Welcome, everyone, to our latest podcast edition of Reimagining Mobility. I'm here with Simon Fraser, business development for Fuel Cell Canada, our organization. That custom develops fuel cell stacks for mobility space. Anything from stationary power are two things that fly in the air, things that float on water and obviously on the road. Simon welcome and thank you for your time. me a little bit. You're in business development, so you go to customers highlighting to them.
And fuel cell stack technology, certainly a very key ingredient similar to what we're talking in electric vehicle, the actual battery cell, how critical it is. Why should somebody develop its its own or his or her own fuel cell stack from the ground up, the membrane and everything else instead of going and buying something off the shelf? That's actually a very, very good question. So the stack, in essence, is the core of the fuel cell propulsion system.
So it strongly defines how powerful, how efficient, durable, how robust. And in the and also how expensive a fuel cell propulsion system is. Of course, you need the combination with the balance of planned components. The other subsystems like the thermal subsystem. But the stack has a very strong and very direct impact. So very often we talk to customers who start off having a first application, a few trucks, a few, I don't know, a first a first ferry application, for instance.
And they start off buying a stack, a standardized stack, which is available off the shelf. And for this first demo application, it's good enough so it works. It’s available fine yeah?
But when you start looking beyond the first demo mile applications, when you start to think about a larger deployment of your product, when you start to think about the business case of selling a fuel cell based product, very often it's clear that is an off the shelf stack is not going to be the best solution, but you want to have the best possible stack for your specific application. And that's when you start to think and say, okay, what do I specifically need?
Which power and what's my efficiency target there? The form factor, for instance, simple things which which are very important for integrating the stack into your vehicle, into a marine application or whatever.
And so that's when you start to think and say, okay, doesn't it make sense to actually have a custom developed stack for my specific application and that's when we start to discuss and say, okay, yes, the stack could a certain degree be its can and it will be a differentiator for your specific product. does make sense to consider custom developing your own stack not for every application, but for some application.
It's a very, very valid consideration and that's when we start to discuss and say, okay, what is possible is a really custom engineered stack for my specific set of requirements which, which possibilities, some advantages we have compared to buying an off the shelf stack from a from a stack supplier. Very good. I know from years ago when we were involved with stack development for heavy duty truck application, one of the one of the key targets was durability, right?
You can have a stack for a heavy duty truck that as opposed to a passenger vehicle is used 90% of the time versus 90% of the time sitting in my driveway or at work in the parking lot. Right. So what I think at that point, we were talking 20 to 25000 hours of operation. Are we are we there now in generally speaking, Because back then that was kind of like not unreachable, but very few were able to do that.
Are we there by now with with that as more of a of a standard that any any stack that not just we developed but others develop as well that that's sort of the minimum is 20 to 25 or we're not there yet? I mean this very strongly depends on which kind of materials, which kind of designs you apply in your specific stack. Historically, many stacks were developed for automotive applications, some +/-100 kilowatts and much lower durability requirements.
Now we see that heavy duty trucks, long range trucks are really going to be one of the most important initial applications we're going to see. And of course, yes, you have to meet the 25,000 minimum lifetime requirements. And yes, you have to very carefully pick and choose which which materials you're going to use in this stack, which technologies, which designs you're going to apply. And in this specific stack, if you make the right choices, 25000 hours are possible.
But many stacks, particularly ones which have been historically developed for automotive applications, will not be able to meet these 25000 hours. So this is also one of the points where we are. Of course, we have to have a deep dive with the customer to understand the application, to understand how this stack is going to be used and we can actually look into the available materials.
We can we can have a look at the designs and we can come up with the proposal, which we feel confident in saying, yes, this stack is going to survive the 25,000 hour request. And of course, it is not just the design of the stack. We also have a lab full of test beds. We have methodologies to to do what we call accelerate the stress test. And you're never going to test the stack for 25000 hours on the test bed. But you have to accelerate this.
