Why won't Canada support GLIP's brilliant electric motor technology?

Markham interviews David Joseph, CEO of GLIP Generation Corporation, based in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan.

What is Energi Talks?

Journalist Markham Hislop interviews leading energy experts from around the world about the energy transition and climate change.

Markham: 00:04

Welcome to episode 382 of the Energy Talks podcast. I'm energy journalist, Markham Hislop. Not that long ago, solar power generation, lithium ion battery storage, and electric vehicles seemed like exotic energy technologies, more suited to a Jetson's future than the contemporary world. Now, they're commonplace. Which makes me wonder, what other far out energy technologies are waiting in the wings?

Markham: 00:31

GLIP, or GLIP, Generation Corporation based in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, my old stomping grounds, may have the next big thing. They claim to have invented electric motor technology based on a breakthrough in our under understanding of magnetic fields that will change the world. In this episode, I'll be speaking to David Joseph, Glip's CEO, about how this new technology works and the industries it might revolutionize. Welcome to Energy Talks, David.

David: 01:03

Thanks, Markham, for having me. It's we appreciate it.

Markham: 01:06

Well, I'm always interested in what's going on in Saskatchewan, but gotta ask, how do I pronounce the company's name?

David: 01:13

You can pronounce it as GLIP, if you like. That's simple, but g l I p is is, norm is the actual company name, but definitely short form Glip, which is, I guess, still funnier than Google. So that works.

Markham: 01:27

You know what's funny? I was living in Saskatchewan when when Google came up, and I one of our, employees at that time said, hey. I googled something, and I went, what's a Google? Yeah. Me too.

Markham: 01:39

This to me. You know? Yeah. This is like 1970 1997, somewhere in around there. Yeah.

Markham: 01:45

So well, look. I am not an engineer or a technician, and so this business of, you know, magnetic field, I under I frankly, I don't understand the science behind it. I'm sure, most of my listeners won't as well. So maybe let's start there. What is your breakthrough?

Markham: 02:04

Can you explain the science behind it?

David: 02:07

Sure. So in in simple terms, we we found a way to take a magnet, a normal magnet, and shut it off. And if you can shut off a magnet, then you can turn it back on again. And if you can do that and you do do that fast enough, you can turn a motor. And, it it the this kind of magnetic field bending technology also goes into generators as well and and has profound, changes in how we generate power.

Markham: 02:38

Okay. So you can switch a magnet on, then you can switch a magnet off, and that what then turns the magnets on the armature and gets the electric motor going. Is that the idea?

David: 02:50

Sure. So there's there's 2 components to it, and if we're talking about the so there's 2 there's 2 parts of the invention. So one is the, the electric motor, and, that's where we started with. So, basically, what happens is is you turn on the, the coil of the stator, which turns the rotor, and then you turn off the electric coil and the magnetic field of the magnet kicks in and turns it to the next phase. So you're only powering the motor, about 50% of the time.

David: 03:27

So you don't have to you're not losing the same wattages you would say you use on a a normal motor. Similar to a what they call a pulse motor, which has a glide phase. So you you you hit it with a burst of magnetic field that turns and then it glides to the next position. In our case, it it never glides. It it's always under power.

David: 03:46

It's either under power from the coil or it's under power from the magnet. And in our studies, we would have thought, that we had about a 50% reduction in, in watts to to do the same thing as a regular motor. We actually had more than that. Actually, in our test, we ended up with something around, 78%, power saving over a normal electric motor. So it was quite profound.

Markham: 04:12

What how important is this? Because my understanding is that electric motors are around 90% efficient. Some of the, you know, GM, for example, on its Bolt EV claimed that under at high loads, it was up to 97% efficient. So are we chasing just small, incremental gains, or is this is there something, unique about this that makes much higher percentage gains?

David: 04:43

Yeah. So, yeah, much higher percentage gains. So when you're so we I mean, we don't laugh at them, but we laugh at the idea of of a couple of percentage change. And we when we talk to the the big companies about the motors originally, that's what they were looking for, 1%, 2% gain. We're talking about much well beyond that.

