Nino Di Cara is the founder and president of Electric Autonomy Canada.
Key topics in this conversation include:
- Why Nino started Electric Autonomy Canada
- How to think about the role of media and providing an accurate perspective on emerging technology
- Why we need to move to decarbonize now if we want to save our way of life
- The Electric Fueling Station of the Future: A Design Competition
- Decarbonize of non-automotive applications
Listen here:
Apple Podcasts: link
Google Podcasts: link
Spotify: link
Links
- Nino’s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/joshiav/
- Electric Autonomy Canada website: https://electricautonomy.ca/
- Design competition website: https://designawards.electricautonomy.ca/
Nino’s Bio:
Nino Di Cara is the founder and president of Electric Autonomy Canada. He is the past president of the National Media Awards Foundation and recipient of the EV Society’s 2020 Howard Hutt Award for Excellence in the Advancement of Electric Transportation.
About Electric Autonomy Canada:
Electric Autonomy Canada is the leading news publication reporting on the transition to electric vehicles, autonomous transportation and new mobility services.
Future of Mobility:
The Future of Mobility podcast is focused on the development and implementation of safe, sustainable, and equitable mobility solutions, with a spotlight on the people and technology advancing these fields.
linkedin.com/in/brandonbartneck/
brandonbartneck.com/futureofmobility/
Transcript
Brandon Bartneck 0:06
I’m Brandon Bartneck. And this is the future of mobility podcast. Safe, sustainable and equitable mobility solutions. That’s what this is all about. With the climate situation as it is right now plus many other factors, it’s never been more important for us to continue to improve the sustainability of the way that we’re moving goods and people. At the same time, we need to improve safety for drivers and pedestrians. And we need to get these solutions in the hands of the people who need them need them most. So that’s what I covered primarily interviews, I’m talking to the people who are developing and implementing covering these technology solutions. Also, my day job
This podcast is brought to you by FEV. FEV is your complete vehicle engineering partner for sustainable energy and mobility solutions. We’re the engineering technology partner behind a lot of what you see on the road and elsewhere, shoot me a note, if you want to learn more, check out fb.com check us out on LinkedIn.
Today’s guest is Nino Di Cara. Nino is founder and president of electric autonomy Canada, which is the leading news publication reporting on the transition to electric vehicles, autonomous transportation and new mobility services, primarily for the Canadian market, as you hear its people developing technology, and also the implementation of this technology in Canada. Really, really cool discussion here. So I think, you know, as it’s increasing background, we talked about toys and, you know, media and marketing. And he started this company, electrical autonomy Canada A few years ago, and it’s cool to hear how he thought about, you know, picking this niche, and then also how to accurately cover this transition, as you mentioned, and if you know, if you’ve listened to the podcast, you hopefully realize that there’s a ton of nuance in both of those topics of electrification as well as automation. And I think you don’t get it from the discussion here. And then also what you see on the website and stuff. So really, really fun discussion. Also, I highly recommend, even if you don’t live in Canada, especially if you don’t live in Canada, it’s interesting Check, check out their website and see what’s going on up there. Because I mean, despite the fact that I could get in a car and drive a half hour and be in Canada right now, sitting in the Detroit area. Yeah, they don’t tend to consciously think as much as maybe I shared about the role that Canada is playing in, within the North American ecosystem that also the global picture. And I guess if you if you actually look back at the guests who have come on, there’s a decent chunk of them have been from Canadian companies. So really, really fun there. And then the one area where we dive a little deeper, which is cool is he talks about a design challenge they have going on right now. So this is in late 2021 of September, this is recorded and gone live. And they have a design competition, essentially, what is the road stop of the future look like? So you’re taking a high highway trip, a road trip and an electric vehicle? You need to stop the charge? What should that look like? And if you’re like me, you’re picturing something that’s probably more like a traditional Yeah, for a staff or gas station than it needs to be, which is just got a cool discussion. So definitely listening to that point. If you’ve happened to be in the design space, check out with turbo got electric autonomy Canada’s website, and you can see the design competition there. It’s a pretty cool initiative they have there. So without further ado, please enjoy my conversation with Nino Di Cara.