You have to squeeze this into a few days, a few weeks of testing. And that takes a lot of experience and experienced test engineers to understand how to translate 25000 hours of operation on the highway into a few weeks of testing on the test bed and have these these accelerated stress tests, we can translate real world operation into something we can execute on on a test bed.
And so it's not just designing to meet 25,000 hours is also being able to provide confidence to the customer that the stack we designed is actually going to be able to meet these very ambitious requirements. I mean, 25,000 hours is still quite ambitious today. It's not an easy task to achieve, but it's achievable. Okay. So you talk a little bit about design. You talked about material, maybe. I assume with that comes a certain cost. How how big is the tradeoff?
If I want to get let's say let's use this 20 to 25000, is the tradeoff less on the design side, but more on using different materials? Is it is it it's both design material and cost goes up or how do we look at that depending on again, for priority, looking at operation, not not efficiency, not whatever x kilowatts per liter. Forget that for a moment. But getting to the getting to the the durability to the time. Right. The hours, what what is the main tradeoffs I have to look at there.
I mean, it's it's you're going to start by looking into which kind of materials you want to buy in your stack, catalyst coated membranes, gas diffusion layers, bipolar plate materials. So this already has a very, very, very important impact on the lifespan you're going to see in your stack. And since since we custom engineer stacks, we of course, we can pick and choose different technology is different materials in the market.
So we're not we don't we haven't invested into a manufacturing facility where we cannot simply change and and use a different membrane, for instance, or a different catalyst for that membrane. So we are an R&D organization. We benchmarked different materials, we see what, which which supplier technologies are available so we can pick and choose the best supplier technologies for a specific application.
number one, really choosing the right materials and then of course, the next step is component design and designing the complete stack. There's very, very important decisions you have to do in the design phase, which have a strong impact not just on performance and efficiency, but also the durability of your stack and something which, which which cannot be overestimated is how important this is interaction between the stack and the fuel source system.
And the good thing is that in our organization,AVL, if you have, we can cover stack development as well as system integration. And so the fuel cell system is going to operate the stack. So the operating strategy, the operating parameters which which which we allow the stack to be exposed to yet have a very strong impact on the durability on the lifetime of the stack.
So we have stack developers, we're going to have a very, very important discussion at the interface between the stack and the system. We're going to tell the system people what our stack is, is able to handle it. We're going to make sure that our stack is not going to be exposed to critical operating conditions or if it has to be exposed we're going to try to limit the exposure time as far as possible.
And the combination of a good control strategy and good operating strategy of the stack and a well-designed stack, applying the right materials is what's actually going to make the stack survive the 25,000 hours, even in real world. I'm driving not just in arbitrary conditions. Well, some of us or some people are probably listening to this saying, here we go again, software has taken over the world. Now it's all saying fuel cell stack software again controls everything.
Clearly, what we do in in Canada, right. With with with the group that you're working with is the development of the stack. But the key component that you're bringing out is that, yes, it's software that controls and makes sure it runs in its optimal operation range and again, allows you to meet certain conditions that the customer wants.
So I guess how much more do you see software playing a role in in improving efficiency and improving durability and improving the applications in different areas of a fuel cell stack or of a fuel cell stack based power plant? You see software sort of already playing. It's it's it's part as it will in the future of will software just like it is in in vehicles play even a bigger role going forward.
I mean the stack itself it's an interesting animal because you don't have any active components in the stack who's completely passive. So you you have to have compressors, humidifiers, heat exchangers, making sure that the stack has can be operated as safely and efficiently as possible. So the control system of the fuel cell system and even the control system of the vehicle are going to create a very, very important role in making sure that the stack operates as as as it's supposed to operate.
And this is not just true in normal operating conditions, but in particularly also when when you when you want you to turn on the stack, maybe it's frozen, for instance, after a cold winter night. And you have to decide how is how's my strategy for unfreezing the stack and what was my strategy when to have a big truck fully loaded going up a hill, for instance? Yeah, I'm going to make sure that that the stack is going to provide the performance I need without compromising the durability which.
