The Allplane Podcast #92 - the latest in batteries for aircraft, w/ Richard Wang (founder and CEO of Cuberg)

Richard Wand was on the podcast already in 2021. At the time, the company he had founded a few years earlier, Cuberg, had just been acquired by Northvolt, one of the giants of the industry.

Cuberg specialized in the development of advanced Lithium-Metal batteries, which are particularly suitable for aviation applications and, since this is a field in which so much is going on at the moment, I thought it was a good time to have another chat with Richard to get his latest insights.

The topic is particularly relevant since there have been a number of announcements in the first months of 2023. Cuberg has announced a breakthrough that may allow its batteries to increase their specific energy very significantly, to the point that they may even double the effective range of some electric aircraft. This happens more or less at the same time that researchers in China have also announced some notable achievements in this field, as well.

So, I wanted to learn more about the state of battery development for electric aircraft and whether are we getting close to the sort of battery performances that will enable the advancement of electric aviation over the coming decade or two.

Tune in for this episode not just to learn the answer to these questions, but also to listen how Richard explains some of the basic concepts that underpin battery science and how this will eventually translate to zero emissions aircraft, perhaps much sooner than we expect!

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Things we talk about in this episode:

  • Richard’s background and story and his previous appearance in the podcast

  • The role Cuberg plays in the Northvolt group

  • What is a Lithium-Metal battery and how it differs from Lithium-Ion

  • Where is Cuberg now in terms of battery development

  • Breakthrough announcements by Chinese researchers

  • What developments can we expect in the field of battery-electric propulsion

  • Are there bottlenecks in the production of Lithium-Metal batteries

  • What are the figures of industrial-scale battery production

  • What are the next milestones for Cuberg

Manufacturing aviation batteries

Cuberg aviation module

Interview Transcript:

(please note that, although we strive to make it as close as possible to the original recording, the transcript may not be 100% accurate)

Hello Richard, how are you?

Hi Miquel. Good to be here again.

Yeah. Thank you so much for being back here on the podcast. We had the chance to speak a couple of years ago actually. I was checking the notes and you were here on this podcast in 2021 and a lot has happened since then. 

I think it’s a good time now to reconnect and to recap a little bit about all the novelties that have been taking place in the field that you are working on, batteries, which is a very, very essential field, not just for aviation, but for mobility in general, for other types of vehicles, other types of applications. 

But before we start, for the people that might have missed that first episode we did together couple of years ago, tell us a bit about yourself and about Cuberg and Northvolt, which is the larger group that Cuberg is part of, and the sort of work you do in the field of batteries.

Absolutely. Happy to give an overview. My name is Richard Wang. I am the founder and CEO at Cuberg. We are a company based in the San Francisco Bay Area that I founded back in 2015 out of my PhD work in material science at Stanford University. We are developing a next generation battery technology based on a lithium metal anode and a highly stable new electrolyte that ultimately improves specific energy or energy per weight by 50 to 70% compared to the best lithium ion batteries today. 

This ultimately has substantial implications for high performance segments of mobility and especially electric aviation, which is our core focus for commercialization of our products. We were acquired two years ago right around the time when we spoke previously in 2021 by Northvolt, and Northvolt is the leading European manufacturer of gigascale automotive batteries. 

They count many of the leading European OEMs as their key customers, about $55 billion in their pending order book, and are currently 4,500 people and building out several gigafactories both in Sweden, where they came from, as well as an announced factory in Germany that the we’ll be breaking ground on soon in addition to also looking at North American expansion.

Quite a lot of activity in the battery industry and especially with the passage of the inflation reduction act in the US, that’s really greatly accelerated overall momentum across the world in terms of industry investments from the automotive sector for battery manufacturing. As part of Northvolt, Cuberg plays a few critical roles. We serve as their advanced technology group and high performance products division. We’re the organization focused on really disruptive and long-term innovations to really propel forward battery technology beyond what we see today in the lithium ion world and also to then not only develop these technologies, but also commercialize them through to manufacturing in niche and emerging markets. 