Today I’m joined by Nino Di Cara. Nino, thanks for coming on.
Nino Di Cara 3:31
Hey, Brandon, it’s a pleasure to be here with you today.
Brandon Bartneck 3:34
Yeah, this is this should be a fun discussion. So a little bit different a different perspective from a few areas with you coming from more of the media side. So with that, can you kind of introduce yourself and share a bit about your background and what you’re doing with electric autonomy? Canada?
Nino Di Cara 3:47
Yeah, sure. Well, I’m the founder of electric autonomy, Canada, which is a news publication reporting on the transition to hopefully cleaner and safer transportation through the adoption of electric and autonomous technologies. Fairly the business in May 2019. And my backgrounds in, in media and in marketing, that’s where my career was up until that day, and yeah, I don’t see it because I I wanted to really help play a role in advancing this transition.
Brandon Bartneck 4:24
And why maybe let’s dig a little deeper there. So I mean, I don’t think and correct me if I’m wrong, but I don’t think your your media and marketing background was specific to mobility or any specific technology. So what what about this particular issue or topic attracted you?
Nino Di Cara 4:41
Well, I got to that stage in in my career, which had been great. Well, I felt the need to do something purposeful that mattered and that was helping with the many problems that we have in the world. And I have an enthusiasm for for new things. Like hugely technological Who kind of person but to me these in particular and autonomy just seem like such beneficial, disruptive changes, that we should get the benefits sooner rather than later. And I think the thing that really sparked me off on it was the film who killed the electric car. And that, that just really showed how there was this great technology that’s coming. But we’ll see the media implied that it was due to corporate forces. It didn’t really happen. And I, I just really wanted to be a part of helping to make sure that it happens now.
Brandon Bartneck 5:36
Yeah. Yeah. And how do you think then? So I know it without pointing any any specific directions. But I think there’s a lot of, there’s maybe not a lot, but there are some people in the media who are, you know, I think well intentioned, who think, Hey, I’m excited about this push towards electrification, or autonomy, or both. And they can kind of pull off so forth, kind of hold on that the underlying objective of, we want to reduce emissions and clean up transportation becomes secondary to I want to push electric or I want to push autonomous vehicles, and for the most part, those are aligned, but they’re not. They’re not perfectly aligned. So So I guess the question is, how do you try to? Is that something you think about? And if so, how do you try to find the balance of kind of making sure you’re checking the Northstar as you go and adjusting as new? information comes out?
Nino Di Cara 6:35
Yeah, it’s, um, it’s a really good question. And it’s one of the advantages of running my own business. This is, this is this is my, my first. This is my first company that I’ve started and founded and, and Ron, I’ve run businesses for corporations before. But when it’s your own shop, it’s it’s a lot easier to just be constantly thinking, Well, I’m I’m here because of this. And, and in fact, we’ve been doing some strategic planning recently as a team. And we’ve got a set of four criteria, actually now five criteria that we’re reassessing the projects against, and the first one is what what project is going to have the biggest impact on advancing the transition. So we’ve, we build it in, just make sure it’s in, in our core in that way does like, what what do we do? Because otherwise? There’s there’s not much point and I’m not? I’m not? I mean, we need to make money and we need to be profitable as a business, because only they’ll see you can keep doing it. That’s one of the criterias is what can we do profitably? And to a level of excellence. But I think if it’s not helping the transition, then kind of like, Well, why why are we doing it? It might be we might do something cuz it’s fun. But I think just doing sake for profit alone is getting just gets miserable very quickly. Yes. My experience?
Brandon Bartneck 8:05
Yeah. And it’s, it’s interesting. I mean, and maybe this ties into the other part of the question the candidate parts interesting as well. So I think like if, if I were designing a media company, and I simply, you know, I wanted to focus around electric and autonomous technology, I’m excited about this technology, I wanted to put, I mean, the low hanging fruit to just talk about Tesla, right? Talking about the companies, people are clicking on the you get the clicks from the whatever, it’s this the CEO who’s saying things, or you can write these kind of scandalous type stories. And you guys, it seems like for the most part, I mean, it’s right in the name, but then also in the content, you’re, you’re focusing on, you know, technology developed and being deployed in Canada. So what went into kind of, right off the bat very clearly setting this demarcation?