David: 05:01

And and it takes a person, as you know, I I believe Chris Wilson looked at it a long time ago, to understand what that actually means and why it works. But it's all I can tell you, it's a huge gain. It's it's 78%, use 70% less power, so you're talking something way over, what a normal motor can do. And on top of that, we are we can improve it. We can we can do it on your kitchen table, but it's also very manufacturable, and and we've manufactured some that could that could go into market.

Markham: 05:36

One of the big questions always is, can it scale?

David: 05:41

Right.

Markham: 05:41

And it sounds like when I was doing my interview prep, I went on your website and read about your technology, and it sounds like that's one of the big advantages it has is that it can scale and you can scale the manufacturer of it quite quickly.

David: 05:57

Yeah. That's that's correct. And, I mean, this, this can be a, a power saver. For instance, you could have it in your, you know, your, your fans in your house. You could have it in, you know, your bathroom fans.

David: 06:10

Again, you're you're using very little power to keep it going, but you could also have it in an EV car or an EV truck. The motor we originally designed was for the Mach E, and, we were very successful in in producing a motor that can go into the the electric Mach E. So, it has 2 important points there. 1, yes, if we can scale it up or down, we can make it huge. But, but often missed in in that point is that it makes your battery smaller.

David: 06:42

So if we're talking EV, then we're saying, okay. The battery now doesn't have to be as big because now we don't use as much energy to, to make the car go that far. And then if the battery gets smaller, your charging gets faster.

Markham: 06:56

Oh, isn't that interesting? I I didn't realize there was a relationship between size of the battery and its ability to at the speed at which it could charge.

David: 07:05

Right. Yeah. Very, very much, interlocked as well as is as you know, we're a very green company. Batteries, ion batteries are are mined. So, I mean, the smaller ones we can use, the better we are off.

Markham: 07:20

Right. And, of course, weight is a big issue, for for electric vehicles. So that's less mass that that electric motor has to has to move. Okay. So when you were doing your testing on the Ford Mach E, EV, Give us an I you know, just a a sample of what the results were, the what the benefits would be, in that application.

David: 07:44

So we didn't get a chance to install it into the mock the Mach E. We had it on-site. We we had talked talked about doing it. The issue is is that there's a lot of computers in the mock e that we would have sent off a lot of screamers for sure. Warning lights would have gone everywhere.

David: 08:00

But what it would do to say the so from Saskatchewan, you understand, trying to get a Mach E at 30 below from Saskatoon to Regina is virtually impossible. I mean, I know some friends who have the Ford Lightning. They virtually can't do it or they spend the have spend the night behind and getting charged back up. Right? So the this technology, when it when it's put into an EV car, would take you from, Saskatoon to Winnipeg on a single charge, and it's not so affected by the the cold temperatures because it's using, as I said, a lot less wattage coming out of that battery.

Markham: 08:38

So that then gives EV manufacturers and consumers some options. So if you're living on the prairies like Saskatchewan, Alberta, where you have really cold winters and you lose 50% of your battery capacity when it gets to 30 below, then you might want a bigger battery.

David: 08:56

Right.

Markham: 08:57

For that, given the example that you've just gave us, whereas somebody who's in LA or on the West Coast, you know, Vancouver, and that's not a big bigger issue, then you can go with a smaller, lighter, battery and not and you can charge it more frequently.

David: 09:16

Yes. And and much quicker. So you're talking you're talking about reducing it to minutes instead of, you know, the normal. I think when we used to drive from, the testing site in Land against Saskatchewan up to, Saskatoon, we would charge it for about 45 minutes to an hour just for that run, that 2 hour run. So now you're talking about a battery that's maybe a third or 25% of the size.

David: 09:42

So you're charging it up in minutes as opposed to, hours. Yeah.

Markham: 09:47

And is is if you made this, if if EV manufacturers adopted your innovation, would we see a reduction in the cost of EVs?

David: 09:59

Yeah. Considerably. So that's the other issue is, 1, the the battery cost would go down as much smaller battery. The other thing is is that, when, you know, you're charging up your EVs, I say, at your house. If you don't have to charge it up as much, then you're then you're not gonna spend as much, money in your hydro bill or your electric bill.