Which I still want to have from my stack. So as I mentioned before, this, this is cooperation between the control system guys and us. As I said, guys is very, very crucial in making sure that the stack is going to survive and perform as as it's supposed to perform. In particular, if you also have to include a certain element of battery capacity in your vehicle. Yeah. So you have different choices. You have a certain level of, of, of flexibility.
And if you have a clever control strategy, you can make sure that the stack survives much longer than if you just apply brute force and try to squeeze out as much power as possible and then is surprised when the stack those doesn't meet the durability requirements. So software, after all, again is is in control here as well. Let's talk a little bit maybe about something that over the last the game, AVL is now 75 years old or going on 75 years and continuing.
Much of that time was spent in diesel and gasoline engines with the last 20 years getting into EVs with battery development inverters, lots of different things over the last 5 to 10 years, heavily into fuel cell stacks as well. But internal combustion engines or diesel engines and now also batteries. A big play of software is also diagnostics. Right. Making sure that the engine runs properly, that we have the capability of diagnosing issues, but also prognosis so that we can look forward.
Hey, this is something about value we see here. We use our data intelligence capabilities to predict something again, both in in engines and batteries. Tell me a little bit what is what how does this play into into the stack, into the fuel cell stack? Because you said before, is it really a passive device or are we not doing any diagnostics then? Right. So so we have to distinguish between between what we do in the in the research and development phase and what we do in the actual application.
So when the stack is ambiguous, so in research and development, we have a lot of diagnostic capabilities, which of course we also need to understand what's going on with our prototype stacks. Prototype stack is expensive. You don't want to damage it. You want to understand what's going on. You want to extract as much information as possible.
Yeah. So we have, you know, traditional tools like like cell voltage monitoring systems which allow us to to understand what each specific cell during a test run is experiencing.
We also have advanced tools like like I'm looking into segmented cells which which indicate current density distribution across the whole area of active area of of the stack, which indicates if the stack is uniformly operated or if you have certain areas in your in your stack where you have, I don't know, significantly higher or significantly lower current densities, which provides, of course, important input to the stack designers.
Do we have stuff like Impedance Spectroscopy, for instance, which is a very interesting tool in particularly low for single cell analysis where we can understand what's happening on the electrochemical level. We can see how stuff like like membrane dehydration, for instance, changes the performance. So all of this is helping us in understanding what's going on with our prototypes and of course, providing inputs in a feedback loop to the stack.
Design is of course always coupled with modeling and simulation. That's also a very important aspect. So it's really trying to close the loop between the stack design or component level design, building testing prototypes on the test bed and feeding this back into the simulation, which again then supports us in improving, let's say, the design of our bipolar played or let's see I don't know certain certain feature of of of of the stack.
So in R&D a lot of a lot of diagnostic tools, a lot of capabilities, that's one side of the story. On the other hand, you're going to have a stack at some point operated in an actual vehicle. And also are you have to try to understand which diagnostic capabilities do you actually need in your vehicle.
Yeah. And what we've seen is that traditionally few years ago, there was a lot of still a lot of diagnostic tools directly built into the stack cell voltage monitoring systems, for instance, which is quite an expensive way of of of understanding what's going on your stack.
But it provides a lot of value, you know, as we're now slowly going into the direction of mass production, you can see that of course companies are trying to reduce the level of of diagnostic capabilities built into their vehicles to make them cheaper.
But this is only possible if you are confident in the stack, in the stack design and the quality of the materials going into the stack, which of course is again, something which to a certain degree is already going to be decided in the R&D phase of when you select which which areas you want to call. And in the validation we do in a lab built.
So when we develop a stack prototype to hold validation experiments with validation, testing prototypes in our lab in realistic operating conditions, making a free start up testing, for instance, again and again, that all of this contributes to the level of confidence we have in our products, which will eventually allow our customers to reduce the level of of expensive diagnostic capabilities they need in the vehicle. So but that's a that's a gradual transition and it's a genuine transition.
