electric cars is like, well, you can charge it in a 120

653
00:59:11,378 --> 00:59:13,538
volt outlet today.

654
00:59:13,739 --> 00:59:16,023
Is that realistic and can you do that scale?

655
00:59:16,023 --> 00:59:17,304
Probably not.

656
00:59:17,431 --> 00:59:22,287
But it's not to the same scale like you have to have DC fast chargers like you do gas.

657
00:59:22,287 --> 00:59:25,951
But you're right that it is still something that has to be done.

658
00:59:25,951 --> 00:59:31,998
Even if you decide you just want to put in more level two chargers, that's still a large
infrastructure change.

659
00:59:32,139 --> 00:59:37,184
I guess what's really interesting is the difference is do you invest in the

660
00:59:38,233 --> 00:59:42,637
fuel source or do you invest in the infrastructure to support the fuel source?

661
00:59:42,637 --> 00:59:46,661
So electricity we kind of have and we can generate more-ish.

662
00:59:46,661 --> 00:59:55,629
It's just like actually getting it into the car through whether that be at home or in your
own, the charging station itself.

663
00:59:55,683 --> 00:59:58,144
Whereas with this, we have the fueling infrastructure.

664
00:59:58,144 --> 01:00:00,715
We've had a century really to build that out.

665
01:00:00,815 --> 01:00:07,458
We just now have to make this new crazy new clean fuel, which we now at least have a model
of how to do it.

666
01:00:07,458 --> 01:00:11,159
It's how do we do it larger?

667
01:00:11,579 --> 01:00:16,281
so really, it's just a scale problem for either that just where that investment goes.

668
01:00:16,933 --> 01:00:24,478
And figuring it out is the tricky part because it's not black and white.

669
01:00:24,478 --> 01:00:32,602
I mean, you don't have to say, we're just doing e-fuels or we're just going to have this
infrastructure and put our money there.

670
01:00:32,602 --> 01:00:34,894
Maybe it's a combination of the two.

671
01:00:34,894 --> 01:00:35,864
Wow.

672
01:00:35,864 --> 01:00:38,005
If we invested X amount, we'll take the 100%.

673
01:00:38,005 --> 01:00:41,768
We're going to put an infrastructure and give 20 % to e-fuels.

674
01:00:41,768 --> 01:00:44,421
That'll hold us over till 2035.

675
01:00:44,421 --> 01:00:48,068
And by then we'll have the infrastructure there and then it'll be cheaper to go that way.

676
01:00:48,068 --> 01:00:57,135
But I think in our society now, there tends to be this black and white type of thing and
it's hard to do things in between.

677
01:00:57,796 --> 01:00:58,716
you're, no, you're right.

678
01:00:58,716 --> 01:01:04,792
And doing a collective mixed approach versus one or the other, you're totally right.

679
01:01:04,792 --> 01:01:14,600
And I think it's been fascinating because even to see the one approach, you don't have to
go too far, unfortunately, to see like, there's been a lot of money spent and then what's

680
01:01:14,600 --> 01:01:16,531
kind of come out on the other side.

681
01:01:17,805 --> 01:01:21,147
has kind of been hit or miss depending on where that source of money is coming from.

682
01:01:21,147 --> 01:01:24,129
But I think will that change for sure?

683
01:01:24,665 --> 01:01:32,139
It's just a really fascinating, they're both technologies we more or less had in theory
for over a century.

684
01:01:32,139 --> 01:01:38,158
One's electric and motors and the other's gas and combustion engines are over a century
old both.

685
01:01:38,158 --> 01:01:42,040
It's just at what evolutions on the...

686
01:01:43,960 --> 01:01:49,561
fueling infrastructure side are we on that have had that century of focus and what needs
to change?

687
01:01:49,561 --> 01:01:50,781
And I do agree with you.

688
01:01:50,781 --> 01:02:01,081
don't think, to me it seems likely long-term that the vast majority will go electric, but
I also don't think, I think it's also really silly to a lot of people like, we don't need

689
01:02:01,081 --> 01:02:01,671
oil and gas.

690
01:02:01,671 --> 01:02:03,561
I was like, well, yeah, you do.

691
01:02:04,153 --> 01:02:08,833
there's the plastics put in these cars are oil and gas.

692
01:02:08,833 --> 01:02:18,233
The oil that's in the motor itself, it's going to change to what scale and where these
products are coming from, but it doesn't mean that you're going to get rid of it

693
01:02:18,233 --> 01:02:19,073
completely.

694
01:02:19,073 --> 01:02:22,173
And there's still going to be a place for aviation fuel.

695
01:02:22,173 --> 01:02:25,041
There's still going to be a place for...

696
01:02:25,837 --> 01:02:31,012
jet fuel and now it looks like e-fuels and I really don't think it's a one or the other.