Nino Di Cara 8:54
Yeah, well, it was a really insightful comment because that, at the heart of that is on is if, if we’re launching a business, it needs to be different and differentiated and, and I’m somebody who’s loved all the media that reports on the Tesla’s and all the other, all the other vehicles, I love, all that all that content, and I read all that stuff. And in my mind, we didn’t need more of it. So if I lost something that did that I wasn’t gonna help. And so for me that the the the barrier to the transition wasn’t the technology, because I think the technology is already been showing, as I mentioned, that movie, the technical knowledge has been kind of there in varying levels for a long time now, but is now rapidly, obviously advancing. So so for me that technology wasn’t the barrier. It was our it was the desire to adopt this technology, and be a leader in it. So I’m, I’m British by birth, but I’m a new I’ve been very heavily in pro Canadian now for 14 years. and Canada has the potential to lead in this transition. And in my mind, the areas that I felt would have the biggest impact on it was on the policy side, and on the business and economic side and social side of this transition. So that’s why we write more about issues affecting those areas than we do about the technology in the vehicles per se. And that’s that’s our focus, the Canadian market, really focused on the economic, social and, and policy side of it.
Brandon Bartneck 10:37
Gotcha. Yeah, maybe that’s a good transition, too. So I think we’re, we’re recording this in September 2021. And it’s, I think you guys have an interesting design competition that was recently kicked off. And that that’s underway right now. So can you talk to us on the infrastructure side, what you guys are doing there?
Nino Di Cara 10:53
Yeah, I’d love to. Yeah, so we’ve launched, as you say, a design competition. And we’re inviting architects and designers to reimagine what the fueling station of the future will look like on on highways. Obviously, on these long distance corridors, travel corridors, there’s there’s often highway stops, but they’re oriented around gas refueling, which is you and your listeners know is, is very fast, you know, you pump gas, and you generally grab a drink, and you kind of get on the way. But if you remove gasoline from from that station, and you just have electric vehicle charges, which is what’s going to be the future, it presents all sorts of opportunities, and when you have people who are spending longer at the stop, and so on average between 10 and 14 minutes, while they’re charging, it’s obviously an opportunity for the driver to refresh and, or work for people to to relax, to work to do to engage in sort of convenience, buying shopping maybe. And so what we like is for the architectural community to rethink like health if we’ve got people who stopped on a highway for this period of time, what facilities can we introduce, that’s going to help them enjoy that dwell time when people are charging and also, if there’s no tailpipe pollutants, then you can we can actually have this indoors you can actually have a refueling station that’s actually indoors which for clinic for Canada, obviously we have quite hard winters. So it also presents interesting ideas that you could do there. So I think at its heart what we’re trying to do is is address the issue of range range anxiety from a different angle. Because I think non gas car drivers view the the length of time that you have to stop in charge when you’re on a long journey. as a as a as a detriment is like something that’s not good about EBS but when you speak to Evie drivers, they’ll say well, I usually plan my stops and I go to the washroom I get a coffee I take my time I do my emails and because it’s planned it’s actually a relaxing pause point in the journey so we want to sort of enhance that dynamic into the visual aesthetic and functional aspects of what these highway stops will be like in the future.
Brandon Bartneck 13:21
Yeah, it’s interesting to my I guess just just talking anecdotally my last road trip experience was a couple months ago drove out to Pennsylvania from the Detroit area maybe a eight hour eight hour trip total usually and the I guess the interesting thing is I was driving with a six month old baby which so typically I’m the person who I’m in the car and it’s most I’m going to make one stop during that trip and it’s going to be five minutes in and out and I want to see the ETA drop as little as possible on on the Google thing because for some reason I have kind of this you give me a goal of what time I’m supposed to get there and I’m going to try to beat that whether it means anything I totally get that but the but the interesting thing with with having the kids I mean we post up five times I think we stopped over and think we stopped overnight even and you know, it changed the whole and it wasn’t it’s not stopped period it stopped and you know, give them something to feed you’re at a stop for 20 minutes and yeah, it took an extra hour or whatever. But I think it was a potentially even more enjoyable trip and it became rather a rather than 10 to eight hours try to get this done as fast as possible. I thought about it differently. So I guess I could see. Yeah, while you’re thinking about it if there is a way for us to kind of change the way people think about road trips maybe maybe there’s something there.
