Welcome everyone to the latest edition of our Reimagining Mobility Podcast series. I'm here with Alwin Lutz. We are virtually this time because Alwin works in our California Tech Center just south of L.A.. He's a controls manager there with lots of experience in battery development, BMS development, software and controls. And today we talk a little bit about air mobility.
And Alwin is one of the guys from our technology team that worked on a variety of different batteries, including the one that just went up in the air recently. So we want to take this opportunity to talk about this a little bit. So. Alwin, thanks for joining me today. Maybe just start out with I'm kind of going the opposite instead of starting out with what the commonality dots are.
I want to start out with what are the biggest differences between when we develop a battery, both from a maybe mechanical side, but also from a control side between something that goes up into the air and something that stays on the ground, either on two wheels, three, four or multiple wheels. Yeah. Thanks, Stephan, for having me on. Really appreciate it. And being out here in California, I can see that you're here having the shades down. And anyway. It's no need to rub it in today.
Yeah. No. So. Exactly. So but yeah, it's an interesting question about the kind of what is the challenge on the automotive side. And now that we get into the aerospace side, it's as simple as that. If you look at automotive, if you have a problem, you pull over, you stop and things get taken care of. If you're in the air, there is no option to pull over. So you have to constantly from the beginning, get into a mindset that more or less failure is not an option in aerospace.
That's kind of the I think the biggest item that the entire team here had when we started into that area. We we work together with our customer. They were in the aerospace area. So we got a good understanding that they kind of guide us through there because they were more experienced in that. But nevertheless, we said our best team members here on that project, on that area to say, okay, we we have failure is not an option.
If you if you think about it and I just had recently a conversation about systems engineering, how much more important is systems engineering than when you say just just one basic big differences with a vehicle I can put to pull to the right side with a plane, a helicopter, whatever it might be, I can't. So that's that suddenly makes systems engineering even more important, or is it still more important that the design of the battery, for example, is is more critical now, or is it both of it?
I guess is this the system engineering aspect is hugely important in the aerospace industry for sure, because you you kind of approach it from a component level to make the safety of flight critical components of flight worthy. But then that is not really the whole take it. You have to approach it from a system perspective. And that's something that as a supplier or technology partner in that area, you can do that alone by yourself.
You have to work together with other systems, subsystems, suppliers, and more so with the airplane manufacturer that is really leading the charge because they have the full system, all of you, whereas we have a small sliver of that entire project. Mm hmm. That kind of system is definitely a major part. More so in the aerospace industry than I can see in the in the automotive industry.
And we got involved in that also with this project that we had that we were bringing in our experience from the automotive systems side, because we have done a lot of not just battery packs, but also prototype vehicles, full vehicle integration systems where you have to understand the vehicle itself. And we brought that knowledge and that integration, that system knowledge also to the aerospace industry with those partners that we work together.
So it was quite a it exciting learning experience, but also a a good synergy between their experience and our experience in that area. Sure. Is is for you and your team, maybe for both you and your team. Both. Is it is it more exciting? Is it more. Well, I'm a little scared to put something together that goes up in the air. Or is it is it really at the end of the day, really, it comes down to a different challenge. But, you know, let's go to it, right?
I mean, specifically at CTC, over the years, we've come up with very cool technologies and really some cutting edge Never there before done type of products, integration, vehicle solutions, whatever it might be. But this is what that this was definitely a step forward again into the air mobility. Right. Is how was that from you guys? How was the team excited? How were you excited or how you were like, I'm not so sure about this. How did you guys take it?
We were quite excited because it's a challenge. One of the things that we like here is a challenge, something new and in the beginning, you you start working on on the mechanization, on designing the battery pack based on what the customer thinks, what they want. We brought in our new technology with the cassette technology, which was new for them to understand. So there was an educational transfer of what we bring to the table versus what they expect, which was very beneficial.
But then as you progress in the development and then the day to day activity, the one thing that we definitely learned and appreciated very much is the the amount of detail and the amount of documentation, the amount of collecting of data and organizing it. So that is verifiable, that is perceptible, because eventually you have to have all the data behind all of your development and testing to get to that safety of flight airworthiness state.
And that even for a prototype in the automotive prototype world, it is not that critical that you have all of these detailed reports, all of these detailed assessments of the failure. When we have a failure in during testing, we need to investigate and document and then later on document also the change that came out of it and how it got implemented. Not into that one piece because we have hundreds of pieces that get into the airplane for each individual.
So documentation and tracking, that was a huge learning for us as well. Okay. Okay. How critical I know today in when we do passenger vehicles or heavy duty trucks or anything that's on the ground, let's say simulation is becoming more and more of a criticality. I know, for example, just a lonely, let's call a usage or driving cycle. Right. Or in this case, flying cycle is certainly considerably different from a from a vehicle, even if it's a race car. Tell me a little about that.