Electric aviation we believe is a perfect example where the needs of that market fit very well with what the technology can already do today as a first market for a commercialization and then ultimately have this be a foundation for eventual integration into Northvol’s broader manufacturing operations for their automotive customers. As part of Northvolt and in the last couple of years, we have now significantly matured the company. 

We’ve grown from about 25 people to now over 150 people, so a 6X growth in two years, and a lot of that focus has been on making our way through product development and now really into our manufacturing scale up phase. We have signed a few major agreements with major aviation and also automotive companies for high performance programs to develop and deliver full battery systems for vehicle integration and testing and are currently ramping up our manufacturing operations to meet that demand. We also anticipate a first flight test with a Cuberg battery system to happen next year with our anchor customer in the aviation space.

Yeah. Lots of stuff going on. I would like to start first a couple of measure announcements in the field of battery technology these last months, these last few weeks. But first of all, before we get into that, I would like to just step back a bit and just go to the basics and ask you about this technology you are working on, which is lithium metal, which is a bit different, from my understanding, from the lithium ion that most of the electric cars are using today. How is it different and what makes it, le’;s say the technology of choice for the sort of research that you are conducting? Is it better? Is it because of the properties of the materials you use?  Which materials do you use, actually? What metal are you using or why is it called this way?

Yes. A lithium metal battery refers to the concept of replacing the graphite anode in a traditional lithium ion cell with a pure metallic lithium anode. If you look at a traditional lithium ion cell, the graphite essentially acts as a host structure to act as a stable framework for lithium ions to go in and out on the anode side. The benefit is that it’;s quite stable, you can get good cycle life, and it is relatively easier to build a battery with a graphite anode as a host, but the downside is you have all this extra graphite, all these extra carbon atoms that are adding significant weight and volume to your battery and that ultimately limits really the energy density, the energy you can store per weight or per volume. Many companies are looking at innovations on the anode space beyond graphite. 

Typically, the two main technologies of interest are for silicon anodes, where the silicon acts not so much as a framework, but as an alloy material to store a lot more lithium per silicon. You reduce the amount of weight in the anode, but then the ultimate technology is to get rid of your host structure entirely and go to pure lithium metal, so it’s only lithium and nothing else in the cell.

That’s why lithium metal is ultimately considered the holy grail of battery anode materials because it is literally the lightest weight possible anode material that you could have. This is the way to really maximize energy density and power density in your cell, which is exactly what you need for something like electric aviation that’s highly demanding in terms of battery performance properties, 

You mentioned energy density. Energy density is one of the main barriers that is often mentioned for the further development of electric aviation, battery powered electric aviation. Where are we now? Tesla car, correct me if I’;m wrong, the metric that is being used to measure energy density is the watt hour per kilogram. Right now, just to put an example of, let’ss say, a high performance car, a Tesla has around 250 watts hour per kilogram.

This gets into a point about are you measuring energy density at the individual cell level versus the full battery pack systems level? At a cell level, I believe Teslas are a little bit better than that, maybe 260 or 270, around there for their cylindrical cells these days. But if you look at the full battery pack, they’;re about I think under 200, maybe 180 watt hours per kilo. I haven’t looked recently, but it’s in that range of under 200.

Okay. You recently announced a breakthrough, we take your batteries past the 400 watt hour per kilogram, is that right or is there again some mass that we should take into account there when we compare the different ways to measure this?

Absolutely, and so yes, for us there are also two numbers. At the cell level, we are announcing now our finalized commercial format cell for manufacturing scale up, which is our 20 amp hour pouch cell, and this cell achieves today 405 watt hours per kilogram. 

That’s a substantial boost beyond the 260 number that you might see in a lithium ion cell. But then the additional news that we have is that we are announcing for the first time our development of a full battery system that goes around our cell. That’s the entire battery package system that goes into the vehicle. At the system level, we are now at 280 watt hours per kilogram in contrast to maybe 180 or upwards of 200 for the best lithium ion system, so about a 40% to 50% increase in watt hours per kilogram at the system level.