Nino Di Cara 14:41
Yeah, that’s that’s a really, really good story. And I think there’s so much that we’ve got to relearn as Evie drivers in our society has got to get get used to in a different way. And yeah, that idea of Okay, that minimizing that journey times like okay, well, maybe it’s gonna be better if I do stop and probably It’s safer as well.
Brandon Bartneck 15:02
Yeah. And I mean, you mentioned being able to check emails or whatever for touring or just yeah, I think there’s a whole scope and even even when I was thinking about this design kind of competition coming into this conversation I had pictured Okay, what? What in my mind, what am I thinking? I know you guys, innovation is one of the things that you’re pushing as well as you know, sustainability and all this type of stuff. And every version of the, of the stuff that I pictured in my mind was essentially a current rest stop that just had chargers instead of a gas station. So I was picturing an outdoor area, which is essentially food and, and my dad’s Easy enough, but then you kind of change everything we’re saying. Yeah, I guess it’s true. If there are electric vehicles, no tailpipe emissions, this entire thing could be you could drive in and then you there’s I think that those potentially change the entire game.
Nino Di Cara 15:50
Yeah, I think it’s a particular thing with with highway charging, I think it’s neighborhood charging or town or in town centers or cities. There’s, there’s lots of places that you can have charges. And there’s in a city, there’s usually I mean, it is not not too far away. There’s always a convenience store. But also a highway trip, it’s, you’re really dependent on all that destinations got to offer you. So yeah, that’s the thinking.
Brandon Bartneck 16:18
And why do you Why did you pick diet? Maybe you somewhat alluded to this what you just said, but why did you pick the highway as opposed so in my mind, when I’m thinking about Evie adoption, at least currently, it’s you know, a lot of people are seeing it as kind of a city option. And if you are a multifamily house, or multi car household, you, for the most part have two vehicles, and it’s easy to switch to and one electric vehicle and then you have either a hybrid or conventional vehicle that you can use for your road trips at home. So that’s kind of some of the some of what I’ve heard and you know, a lot, a lot of people kind of focusing on fixed or trying to improve kind of the urban and suburban type charging infrastructure. But this road trip chop topic is certainly interesting as well. So I had you guys settle on that kind of the highway driving is your target.
Nino Di Cara 17:10
Yeah, well, it’s, it’s, it’s what is one of the biggest objections you hear to ease is, well, if I want to go and visit my, my auntie or uncle who lives 10 hours away, how am I going to do that? So well? When did you last visit that person? Well, three years ago, but I might want to do it tomorrow. And that’s the reason that Nev is not not liable. And so it’s, it’s, it’s a real big, big barrier. So I guess that was kind of like one way to it, you know, I think we’re thinking of it as trying to change that perception of Okay, got a long trip, and it’s gonna be awful, because you have to stop into actually, everyone’s gonna want to stop at this stop, because it looks just a great stop. It’s got all the amenities, and it looks super cool. And it’s just a nice environment to be in. And, and I think that it’s, I think that, as I say, with I think that we we won’t need gas stations in exactly the same way in town centers, probably cities in the future, but but highway absolutely is still going to be a critical part of our public infrastructure for a long time. Yeah, and we’ve we’ve, what we’re hoping is that we’ve our, our presenting sponsor is a company called Parkland, which is a big Canadian based Corporation that’s responsible for fueling, I think it’s one in six gas gas pumps in Canada, and also with with operations in the US, so they’re very big gas retailers. And they’re, they’re planning for the future as well. They’re thinking, as this transition happens, what’s what’s the new model? And how does it work? So we are, what we’re hoping is that we’re going to have some designs that are quite feasible. And that may actually end up being built and that will actually see on our highways. So there’s a really exciting real life component is coming through if the stars align with the entries that we get,
Brandon Bartneck 19:19
also, I guess if I don’t know how many people will get really on the on the architecture and design side here. But But if someone’s hearing this, and they’re interested in one, two, I don’t think they are they want to share it with someone who they know who might be interested, but we’re just going electric autonomy website more and more or less, right? Yeah, register.