David: 10:23

So you're gonna save money there, but at the same time, I think the big issue is weight of the battery. So everything now, gets smaller. And then the other thing that that's important to to know is is that it's a DC motor. Now it could be switched to AC, but it's it's essentially a DC motor. So in your EV vehicles, you have a huge rectifier, which takes the DC voltage from the battery and turns it to AC because most motors, almost all of them run on AC that are in your car electric cars.

David: 10:56

So you get rid of that. You don't need that anymore. And that has to have a you know, it's it's they're huge. They also not so weight, but they probably have weight, but they also have to be cooled all the time. So they're drawing electric power.

David: 11:09

That's gone. This technology is straight DC to DC, so the battery's DC, the motor's DC, and, you you sort of strip all that away from the car. Interesting.

Markham: 11:20

Now, yesterday on this podcast, I had the head of Hitachi Energy's, North American Renewables division, and we were talking about the US power grid and the adoption of renewables there. And and he agreed, first of all, renewables now are, the low cost, way to generate power, down at about $60 a megawatt hour, and it's competitive with, with, coal or or gas. So if your motors were installed on the on the final demand, you know, with with EVs or some other kind of appliance, you mentioned some of the ones in in the house. So now you've got a lower load on your grid, less strain. But how would your technology make the actual grid, the transmission distribution generation, of electricity more efficient?

David: 12:21

So so that's that's the the most exciting part about the technology. So when we take this over to the generation side of things, so what we do we're able to prove and this is third party verified by Interact Intertek rather. Intertek is probably the 2nd or the largest company in the world for this kind of testing. They go way back, to Edison's light bulbs, so they're extremely credible. So what this technology did was it took away the back EMF on a generator.

David: 12:53

So to explain that really quickly, if you take a generator, any just small generator, alternator, doesn't matter, and you twist the 2 leads together and you try to turn that generator, it's almost impossible to move. It's because it has this back EMF. So the the rotor the magnets in the rotor are kicking back against the, the the magnetic fields from the coils on the outside. So that's why you could never get ahead of the generator. You you can put a motor on a generator.

David: 13:23

You're never gonna get ahead between those 2 because the more power you draw from that that generator, the more power is required, and it's a lot more. Okay. So we were able to take the the the normal magnetic fields of a generator, bend them around so that they impact the rotor, but in a positive way. So what happens when the rotor tries to turn now, we have taken away the back EMF, put it in front of it, and pull the rotor around. So now you when you put in very little power into it, your generator is going to be able to, give out a ton of kilowatts.

David: 14:04

You can turn all the lights in the house and the generator does not get harder to turn. It simply does not get hard to so we we prove that by, by bringing up that company to test it, to see what would happen with the torque when we put a load on it. So to just to briefly go quickly about that is we we they came up and they put you know, we had a 15 horsepower gas motor turning the what's called the Zurg generator. So, you'll love our Ackermanns. We've got Zurg, but it stands

Markham: 14:36

We'll get we'll get to Zurg in a moment. Let's let's we'll just stick with with what

David: 14:41

Okay. So the at the end of the day, the the the motor was turning at 400 make this about 404 RPM. And then when the, the engineer put a 10 ohm resistor on it, in other words, it's drawing power, instead of slowing down, it should slow down at least 20 to 30%. It actually went up in speed, so it actually gained about 5 RPM. And then when the the which astonished the engineers that were standing there.

David: 15:10

And then when they shorted it out, which should've literally stopped or stalled the motor, it actually went up 8 more RPM. So it actually was gaining speed as opposed to going the other way. So in short, torque was not increased when we were drawing a lot of power from it. Take that to a power grid. Yep.

Markham: 15:29

Oh, okay. So it takes a lot less energy to get work done.

David: 15:34

Right.

Markham: 15:35

Right. And, you know, it occurred to me that, I'm old enough. You know, I I when I remember the days, and I grew up with it. You know, incandescent bulbs were, all that we had, and it was hard to imagine that, there would be LED lights down the road, that drew far far less electricity, and yet here we are. LEDs are the standard now, and they and they consume very little electricity.