Okay. Let me see if I got you right, because you are measuring different metrics here and I must confess I’m not an expert in battery technology, so some questions might sound a bit stupid in this context, but I just wanted to clarify. We have the energy density at the cell level, we have the energy density at the system level. The system level, from what you’re telling me, tends to be lower the level of cell?

Correct. The reason for this is the battery system is a lot more than just all of the battery cells taped together. You need to engineer them in a stable way for safety reasons for management of temperatures and cooling systems as well as electrical wiring and all these other additional elements that combine all of your battery cells into a battery system. That’s why the number is lower for the system, because there’s a lot more engineering that goes around it to make it a fully functional system.

Okay. And then there’s another metric, which is the ampere hour, so AH. What’s the relationship between these units of measure, between the watt hour kilogram and the ampere hour?

Sure. The amp hour by itself is not related to the energy density, at least not directly. The amp hour is just the capacity of a single cell. It’s basically how much energy or in this case, how much capacity a single cell can store. You can make both a lithium ion cell and a lithium metal cell much bigger or much smaller for different applications. It’s not specific to a type of chemistry, but the 20 amp hour cell indicates really how much energy will be stored in a single unit. The significance of this is that we believe a 20 amp hour cell is roughly the ideal cell size for the aviation industry in particular, because it’s a good balance of high packaging efficiency, but also good energy density and good safety.

This capacity that you are reaching now, in practical terms, in the sort of aircraft that are being designed now for electric propulsion, we are talking about planes that are in the, let’s say nine to 30 passenger range, even less normally, because the 30 passenger ones usually use some sort of hybrid propulsion. How does this translate in terms of range, for example, or in terms of increasing the, let’s say the payload of an aircraft?

Absolutely. It differs, as I think you’re referencing, for different segments of aviation. I think that there are three key segments that we look at. 

One is the urban air mobility segment, so the vertical takeoff and landing aircraft, and these are typically all fully battery electric, not hybrid. The second segment would be fully electric plane, typically small planes anywhere from maybe four to nine passengers, fully electric like Eviation, for example. These aircraft fully electric. We’ll get into the range targets in a bit. And then the third segment is the hybrid electric segment, which is the 20, 30 plus passenger aircraft. 

If you go by segment, in the first segment, urban air mobility is where you are most stressed in terms of energy density because of the high power needed to do vertical takeoff and landing. In these vehicles, typically you’ll see battery weight fractions as a percentage of the total operating weight of the aircraft of upwards of 30, upwards even 40% is all just battery weight, which is an enormous amount when you look at an aircraft’;s balance of weight. Because it’s so heavy, it really reduces the payload capability of the aircraft or it really translates if you want full payload as well to a very, very short effective rate. The reality is what we see with a lot of eVTOL manufacturers is realistic ranges when you look at needing fight reserves and you look at all the other factors considered, the full payload, under 50 miles effective flying range. 

Companies are saying hundred miles, 150 miles or even more, but the reality is those are not really achievable with lithium ion batteries today. Typically, 30 to 50 miles is the best you can really get.

That’s also what you see with an Archer, for example, where they have said that’s short range is their target and it;s because the batteries are so heavy. There are some markets for such short range flight, but they’re relatively limited and a lot of urban air mobility players are trying to extend it to a hundred to 200 mile range, which fundamentally requires much lighter weight batteries. The second segment is battery electric planes and these with lithium ion batteries can maybe go upwards of 100 miles today.

Again, a far drop from what the announced targets have been, but in reality, if you look at a certifiable aircraft in design and considering flight reserve requirements, the actual usable range is probably about a hundred miles, maybe slightly more, and again limited because of the high weight fraction of the batteries.

If you look at these two markets in particular, the use of a lithium metal battery is quite significant because an increase in specific energy of 40 to 50% at the battery level will actually translate into effectively more than a doubling in flight range, sometimes even a tripling in flight range, effectively.