Nino Di Cara 19:37
Thank you. Yeah, yeah, the electrical autonomy.ca does have a link on the top two Design Awards, where you can just go to Design Awards dot electrical autonomy.ca and you’ll go right to the competition website,
Brandon Bartneck 19:50
and it’s open until like mid November or sometime.
Nino Di Cara 19:53
That’s right, yeah, November the 15th and planning to announce the winners in February, February 1.
Brandon Bartneck 20:00
So what are? So do I think this this charging station is certainly an interesting topic? What? What other big, big trends are you seeing? Or what what big topics are you excited about in this world that you’re playing in?
Nino Di Cara 20:13
Um, well, one of the ones that I think is, in increasingly important is the is, and this one I’m not so much excited about, but I’m exciting in trying to address it is quality of public charging infrastructure. And we’ve got, we’ve got a good skeleton of public charging infrastructure now in in Canada, the problem that is pretty pervasive is the reliability of those stations, when you arrive at them. And the challenge is that there’s any number of reasons that a charger might not work, and there might might be somebody parked in front of it, they call that ice when a combustion car parked in front of the Evie charger, for ice for internal combustion engine. Either the charger could be blocked, or the charger could be broken, or the network that’s connecting that charges, the internet might be down, or the utility might be unable to get power to that charge if some reason and it is there’s lots of lots of different reasons why it might not work. And so it’s historically been quite challenging to identify where this is happening and to monitor and scale across many different network providers and message many different site hosts. But yeah, I think we we need to really make sure that these these things, we need to, I think work quite diligently to make sure that the uptime to these things is is is really is good and probably more reliable than what we’re seeing right now.
Brandon Bartneck 21:51
Do you have any thoughts about kind of what what that might look like and what some of the solutions that have been proposed look like.
Nino Di Cara 21:58
And that’s where we’re spending quite a bit of time thinking about how we might do that right now. The network’s all have data, and they and that data gives them information on uptime, but it varies significantly between between company in terms of why they collect that data and what they measure for. And, and also, it’s challenging to understand. If a charge is being blocked by a big garbage bin or something like that records, that data doesn’t necessarily show that there’s no usage on that charge because it’s blocked. So you kind of get into the real world getting real world data, if somebody’s actually attending the site. So we’re looking at a number of options as to how we can if we can identify what what the uptime rate is now, and that’ll give us something that is a good starting point for it.
Brandon Bartneck 22:51
Yeah, it’s, it’s an interesting topic. And also maybe I want to expand a little bit. So I know, I know, maybe maybe someone I think most of the discussion so far has been kind of passenger car focused, right? And we’re talking about electrification of vehicles that you would drive drive around for the most part. But if you guys, if you look on your website, right, you guys are paying attention to a lot more than just the passenger car space. So can you speak a bit like, how are you seeing electrification kind of grow to other application segments? Where
Nino Di Cara 23:25
it’s thanks, yeah, we focus, we’re facing an increasing amount of medium and heavy duty vehicles. And there are increasingly good options of those vehicles coming to market, although it’s still very early days. But so what we’re trying to do with our reporting is to show case, companies that have made the decision to start transitioning their fleet to electric, all companies are introducing pilots, on electric vehicles into their fleets. So the more that we can share case studies, and we can show examples of what leaders are doing to to do this, and that’s kind of like a beacon for others. And it makes you know, the next company that comes along easier to make their own internal business case when their competitors are doing this, or somebody else has already done it. Yep. So yeah, so that’s, that’s a big, certainly a big priority. There was there was just actually a good event run recently with called go run a less electric which has actually run in the US and in Canada, which was testing real electric vehicles carrying real freight on rail routes. So there’s some good data that’s coming out of that we’re gonna be publishing a roundup of that in the next week or so.