Markham: 16:05

So using that example, why would we be surprised, I guess you're not surprised, but I'm a little surprised, that you could make, you know, these kinds of efficiency gains, with with electric motors or with the technology you've got. So what has been the reaction of, you know, companies that you've tried to sell this to, and get them interested in in working with you?

David: 16:34

So you've got, that would be a long story, and we would have to have a couple of shows to cover all of those issues. So we have spoken to some. The initial reaction is extremely positive. The issue comes in in and maybe we'd you know, we're we're better at in inventing and building than we are in marketing, I would have to say. But as the issue comes with a lot of companies is you're asking them to change everything in mid flight.

David: 17:01

So if you were to go to say GE, I mean, yes, this would be the thing GE should take tomorrow. They've got multibillion dollar contracts that are spaced out over 20 years. It's very difficult for them to wanna insert a new technology into that market. The EV market's a little bit more open, but, again, you've got a situation where you've gotta get them not only convinced, but you've gotta get them to actually want to change. And, you know, we talked to, you know, for instance, Saskatchewan and and utilities.

David: 17:37

You know, they they just told us outright. You know? We've been doing this for a 100 years this way. You know, why change now? That's gonna cost us money, etcetera, etcetera.

David: 17:45

So we were surprised. I mean, we expected to when when we had third party verified, especially when we had 3rd party verified, and it wasn't a small company that did it, that, we would, have a lot easier time convincing people now is the time for change. But a lot of these big companies, especially the older ones, especially the ones that are in position to do it, are not ready yet to do it. They they're still thinking old.

Markham: 18:12

Funny you should mention this. You are a living example of professor Clayton h Christensen's disruptor dilemma. And that is the, incumbent firms are already profitable. They're making their profits are acceptable. They're doing very well with the technology they've got, and then they look at a new technology and they go, well, you know what?

Markham: 18:41

We're not gonna make any money on this for a while. We're gonna have headaches. We're gonna we're gonna have to spend capital to change our processes, whatever it might be, and so we're not interested in that new technology and they become blockbuster. And somebody does come along and takes that technology to market and it becomes a disruptive innovation. It's the thing that is so good that consumers leave the incumbent and migrate over to the startup.

Markham: 19:09

And and, again, that's that's Blockbuster all over. I mean, Blockbuster actually looked at Netflix, had the opportunity to buy it for $50,000,000 and passed. Not because they didn't like the they just looked at it and went, who's gonna wanna stream video?

David: 19:24

Yeah.

Markham: 19:24

Exactly. The Internet, 20 years ago, the Internet wasn't as developed as it is now, and and, we didn't rely on on ecommerce as much as we do now. And so they they made a mistake. They misjudged the disruptiveness, the disruptive potential of the of that new innovation, and it took Netflix had to be very persistent

David: 19:47

Yeah.

Markham: 19:47

You know, to to build that business model. And it sounds like you're just a like a classic case of that. Yes. This is better. Yes.

Markham: 19:54

This is lower cost, but it requires us to do things different, change our business model, and I don't really wanna do that.

David: 20:02

Yeah. And you're act you're act exactly right. And just to go along with that, that's exactly what we were told by the US Department of Energy. So we took this invention and took it in front of them. We actually had people from the White House on the Zoom call with us, Department of Defense, Energy, head of the energy, US, DOE.

David: 20:23

And they they were astonished with it, and, obviously, they understood that they had their their scientists there and everything, everybody do it. And their word is, you know, this is a game changer. And and then and everyone was happy. And then later on, when we got the 3rd party testing, it was it's too destructive right now. Let's just, you know, kind of put this thing on ice.

David: 20:46

That wasn't their words, but but too destructive was their word for it, to the economy at the time, which is funny because, you know, in, in the US, you have, you have a liberal government. We call it liberal government. I guess they would call it democratic government, but they're they're very they're huge part of the green movement. But as you say, this has gotta move these people's minds, and they're not ready yet. They're just not.

David: 21:14

So

Markham: 21:14

I have interviewed quite a number of US, startups. And

David: 21:21

some

Markham: 21:21

of them, you know, they come out of that American innovation ecosystem. They start off in a university, in a lab there, and they come up with this new technology. And then they create a start up, and and they they take it from the lab into, you know, like a demonstration project to show the technology works. And then they they get into a commercial, No. Sorry.