The reason is because of the flight reserve requirement that’s fixed. You need roughly 30 minutes of fixed reserve requirements. Even if your aircraft can only fly, let’s say 40 minutes in total, 30 minutes of that is safe for reserve requirements, so then your practical flying time is only 10 minutes.

If we can increase that 40 minutes to 60 minutes, your effective time goes from 10 minutes to 30 minutes. It actually scales much more than the energy density number would suggest because of that reserve requirement. For urban air mobility, we might go from 50 miles to 150 miles and for an electric aircraft, fully electric, we might go from 100 to 200 miles based on realistic flying ranges using our battery.

We have seen also an announcement by a Chinese battery developer called CATL that said that they were developing a battery that was able to reach 500 watt hour per kilogram. I don’t know if they were referring to per cell or per system. Are they using a similar approach to yours or is it a completely different technology?

Yeah. CATL is the largest battery manufacturer in the world, so I think anything that they say needs to be looked at seriously. However, they have not really announced major details about the technology or the product, so it’s a little hard to say exactly how this will play out. What it sounds like is that it’s 500 watt hours per kilogram at the cell level, not at the system level. 

They have not announced a battery system that goes along with this yet. In addition, I think technologically, it’s quite unclear what is in the battery cell. What they have announced is very hard to interpret. It doesn’t map to any conventional ways of describing battery technology. It’s a little unclear at the moment. The details haven’t been clarified, and also it’s not clear what other kinds of characteristics the cell has in terms of cycle life, in terms of power capability, and in terms of charging rates and so forth, in terms of safety.

You have many, many things that are needed to make a battery real as well as to ultimately scale it up for manufacturing in a cost-effective way. The 500 watt hours per kilogram is a number that actually, a lot of organizations can achieve. Even academic groups can hit 500 watt hours per kilogram. 

The challenge is can you do this while also having a battery that is performative in a whole host of other dimensions and useful commercially because you can also scale it up for manufacturing? I think we’ll just have to wait and see where they get to in the coming months.

Where are you in terms of scalability and how far are you from producing this at the industrial scale?

We are currently already producing our batteries for prototype deliveries. We have our first battery systems delivery slated for later this year in Q3 and in Q4. We are actively manufacturing four prototypes for ground and flight testing in vehicles. I think what you see from the aviation industry is that no aircraft manufacturer is ready yet for a fully industrialized solution because there are no aircraft that have been fully certified and ready to scale towards any significant volumes. We are scaling our production capability in conjunction with certification timelines and progress for key customers. If you look realistically at timelines, you’re looking at 2026 or 2027 for certified aircraft for most players in the industry. That’s also when we would intend to scale to support their commercial ramp.

This prototype production is the baseline model or is already the latest one, like the 400 one at cell level or is it’s the previous one that was a bit lower than that?

Yes. We are currently producing the latest generation cell. It’s the ultimate finalized commercial format for the cell with the 405 watt hours per kilogram and the 280 at the module level.

Okay. From what I read, well, and you told us now, it’s that you are working closely as well with several companies, several operators or companies that are developing electric aircraft. What can you tell us about this, I don’t know if it’s right to call them partnerships or collaboration? I don’t know if there’s anything that can be disclosed in commercial terms. In your website you talk about customers. Are those companies that have already committed to onboarding your batteries or we are talking about something much more, let’s say early stage here?

Correct. Yes, in the past couple years we’ve moved significantly on the commercial front and two years ago, we were in the stage of shipping small numbers of battery cell samples for early validation of the core technology. It’s a proof of concept stage. 

We’ve progressed now quite a bit further in commercialization and so we have already signed major development and partnership agreements to deliver full battery systems designed for the specific needs of each vehicle manufacturer. The nature of the engagement is that we have the standardized technologies that we’ve developed in-house at what are called the battery cell and the battery module level. The cell we have already talked about as the individual building blocks of the battery system. And then these are packaged, typically maybe you have 30 to 60 of these cells in a brick and that brick is the battery module, and then you have maybe 10 of these bricks or 20 of these bricks to make up a full battery system.