Brandon Bartneck 24:51
Are those medium or heavy duty?
Nino Di Cara 24:54
It was medium and heavy duty. I think yeah. So yeah. So really, the real world applications of this this stuff is is happening. And obviously it’s a huge segment in terms of carbon emissions. And, and fuel costs, frankly, as well, which when you get that running on electric, it’s going to significantly reduce the cost of ownership. So yeah, that’s certainly the main one. And then, in terms of other areas like marine is quite exciting. We’ve we’ve got lots of waterways in Canada, and lots of great lakes, obviously, bordering with the US. And we’ve, in fact, a couple of electric ferries are just on their way being delivered from Romania to Ontario. And they’re going to be deployed for 2022. So that’s, that’s, that’s, that’s really exciting to see that category. And then an aviation it’s just surprising me how quickly there’s how quickly a there seem to be electrification, there are liquification options for for aviation. This is an area that you have some some engagement with and experiences, I think.
Brandon Bartneck 26:10
Yeah, yeah. So certainly. And yeah, so automotive has been what I have, for the most part been focusing on what’s my day job at ftb. For the, I’d say the first four years I was there. But now over the last year, I’ve been, you know, great branching out and putting a lot more focus on these other application segments, with aviation being one of them. And I think, you know, we talked about mining as one. So I was at the big mine Expo last year, which aired last week, which is a particularly interesting, interesting situate. And I think one of the, I don’t want one of the challenges, I think I see, you know, maybe I’d be curious to hear your thought and maybe the role the media plays here. So when you think of, like aviation, let’s start there, like the the use case or the benefit of electrified aircraft, like, we’re not going to have an electric 757 triple, seven 730 what the Airbus 383 23 ad sets are like, those types of vehicles aren’t going to be electrified in the short term because it just it doesn’t make sense from a physics perspective the battery technology and and the electrified motor, but at the same time, there are the smaller reaching regional applications or they talk you know, talk about air taxis you Vitol, so essentially upgraded helicopters, as well as regional, whether it’s free cargo type planes, or anywhere from the two to 20 seater, like, these are kind of the primary applications right now for either electric or, or hydrogen type aircraft. But it’s very different than like when you say the term aviation I bet you a lot of people listening think of the last plane that they flew on, and that’s not necessarily what we’re thinking of.
Nino Di Cara 27:53
Yeah, yeah. Really good distinction. So yeah, I think hybrid hybrid systems for aircraft makes makes really great sense. And, yeah, we have one of the first electric flights in Canada, actually, I think back in 19, or early 2020. Actually,
Brandon Bartneck 28:08
wow. Yeah. It’s exciting. Yeah, it’s, you know, you know, what the company was?
Nino Di Cara 28:13
It was harbor air. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Which is just kind of amazing to me, when I started on this journey, I just didn’t think we’d see that that like a working aircraft that takes passengers actually doing that kind of is, is kind of interesting.
Brandon Bartneck 28:31
Yeah. And if I pointed so the appointed a few people to this, and I think that it’s really what well done on PBS has a documentary that they came out with on electrified aviation just a couple months ago, which, which is really interesting. And they talked about, kind of throughout the world, look at different companies working in different aspects of electrified flight. And it’s cool to see I mean, there’s there’s certainly challenges regulatory it’s, yeah, there’s challenges. I mean, this the stakes are a lot higher than in an automobile because you can’t pull over and let let something happen, you know, and, but there’s a lot of lot of cool things being done there.