We're seeing in a lot of aspects of fuel cell design and the availability of of new materials, for instance, or the maturity of the design. So you can see that a few years ago we were still trying to have a few hundred stacks, maybe manufactured by hand, assembled by hand, happy if they actually work, that we are now, we see customers say, okay, I want to have a few 10,000 units next year. I want to have a few hundred thousand units.
And a few years from now, if they're thinking different dimension, which also is an input for us because it means that we we're not just going to look into stuff like, like performance and robustness, but we're also going to bring production engineering engineers into the projects because our engineers are defining target costs, really trying to not just make the best possible stack, but make the stack easy to assembly efficient to us.
And we're making sure that the quality can be easily checked. So these are aspects which are completely normal in automotive industry, but to a certain degree they still have to be translated and implemented in fuel cell industry. And it's it's very it's very interesting to be part of this transformation.
And for me, this this this whole transformation is really achieved in the end to have cost effective stacks produced in large numbers and really ready to to be operated in large fleets, whether it's commercial vehicles, whether it's in maritime applications, for instance, or in stationary applications. There's a lot of automotive knowhow which we can transfer into the fuel cell industry. This this can be a very significant contribution.
Also, we as AVL can bring into fuel cell industry in terms of supporting this this ramp up of of of the industry and good. That really ties directly into my last question that I heard is from from from you from a business development point of view, what have you seen over the last 2 to 3 years change? And I think you just explained it right.
We were now we're now going to a point, not anymore laboratory or can we do it or feasibility we're going now into okay, let's take this well let's make it manufacturable, let's make it scalable, right at scale, at quality, etc.. So. I guess with that already and similar, let me add an add on question to that as a last question. What do you see that happening over the next two years? You see additional changes, relates to what people come to you and say, Hey, we need help with this now.
What do you see? This is now we're at now. Now we're where we're at now. We're just going to continue. It's just going to be more because fuel cell and fuel cell stacks as a result of it becoming more prevalent in the in the mobility space or what do you see from a customer demand that we can then suffice that AVL you see over the next two or three years?
I mean, first of all, it was still in a in a phase where, where we as AVL, we, we, we see a real way of getting a request from a lot of different customers, which are not typical AVL customers. Yeah. So non-automotive customers working in aviation applications, maritime applications, trains, for instance. Yeah. So it's interesting for us to work with these customers and to see which kind of requirements they have.
and of course some of these requirements are quite similar, whereas some industries have very, very specific requirements which really have a fundamental impact on how we have the design stacks, which materials we can use and how these tanks are being operated. in terms of, of of maturity at this point, we still have a mix of some customers really starting new and working on the first stack and planning the first similar applications.
But on the other hand, we already have some customers who are a few steps ahead and already thinking in bigger dimensions, thinking in direction of mass production and production volumes. So what I expect is that in the next couple of years we're going to have more and more customers going in the direction of of mass production, having more emphasis on on the production engineering, on target costing, for instance, taking a few steps closer to large volume applications.
So I think this is a trend we're going to see on the one hand and the other hand. As I mentioned before, fuel cells is going to be a topic in so many different industries and certain industries just kind of discovered fuel cells quite recently. And and you're also going to see these companies slowly but surely moving from first demo applications, small volume applications into the direction of of really having products ready to be sold into mass market.
So this is definitely something we're right in the middle of of this transition process. And you can also see regional differences here. So so what's happening in Asia is a bit different to what's happening in Europe, which is again, a bit different to what's happening in the U.S.
General trends is something we can see globally and that's good for fuel cell industry because this is a huge demand for for for good, for robust for for cost effective fuel cell solutions for all the different applications you're going to see. And we as AVL, we're pretty well prepared to to handle these requests and to provide solutions which are mature and ready for the use of other applications. Very good. Thank you, Simon, for your time.
Excellent and very insightful and interesting for me, for me to learn here. And thanks, everybody else for tuning in until the next time. Thank you.