Markham: 21:44

They they get into a pilot project, and then then they get to scale up. And the American government, maybe it's through the military, you know, the d ar ARPA, project, but they have all kinds of of of ways to to fund those, innovators so that it gets over the valley of death as it's called, into into full commercialization, then they grow up. And that's the secret to the been the secret to the American economy since 1945.

David: 22:15

Yeah.

Markham: 22:16

And and they're doing it again now with clean energy technology. That's the brilliance of what the Biden administration did. Is it had an answer to China by going back to what the Americans have always been really good at, which is innovation. And I've asked, I don't know how many times I've asked Americans who are in this space. I said, do you think the American innovation system, American innovation, can help you catch up to China?

Markham: 22:47

So you don't have to, you know, you don't have to, manufacture at gigascale for everything. It's you're smart. You're smarter than you'll get you can do something different that's better. And your, you know, your technology fits right in that. But it's hard.

Markham: 23:04

Man, it's hard because you're bucking the system. Right?

David: 23:07

Yeah. That's correct. And I'll give you and there is a difference in, in Canadian attitude towards their own and American attitude. It it stems from just what you said. But I'll give you a quick example.

David: 23:20

For instance, when we did before we brought in the 3rd party, when we had the, the first, EV first motor it wasn't EV motor. It was a demonstration motor. Had a demonstration generator. We had against, in Saskatoon, and we invited, the province, the people science people from the province, and we invited the, town people sorry, the Saskatoon government, local government, to come and see it. And this was, around December of that year.

David: 23:49

And the answer I got back and it was, like, it was, like, 30 below course. It was really cold, of course. The the science building was right across the road from where we were doing the testing, and the nobody showed up. Nobody showed up from the province to come and see it. Nobody showed up from the local Saskatoon government.

David: 24:08

They said, well, we're sorry. We're, you know, we're all about committed to Christmas parties right now. So that, you know, that stunned us. But what really impressed us was we had a couple of guys from the US come up here. They're they're actually from, California, Southern California.

David: 24:25

They flew up the same week. They went through the COVID protocols. They went through the freezing cold weather they've never seen before because they're from the south of the US and did see the demonstration and was there for demonstration. And that's the reason why we ended up with this Zoom call with, with the White House and with the DOE was because they came up and seen what they've seen. But that was just sort of a difference in attitude that I think it's right.

David: 24:49

It's not just Saskatchewan. It's right across Canada. We have a little bit of a I don't know what you call it, but an inferiority complex. And, unless it comes from somewhere else, you know, we're not so keen on it maybe.

Markham: 25:02

You know what? I moved to Saskatoon in 1979 to go to the University of Saskatchewan. And I spent 26 years in Saskatchewan, and I've been in was involved in economic development there for many of those those years. And I I can't tell you how many times I've had this conversation. And then I moved to Alberta and lived there for 11 years, and had more of the same conversation.

Markham: 25:25

Not quite as often because, Calgary has a better developed, angel investors, system, and it's, you know, they have capital markets there that just don't exist in in Saskatchewan, which makes it really hard for companies like yours. But the problem comes in, and this American economist, Mariana Mozzacatto, has written about this. And she said, what has to happen with new technologies is they need to be derisked. And if private capital, is not keen about taking on high risk, at the beginning. And she says, that's really important that you have what she calls the entrepreneurial state that is willing to take risk, and derisk that technology along the development process until the private sector goes, oh, okay.

Markham: 26:20

Alright. Now we see it. Now we're prepared to jump in, and we'll we'll take it and scale it up and bring it to market and make it a make it a success. And in Canada, because we have such a small manufacturing facility, I mean, relative to the US and China and Europe, we are not willing to accept risk. Our investors are much more risk averse than they are down in the US.

Markham: 26:46

Down in the US, if you fail, okay, what did you learn? Did you learn something from your failure? Great. Take it on to the next one, and we'll make that one a success. In Canada, you fail, and oh my god, I mean, you know, you've you've just you're you're done.