Nino Di Cara 29:10
Yeah, I’ll have to check out that documentary. As you mentioned, vertical takeoff in drones. And I think what that’s kind of what’s cool, that’s that’s what’s kind of caught me a little bit is that we’re all familiar with drones now. And these kind of like relatively small units that take off with cameras and so on. I think we’ve all seen like, slightly bigger ones. And then when you think of like, electric aviation being, maybe just a huge drone that can take two people is suddenly it’s like, oh, that’s that’s just a that’s a very small technological shift from from where we are today, you know, rather than a, you know, like a 10 2040 seater plane, you know, class. Yes. Yeah. And it’d be nice. The more we can electrify things, the quieter it’s going to be and the less pollution it’s going to be inside. As a passenger, I’m sure it’s gonna be a lot more Fun to traveling these vehicles without the huge noise from the engines
Brandon Bartneck 30:04
yeah and I mean the cool thing and I think this is maybe not appreciated but a decent amount especially when you’re close of the noise generated from the aircraft is going from the propeller spinning itself especially if you think about helicopter it’s that propeller is incredibly loud. Yeah, but when you can switch to electrified motors and you have more of a distributed distributed propulsion system so rather than one central motor and this is the same for for aircraft as well so rather than having you know, two engines on the two wings, you can switch like lilium for example, has a bunch of little electric motors distributed and that a lot quieter, right because now you have electric motors and smaller propellers and it scales with the length of the propeller for the sound and the speed of the end of the tip. And then also you can do some cool things with just from a physics perspective so like these electric short takeoff and landing like you never could the idea of landing on a runway that’s a couple 100 yards or whatever it was it’s not feasible with a typical conventional aircraft but when you get to this distributed and you’re able to utilize all of these electric motors in a grim way and you know change the way they promote you you need much less take off even if you’re not going vertical you need much less runway than you did before.
Nino Di Cara 31:22
God didn’t know it’s amazing the knock on benefits that come with this changing system isn’t it it’s like it’s always too easy to think that it’s a switch just like for life but then you just need an example up there that is reduced to a landing area that’s got huge functional benefits
Brandon Bartneck 31:38
Yeah, I mean if you think about it to then you know Amazon suddenly can the roof of their warehouse see a landing place or a big parking lot that they have for one of these or you and I recommend I just had Kevin and Cliff on a couple episodes ago from from x wing and he was while he was at NASA really a big proponent of this regional Air Mobility so or RAM and he had a paper that came out and he was pushing this and it’s this idea that you know, if we do switch to electrified and autonomous, autonomous aircraft are both Connect they go hand in hand. Yeah, we have and I assume Canada does the same with the US has this huge network of currently inaccessible airports to the public. So like, I go to Detroit, International Airport, but I also drive by three other airports on the way because there’s a small kind of private aircraft even if you switch and suddenly the unit economics look a lot different and you can remove some of the pilots and you can access this network there’s existing infrastructure that kind of changes the whole game if done correctly,
Nino Di Cara 32:44
right? Yeah, yeah. Yeah, those Yeah, I guess they’re like commercialized commercial only or private airports. But yeah, open up those areas. But oh, god yes. So yeah, I was gonna say like once one thing that I’m I’d really love to see in my lifetime is electrical autonomous male robots delivering drones literal autonomous drones delivering our mail. And so if our houses were built on our homes were built with like a chute on the top and these drains just bought our mail and like just hovered over the roof and then dropped it in the chute then imagine that the all the postage the mail trucks that would be lifted from our roads No need to there’s no security thing because they’re only supposed to doctor to drop it down and shoot. So that’s my great grand plan
Brandon Bartneck 33:34
in its own science fiction, but the technology is not not far off. I mean, there’s yeah there’s a lot of logistics type questions and figuring out how to get public buy in and regulation but yeah, it’s it’s not infeasible by any means.
Nino Di Cara 33:47
Yeah. And we’d love to just really be if that’s okay on you mentioned mining is one of the applications and yeah, it’s an area we’ve done quite a bit of work on we’ve got but one of our partners here called McLean engineering, based in Canada makes underground electric mining vehicles. And the benefits for mining operations of electrifying is really huge that there’s been electrified mines for a long time but having battery electric vehicles that can that are not connected to a power source is obviously the innovation and the the the advantages are just huge for in terms of cost and in terms of operator comfort. So if if you think of an underground mining you’ve got like a diesel vehicle operating deep underground, it’s obviously creating a lot of noise, a lot of vibrations and and a lot of pollution. That has to be ah fact out
Brandon Bartneck 34:44
and heat and heat to do something I hadn’t thought about until recently.