697
01:02:31,012 --> 01:02:40,460
I think you have to be smart at where you're putting the focus and I think there is a
place for hydrogen in all of this but I think for a lot of light duty stuff it seems

698
01:02:40,460 --> 01:02:52,733
pretty clear that will go electric and that it's kind of these other use cases TBD but
there's good arguments for these other fuel sources and technology is powering them.

699
01:02:52,733 --> 01:03:03,333
Well, shipping, think, is a great example because in shipping, if you were going to make
an electric cargo ship, just think of how much cargo is going to become those batteries

700
01:03:03,333 --> 01:03:04,313
that you're hauling around.

701
01:03:04,313 --> 01:03:09,213
So theirs were an e-fuel would be a much better application than a car in the street.

702
01:03:09,213 --> 01:03:14,853
a totally from like a carbon like from a mission standpoint, shipping is terrible.

703
01:03:14,953 --> 01:03:17,113
There's no argument there.

704
01:03:17,665 --> 01:03:24,989
I think there's an argument maybe to be made that there's some sort of hybrid solution and
then you've got these ideas that people are trying to go back to being wind powered in

705
01:03:24,989 --> 01:03:25,989
sales.

706
01:03:25,989 --> 01:03:27,200
I don't know if that's going to happen.

707
01:03:27,200 --> 01:03:29,110
I think it's an ambitious idea.

708
01:03:29,110 --> 01:03:36,464
But no, you're totally right where it's like, well, if we go to a cleaner fuel source
today, we see a pretty immediate impact.

709
01:03:36,464 --> 01:03:41,496
And if there's battery technology or hybrid or whatever technology down the road, great.

710
01:03:41,496 --> 01:03:47,419
But there's, yeah, a fuel source that's being so heavily dependent on that's

711
01:03:47,419 --> 01:03:53,631
having such a large outsized impact in that one industry, why not do that?

712
01:03:53,631 --> 01:04:03,155
And I think that's actually for all the talk green hydrogen gets, like heavy industry
makes a lot of sense for it to go like manufacturing and like steel and aluminum smelters.

713
01:04:03,155 --> 01:04:13,789
That I could see going hydrogen powered just because you have these large facilities that
can have large areas for storing hydrogen and then use it in a effective way.

714
01:04:14,317 --> 01:04:15,507
I don't think it's going to be in cars.

715
01:04:15,507 --> 01:04:23,341
I don't even know if it's going to be in trucks, but like heavy industry, yeah, I'd
usually makes a lot of E fuels in racing and shipping.

716
01:04:23,341 --> 01:04:29,163
I could see that because they are carbon intensive, but also effective in just getting the
stuff there.

717
01:04:29,163 --> 01:04:33,164
It's like, how do you change what the out product is?

718
01:04:33,165 --> 01:04:41,548
And then electrification for light duty, unless you're towing and you're towing more than
a couple hundred miles, especially if you're like a small city or these other things,

719
01:04:42,148 --> 01:04:43,409
there's a lot of...

720
01:04:43,745 --> 01:04:48,607
truck things that can be done within cities that the price of the products need to come
down.

721
01:04:48,607 --> 01:04:52,072
But long term, I don't see why they wouldn't go electric.

722
01:04:52,465 --> 01:05:05,370
Well, you know, I think one way to look at this is leaving if is it hydrogen or is it an
e-fuel or is it a battery or some combination of those that creates the power?

723
01:05:05,370 --> 01:05:10,292
You have to deliver the power to the road, to the tires that are moving the thing forward.

724
01:05:10,292 --> 01:05:14,534
And that's where I think electric drive is far superior.

725
01:05:14,534 --> 01:05:22,307
And if it weren't for the fact that electric motors have gotten more efficient, they've
gotten smaller, the power to weight ratio on those has gone on way up.

726
01:05:22,629 --> 01:05:29,353
You've got, it's possible with four wheel motors that you can break, you can do traction
control, you can accelerate the car.

727
01:05:29,353 --> 01:05:32,034
So a computer and four wheel motors.

728
01:05:32,054 --> 01:05:34,175
Now, where's the power coming from?

729
01:05:34,175 --> 01:05:44,161
Well, maybe it's coming from a pure battery pack that you charge, or maybe it's got that
range extender on, or maybe it's a little internal combustion engine that's running on an

730
01:05:44,161 --> 01:05:45,062
e-fuel.

731
01:05:45,062 --> 01:05:48,183
mean, hydrogen is a lot of car, it's inevitable.

732
01:05:48,183 --> 01:05:50,104
It's going to cars are going to be electric drive.

733
01:05:50,104 --> 01:05:51,825
I mean, it's so sweet.

734
01:05:52,806 --> 01:05:54,387
I mentioned my wife has that Tesla.