David: 27:01

Yes.

Markham: 27:02

And that's a major problem, and I hear the federal government yammering on all the time about productivity. You know, oh, our productivity is so low. It's in innovations like yours that increase our pro productivity. And we, so the very thing that's available to us to fix the problem, we're we're too risk averse to adopt. Okay.

Markham: 27:23

So we've kind of laid out the agreement. We we understand what the problem is here. What's your company's plan to overcome those obstacles?

David: 27:33

So we've got, 2 smaller partnerships going on with, 2 other companies. So, well, 2 other groups. But, the one the one in particular would be to supply the, generator to do a small grid, and it would be going into, the indigenous community. We we're hoping we can get that one through, but, again, that requires a combination of federal dollars and local dollars. And, so far, the local dollars are there, but the federal the federal folks haven't come to the table.

David: 28:07

We have another group out in India, which we which want the the the motor, but in a form of a hub motor. So, basically, they wanna be able to use it for motor students because the battery is smaller over in places like India. The batteries burn up, catch fire. They like the idea of having a very small motor and going a lot further distance. So we're working with them, on that motor, but it would be it would likely have to be manufactured in India in that case.

David: 28:38

We we've held it, you know, as long as we can. We wanna keep it in Canada, a lot of the manufacturing base as much as we can. We have the the the raw materials here. We have manufacturing here. But how long can we wait, you know, for somebody here to come to the table?

David: 28:54

We like to be able to also, you know, produce the EV motor. And we're working on we have a design now, and we're ready to go, by the way. Like, we have all the c the CAD files, etcetera, etcetera, from the tested generator. So what we would like to do is we're looking for investment partnerships. We wanna be able to power a grid with it or even a house.

David: 29:16

I mean, back then, it was you know, we we even asked the Saskatchewan government, look. What we'll do is Zamboni. Just give us Zamboni. We'll put an electric motor in it. Right?

David: 29:26

And, we got we got heard crickets, so I guess they didn't take us seriously. But, that's what we're trying to do now is to get that right partnership group, that can sort of get past the idea that, you know, that planes can't fly unless we were born with wings, and they get that idea out of their head that this is not magic. This is real. Then we can move forward with, well, you know, one that can power grid, power an individual house, which is what we'd like to do is we'd like to unplug the grid. That's the the goal.

David: 29:59

We'd like people to have their own power unit. Again, that's not popular because governments control utilities, and they don't like people controlling their own utilities. But I think that would be the ultimate would be to be able to produce this generator at somebody's home, run on a fraction of, say, natural gas or solar, using the combination of the motor and generator. And, you know, you then control your own electric bill, basically.

Markham: 30:25

Yeah. It sounds like I mean, you know, we we all know that, Southern Saskatchewan and Southern Alberta have the best solar resources in in Canada. Yeah. And if you could put together a system that was very efficient and used much less electricity, then even in the summertime or sorry. In the wintertime, when generation goes down, it sounds like you could still the system would still work.

Markham: 30:51

And in the summertime, it would just simply, use let a lot less electricity, which then could surplus could be exported back to the grid.

David: 31:00

Yeah. That's correct. And that's why I think the indigenous population on the on, around Canada across Canada is interested in it because the other thing it affects is the generator affects the size of your wind turbine. So you have these huge wind turbines today, but you need them because as soon as you draw power from them, you need a lot of wind to push them so you can get a very big turbine. In our case, these communities would have a very small turbine and yet could produce the same amount of power.

David: 31:29

So, and and in some places where they don't get these, the sun in they would need to use every bit of sun or wind that they can find. And you're right. These combinations would work and the energy can be stored in a number of different ways. And there are some marvelous ways of storing energy, including in sand. So

Markham: 31:50

Yeah. I I I think that, one of the benefits, and one of the drivers of adopting your technology would be the fact that there are other enabling technologies that are coming they were in the pipeline, and we're gonna see them in that just a little while. I was reading just today about CATL, the world's largest battery manufacturer based in China, and they're bringing a solid state battery to, market in 2027. So imagine if you had the energy density of a solid state, which would be about 50% more. I think it was 50, sorry.