Nino Di Cara 34:50
Yeah, really? Yeah, really good point. And then, and we battery electric, is there’s no noises, there’s obviously a lot less vibrations and the The running costs of the H fac is is normally see lower one of the panel discussions I was on the gentleman saying that their clients had found that the cost they thought the cost saving would be in the diesel saving but the cost saving was actually an H fac was in diesel saying but the huge cost saving was in reduced HR costs
Brandon Bartneck 35:23
yeah and the so I don’t I’m I’m new to the mining industry I’m still fairly new we’ve been looking into it for a few months but very ignorant view and I but maybe maybe there’s others who are listening heard the same but at least when I had never been exposed to kind of what what the mining industry is as well yeah I heard kind of talk of there’s there’s cool electrified stuff there’s cool connected and autonomous type technology but in my mind I still kind of picture kind of old school mind that like you see in the movies and I didn’t actually think that people were there with pickaxes but like that’s kind of you know what you picture and then a trolley like on a train track that’s that’s moving and yeah, it’s unbelievable the the scale of the the equipment and technology and then also how far advanced stuff is. I mean, when I was in Vegas at the the mind Expo I think Komatsu had like their third largest excavator something like that and it was inches from the top of the convention center and the tires are 15 feet tall and the tall trucks are just in order like even these underground trucks I mean obviously the profile is a lot lower but like the the power and the productivity of these things is unbelievable
Nino Di Cara 36:33
yeah it’s uh yeah I’ve never seen one of those machines got close but just looking at the pictures of like like a human standing next from those tires they barely like tool this tool is half a tire or something is just a whole nother scale of
Brandon Bartneck 36:46
Yeah, maybe that that brings up an interesting point so like the salt yeah underground mining like you said has been electrified and the battery electric parts interesting right now and then also there’s some there’s improvements on the autonomous side and then also on the on the electrified side but I’d be curious like a haul truck that was one of the themes from the from the from last week because you know those they’re enormous machines that are under heavy load and they have a lot of emission and they’re also relatively good use case for battery electric because you know they go uphill but then they also go downhill which with with a ton of weight which allows you to regenerate and restore energy but with that being said there’s there’s the jury’s still out of whether I think everyone agrees we need to make these things more sustainable and we need to reduce the emissions but the jury’s still out of whether the best solution is pure battery electric or if it’s some hybrid or if it’s a fuel cell or if it’s an alternative fuel ice. Yeah, so for that and then kind of the broader topic How do you think like, you know, as company electric autonomy and you’re talking primarily about battery electric vehicles, how do you try to think about these applications where Yeah, maybe it’s not clear that at least in the short term, battery electrics are the optimal a pure battery electrics are the optimal solution.
Nino Di Cara 38:09
I think that the battery technologies still certainly well, I think we’re still I think a lot of innovations come in battery technology so I think that where the paradox is not there yet, I think that it will be increasingly over the coming years. So I think hybrid solutions for me are the transitional technologies that’s always the way I’ve thought about it for passenger vehicles. And like right right now we need to do everything that we can to reduce carbon emissions so if if hybrid is the immediate solution that’s available for medium heavy duty and some of these other aviation For example, we have to dive into them like fully and completely but I don’t think long term it’s all going to go battery because I think I mean, we’ve just we’ve just seen like the evolution in like computers down to smartphone size and you know, that’s we’d like lots of industries working to reduce if you look at the transition that’s happened to smartphones, it’s that’s lots of industries and lots of experts and lots of scientists working to pack all that technology knowledge into the smartphone right now, that that’s only just started happening at scale globally with batteries. that more and more companies like the you know, the financial community is starting to understand why battery cell batteries are part of our energy future. So there’s more money and there’s more research and is more innovation going into it. And I feel as though we’re only just kind of really get started in it. Like methods scale. So we’re on lithium ion technology right now see solid state is around the corner and there’s other there’s constantly other battery technology that people are talking about. So I think that we’re going to get there. We With fully backed with fully backed battery electric, it is just a matter of the window of time. So I don’t know if that’s helpful to say that x is quite vague, but yeah, 1015 years I, I think I’ll be surprised if we’re still relying on much hybrid for some of the less you belong. That’s right. That industrial scale, if you like, and that’s super heavy duty application.