735
01:05:54,387 --> 01:05:56,108
Hey, no oil changes.

736
01:05:56,108 --> 01:06:01,171
You know, the brake pads are probably going to last longer than the rest of the car.

737
01:06:01,691 --> 01:06:03,247
You don't use the brakes.

738
01:06:03,247 --> 01:06:05,728
yeah, it's no brake pads and like.

739
01:06:05,961 --> 01:06:15,165
That is one of the biggest reasons I loved going to electric was just no oil changes and I
know that sounds like a silly thing but as someone who drives a lot and I've done my own

740
01:06:15,165 --> 01:06:24,650
oil changes that I enjoy it but some of the places I lived it wasn't really easy to do
that and then going to spend 80 to even 100 bucks to get oil change I was like okay now

741
01:06:24,650 --> 01:06:34,718
this really sucks I'm wasting time to go somewhere to get this done I'm spending so much
money to have someone else do something that's fairly simple that yeah and I think you're

742
01:06:34,718 --> 01:06:35,685
totally right with like the evil

743
01:06:35,685 --> 01:06:45,689
rev scenario that if you're towing or like I said anything light duty I just don't see how
it doesn't go to look it's electrified and then maybe there's a range extender if it's a

744
01:06:45,689 --> 01:06:58,463
case that needs towing or something but just the torque and I think it's one thing to talk
about like motorsport and performance vehicles but when you look at the vast majority of

745
01:06:58,463 --> 01:07:03,535
people they just need a thing that gets them from point A to point B and

746
01:07:03,583 --> 01:07:13,448
something, electric car seems like a sports car to them even if it's a large heavy thing
just because of the power delivery and it being just continuous and stuff having kind of

747
01:07:13,448 --> 01:07:15,589
the clunky there.

748
01:07:15,589 --> 01:07:19,760
I think that's been my biggest issue with so many plug-in or hybrids and let alone plug-in
hybrids.

749
01:07:19,760 --> 01:07:28,125
They drive terrible and it's not like maybe there's like some of the higher like the Volvo
and the Mercedes ones you're talking about.

750
01:07:28,125 --> 01:07:33,517
They handle fine but it's just like the gear like having like nine gears and it takes four

751
01:07:33,517 --> 01:07:35,707
years just to get to 50.

752
01:07:35,968 --> 01:07:44,222
It's that kind of thing that I think most people when they experience just that kind of
linear speed they don't really know the difference and it feels it's a much better

753
01:07:44,222 --> 01:07:45,433
experience to them.

754
01:07:45,433 --> 01:07:54,097
And I think sooner or later a lot of these light duty things will just go that way just
because that's what people get used to and kind of expect it to feel like.

755
01:07:54,861 --> 01:08:06,970
In the end, I think Stellantis announced this recently, that they're going to be testing,
I think, a limited-sized fleet with their solid-state batteries.

756
01:08:06,971 --> 01:08:11,894
And so they say 600-mile range.

757
01:08:11,894 --> 01:08:17,599
Now, it's not going to be commercially available, but they are testing it on the street.

758
01:08:17,599 --> 01:08:21,391
So does that mean in five years you're going be able to have a solid-state battery?

759
01:08:21,457 --> 01:08:30,534
that will get you to 600 or in 10 years, gets you to a thousand, charge your, or 2000 and
you charge your car four times a year or something.

760
01:08:30,534 --> 01:08:31,575
don't know.

761
01:08:32,343 --> 01:08:38,199
I'd worked in the solar industry in the mid to early 2000s.

762
01:08:38,199 --> 01:08:40,862
And the big word then was nanotechnology.

763
01:08:40,862 --> 01:08:48,379
And I feel like in the EV space, especially with batteries, that is now the buzzword.

764
01:08:48,379 --> 01:08:50,452
It's like, just solid state.

765
01:08:50,452 --> 01:08:54,235
That's this magic amorphous thing that'll solve everything.

766
01:08:56,413 --> 01:09:03,883
I think it has a place to play, I think realistically what's going to happen is we're not
going to get cars with 800 mile batteries.

767
01:09:03,883 --> 01:09:12,614
We're going to get the same cars with much smaller batteries that go 300 to 400 miles that
last longer and charge faster, even though I think everyone has this idea in their mind.

768
01:09:12,614 --> 01:09:15,033
It's like, I'm going to go 2,000 miles.

769
01:09:15,225 --> 01:09:24,605
in the end, right or wrong, the manufacturers see this as a way to get less batteries into
more cars versus putting a bunch of batteries into a few cars.

770
01:09:24,605 --> 01:09:30,905
I mean, I think there may be like some high end, it wouldn't surprise me if like the high
end RAM TRX or something.

771
01:09:30,905 --> 01:09:33,745
Yeah, maybe it has like a 600 mile range.