Markham: 32:24

It was 500, megawatts of of storage capacity. And you Right. And you you, joined that with your technology so that the draw was a lot less. And suddenly, I mean, you're not just powering a house. You're powering houses, maybe a neighborhood.

David: 32:43

That that's right. It's for something that's very small.

Markham: 32:46

Right? Yeah. Exactly. I mean, it just it's it sounds like a game changer. So given the fact that you're you're kind of in the valley of death, you're looking for partnerships, looking for capital, you're trying to get to the next stage, of your, the technology development.

Markham: 33:03

Do you have the capital backing and access to capital and other, other inputs that you need to get your company to the next level?

David: 33:14

I I would say yes and no. We have the we have the smarts. In other words, we have a lot of, engineers, scientists that are willing to, come in and take what we built for Intertek and turn it into a a real life version of it. So, and from that side of the technology side of it, we we have abundance of, skilled people in Ontario Arizona, Ontario and Saskatchewan and around Canada, that has that ability. We are patching the money together.

David: 33:44

So we don't have the big guy coming in. It would take a lot, but, I mean, we don't have the big guy coming in to to right now. So, the answer is yes and no. We're gonna patch it together until we get the big guy that we wanna jump right to manufacturing, and it wouldn't take long. Everything is ready to go.

David: 34:03

So

Markham: 34:03

Right. So you're kind of at the friends and family, level still and and looking for bigger investors to come in so so that you can scale up.

David: 34:12

Yes. Yeah. And most of exactly. And most of the people that we talk to are people that have seen the technology and and are willing to to sort of put their toe in the water. And, and we we keep finding those folks.

David: 34:23

But to get it to the manufacturing stage, which, as you know, takes a considerable amount of capital, we haven't found the right person yet, but we're still looking.

Markham: 34:33

Well, this is fascinating, and, I can't say I'm surprised that this kind of innovation comes out of Saskatchewan. It was, I saw it all the time, when I lived there, during the, the eighties nineties. And, but, and I'm also not surprised that you're experiencing these problems because these aren't just unique to Saskatchewan. Though, you know, given the small population and and, and capital markets, it's probably a little more acute than it is in, say, Alberta or BC. But these are common, and and this is and I'm gonna go on my soapbox for a little bit here, David, because I'm a big advocate of industrial policy, clean energy technology, and thus industrial policy.

Markham: 35:21

The Chinese started with it 20 years ago. I mean, it's an old idea, you know, the Americans, and Europe, certainly used it in in the post World War 2 era, but it kinda fell out of favor after 1980. And and the Chinese brought it back, and it it it a very big role for government to support innovations and the development of of nascent industries at the beginning stage, which is what the Chinese government did with solar and and and EVs. Okay. And and I are and now you see the Americans doing it in a big way with the inflation reduction act and the infrastructure act.

Markham: 35:57

And I and I've been arguing that Canada needs to do exactly the same thing. It doesn't need to just put a pot of money out there, you know, the like the the the green, our green fund, and just say, now come and give me an application, and we'll think about it. We need the government needs to be more proactive and go out and find innovators and work with innovators, bring money to the table, bring resources, you know, to the table like labs and and scientists and so on, and take an active role in developing our new, you know, innovations like you've got. And I I think you're just a poster child for the new approach that Canada needs, and the I hope you you stick around and flourish until we get there. But, anyway, this sounds like a very exciting, technology, and I wish you all the best.

David: 36:47

Well, thank you. And and and just, you're absolutely right. Just so you know, most, if not all the programs that the federal government offers, you you're basically required to already be up and selling. So if you're you're not making a $1,000,000 or $10,000,000, some of them are $10,000,000, and, they they just won't even look at it. And so, you know, we've always said, look.

David: 37:09

And if I've got $10,000,000, I can start building the motors, you know, even if I'm sticking them in ceiling fans. You know what I mean? But, you're right. The the the there's just nothing in Canada for it right now.

Markham: 37:21

Yeah. Very much a chicken and egg problem. Well, thank you very much, David, for for coming on today. It's a real insight into the world of technological innovation in Canada.

David: 37:33

Well, thank you, Martin. I really appreciate you having me.