How how important was simulation and how much did you guys make use of simulation? Yeah, we we did have the challenge to do a lot of simulation because one of the items is this is new technology. And one of the critical parts is that there are kind of two parts of the simulation. One is the like you mentioned, the uses profiled the drive cycle, so to speak, the flight profile.
That was something we had to learn and understand and then actually get into our upfront simulation activities to see how doesn't respond thermally. How does the entire system respond in terms of accuracy, of state of charge or any of that which is different from a vehicle where you have a certain amount of peak power and continuous power. So you're used on a vehicle that you do your wide open throttle to get your 0 to 60 or 60 or 100, and then you come back down to low power in the aerospace.
It was really a continuous hyper power, medium power, our high power. So a lot of simulation activities before we actually built anything was done in the thermal side of things. And then the second aspect of the simulation that we had to do here is what I mentioned earlier about you can just pull over to the side of the road. The major requirement for aerospace here is really what inherently is an issue with any lithium ion battery, which is thermal runaway.
So we did have our cassette design optimize from the get go to really look at a single cell or dual cell runaway of the cell without propagation. Now what does that mean in normal automotive production designs, you are preventing thermal runaway with any type of method in the pack design. But nevertheless, you cannot oftentimes fully prevent it. And the design objective is really to prolong that event so that you have enough time.
We're talking minutes, tens of minutes for the operator, the driver, to get alerted and move out of there for this application. We couldn't do that. We have to stop it. We basically have to stop the propagation. And in order to come up with the correct design on the mechanical system, we did a lot of simulation.
We did individual cell testing, took the learnings or the data, the real data of the energy, the release of the energy over time, and how it then spreads within the cassette and spreads within the entire system to then do the simulation and optimize and change materials. We change the construction of the units to come to a simulation result that gives us confidence that, yes, this will not spread. It will have two cells or three cells that are unusable.
An entire cassette is unusable, but the entire battery system is still fully functional with a minor degradation and the airplane can still fly. Okay, that was that. And that followed up then afterwards with physical testing to actually validate that all the simulation activities are translating into real test and then results. So that kind of brings me to a top topic.
Wanted to get to what what does it take for, let's say, battery and battery systems to be even more applicable to air space, right. Or again, mobility in the air. So to speed planes, maybe even helicopters, who knows? Drones certainly as well is a the, is it power to weight ratio to energy to weight ratio? Is it the ability to have cells, maybe solid state that are less swelling, less susceptible to thermal runaway? Give me a little bit of insight on that one.
Yeah, it's for a for an airplane, more so than for car weight is everything. You have to have a energy storage system that is as much reduced in weight because whatever you have in weight, you cannot carry as cargo. And you want to have an airplane that flies 500 or 400 miles and can carry one or two people. That's useless. So weight is the major criteria in order to get really that ratio between how much energy can you store for a given amount of weight that you have in there?
That's the main overlaying objective of of getting there. The second area, of course, is the safety and the reliability, and that is somewhat related to the type of cell technology, as you mentioned, that you can use at this given time with current cell technology, you have the safety aspect of thermal runaway and you have to protect for that.
That means you have to do construction of your battery design to prevent it and not to prevent it, but to mitigate it to the point where you can are arrested and that that wait. So long term, I can see that most predominantly will be to get the energy on a on on the cell level up and to reduce the potential of safety because that automatically will reduce everything that's around the battery to minimize the weight. You talked a lot about safety. Let's maybe the last question here.
How much different are you approaching the software as opposed for for air mobility as opposed to for ground mobility? Is there a difference or are you real using the same thing or are you putting additional safety mechanisms in? We have more redundancy. Tell me a little bit specifically about the software. Yeah, the the software development for the aerospace is is very well, let's put it that way.
It's it's very regulated in a way, and it's very strict to get the different disciplines organized, similar like in the automotive production development. You have you have your recycler, you have your requirements definition. You have to have your test cases and everything. But more so on, on the aerospace area where you have all of the automotive requirements and then the strict testing and also the documentation and control of the software for modification.
That has to be extremely strict to any any code change, no matter how small it is, cannot be just accomplished through internal. It also needs to be then approved by the FAA later on when it comes to safety. So there there's another it's not a kind of self certification in a way. You really have to bring everything to a agency that will then eventually approve your design and approve your software and also the modifications thereafter.
So from that perspective, the actual software development, do you develop and see MATLAB, Simulink model based is very similar, but the entire process and the quality assurance around it is quite intensive. Okay, Alwin, thank you very much and thanks for tuning in for our latest podcast.
Again, thanks, Alan. Lots for the insight here on our air mobility adventures and we're now getting more and more into it with our technologies and what you mentioned with what our battery cassette technology was originally envisioned for. So this is the first step. And the next step is hopefully we're we're taking this to space then. Thank you Awin, for your again Thanks for listening to reimagine mobility Podcast. If you like this episode, please subscribe and tell a friend.