772
01:09:33,885 --> 01:09:35,005
Yeah.

773
01:09:35,185 --> 01:09:35,645
Right.

774
01:09:35,645 --> 01:09:36,315
That's true too.

775
01:09:36,315 --> 01:09:37,385
That's, that's, that's a good point.

776
01:09:37,385 --> 01:09:37,695
Yeah.

777
01:09:37,695 --> 01:09:40,028
That kind of starts and then kind of works down.

778
01:09:40,028 --> 01:09:43,381
state, salt water, battery, sulfur batteries.

779
01:09:43,381 --> 01:09:48,704
even read about a battery that's made from lobster shells, crustacean batteries.

780
01:09:48,704 --> 01:09:54,348
So, I I think the point is everyone's trying to figure out the super duper battery.

781
01:09:54,348 --> 01:10:01,309
Hey, is it going to be solid state or there's that the thing is there's so much investment
being put in there because we know we need batteries and some of them.

782
01:10:01,309 --> 01:10:04,831
We're going to be applicable for that big factory that's making steel.

783
01:10:04,831 --> 01:10:06,593
And those might be for our home.

784
01:10:06,593 --> 01:10:10,775
And some can go in cars and it'll make that electric drive.

785
01:10:10,775 --> 01:10:12,619
The electric drive is the way to go.

786
01:10:12,619 --> 01:10:14,778
I mean, it's just so simple.

787
01:10:14,778 --> 01:10:17,250
It'll put all the car maintenance people out of business.

788
01:10:17,250 --> 01:10:21,682
You can't go from, you know, 10,000 parts to four or five, right?

789
01:10:21,682 --> 01:10:25,955
And on the drive train and not make it more reliable.

790
01:10:26,091 --> 01:10:28,261
Exactly and I just want to say thank you.

791
01:10:28,261 --> 01:10:37,696
I I realize we've kind of gone over time It seems like we could probably keep talking
about just motor sports in general let alone the electrification of it So I for anyone

792
01:10:37,696 --> 01:10:44,708
that's kind of listening to today's episode What's the best way to get a hold of you or
kind of learn more about the future cars podcast and the other things you're working on

793
01:10:44,708 --> 01:10:45,531
right now?

794
01:10:45,531 --> 01:10:47,802
The best way would be on LinkedIn.

795
01:10:48,249 --> 01:10:55,989
We'll have links to that and all of your content in today's show notes, but Ed, thanks
again for coming on and definitely want to talk to you soon.

796
01:10:55,989 --> 01:11:02,139
And I know with just how quickly electrification is happening, especially in motorsport
and some of these cool things.

797
01:11:02,139 --> 01:11:08,509
mean, we didn't even get to talk about like, speaking of hybrids, I think the coolest
hybrid that's come out all year is the new Porsche.

798
01:11:08,509 --> 01:11:13,969
Like you leveraging it to kind of get rid of turbo lag, I think is a great example of what
you can kind of do with it.

799
01:11:13,969 --> 01:11:14,999
But that's a whole nother thing.

800
01:11:14,999 --> 01:11:16,369
We didn't even get to that.

801
01:11:16,369 --> 01:11:18,203
So, Ed, thank you so much for coming on today.

802
01:11:18,203 --> 01:11:20,849
I'm looking forward to speaking with you again soon.

803
01:11:20,849 --> 01:11:24,677
Yeah, we'll have to do the performance EV as the next one.

804
01:11:24,677 --> 01:11:27,981
think we could talk for hours and hours on that one, I'm sure.

805
01:11:28,055 --> 01:11:29,553
Yeah, thanks so much Ed.

806
01:11:29,553 --> 01:11:30,562
Thank you, Chase.

807
01:11:30,562 --> 01:11:31,397
Enjoyed it.

808
01:11:36,665 --> 01:11:38,887
Thanks for tuning into this episode of grid connections.

809
01:11:38,887 --> 01:11:45,022
We hope you enjoyed our conversation with Ed Bernadon on the future of motorsports,
electric vehicles, and sustainable technology.

810
01:11:45,022 --> 01:11:53,309
Ed's insights into how motorsports are paving the way for innovation in electric vehicles,
battery tech, and sustainable fuels offer a powerful look at what's next for the industry

811
01:11:53,309 --> 01:11:55,090
and for all of us as consumers.

812
01:11:55,345 --> 01:12:00,631
If you found this conversation as fascinating as we did, please share with someone who
would enjoy it too.

813
01:12:00,753 --> 01:12:04,057
And if you have a moment, leave us a pause review on our podcast page.

814
01:12:04,057 --> 01:12:09,104
Your feedback helps us bring more conversations like this to an even larger audience.

815
01:12:09,104 --> 01:12:13,346
Thanks for listening and until next week, this is a great connections podcast signing off.