That’;s the hierarchy of packaging. What we have internally is a pretty standardized battery cell and a pretty standardized battery module technology because every customer roughly needs the same kinds of capabilities from a cell and a module. However, where they differ is at the full system level, because at the system level level is where you’re then configuring the dimensions of your battery system for a specific aircraft, the electrical voltage and current and configuration for the specific aircraft, how you interface in terms of cooling systems, how you interface in terms of safety systems and communications.

That level of interface at the system level is customized on a per vehicle level. Our development agreement entails really delivering our standardized cell and module technology and then working together to create that full pack solution customized for each customer.

Because the certification of a battery pack, would it be separate from the certification of the aircraft itself? Is there a specific certification process for battery packs for aircraft?

There are definitely strong regulatory requirements at the battery systems level, particularly in terms of thermal runaway resistance. If you have a battery cell that catches on fire, the FAA forces you to really run this test and then see what happens to your battery system and ensure the system can keep functioning well even if you have multiple cells going into thermal runaway. There are pretty significant regulatory requirements that we definitely need to meet as a battery provider. Ultimately, the type certificate happens at the aircraft level. 

There isn’t a type certificate for a battery system by itself. It happens at the aircraft level, but you need to meet the battery regulations regardless to then ultimately get type certificate for your aircraft.

Let’s look into the future. Now we are talking about the 400, 405 watt hour per kilogram at cell level. What prospectives are there in the near future? What would you say would be the progression of this battery technology, let’s say in the next 10 years in terms of energy density? What’s realistic?

Again, if you look at technology pathways, you can talk about the cell technology as well as the systems level technology and also the energy densities that come at both cell and systems level. I think the reality is that by the end of the decade, by 2030, we’ll probably see cells at about 500 watt hours per kilogram. 

If you look at the historical progression of energy densities in the battery world, it is roughly about three to 5% increase per year. Projecting that forward another seven years, if we get to 400 to 500 watt hours per kilogram, that’s already significantly faster than what history would indicate, but I think it is achievable because fundamentally, once you integrate a lithium metal technology, that is the energy density range that you are able to achieve.

It’s about four to 500 at the cell level. At the systems level, this translates into roughly 300 to 350 watt hours per kilogram at the systems level, maybe upwards of almost 400 at the systems level. We have a pretty clear pathway with the next generation of our product that will be coming out in the next year or two to get to 350 at the systems level, which would be a dramatic leap even beyond where we currently are today. That’s based on improved packaging efficiencies as well as cell level improvements to increase cell level specific energy. You also see a lot of academic developments recently that are talking about much higher energy densities, getting upwards of 800 or 1000 watt hours per kilogram at the cell level.

Yeah. I wanted to ask you about that. I think there was also a research paper in China that just made the rounds because I think it’s only at a theoretical level, it doesn’t exist as a prototype, but I saw some people in the battery space getting very excited about that paper that came out I think one month ago or something like that.

Yes. There are always, I think plenty of academic publications going on with I would say a lot of hype as well. We should be cautious about how to interpret these academic publications because an academic announcing that theoretically a chemistry can get to six or 700 watt hours per kilogram is still potentially multiple decades away removed from the actual commercialization of that technology, if it even pans out. 

The reality is seeing a proof of concept in the academic lab is at the very, very early stage of that development and innovation funnel and process. There are chemistries that can theoretically get upwards of 800 to 1000 watt hours per kilogram, but again, if you demonstrated it in the lab today, you could already write a paper saying, oh, I’ve achieved 800 or 1000 watt hours per kilogram. But the challenge is how do you make that a practical product in terms of actually making it cycle?

A lot of these are single use or only cycle of very few times and are highly unstable chemistries. How do you then manufacture it? Because typically, these chemistries are so different from lithium ion batteries that the entire manufacturing process also changes substantially. How do you also finance it all the way until it gets to commercialization? Now, this is a process where especially if you’re reinventing the manufacturing process, you need literally billions of dollars to get to the point of being competitive with the lithium ion industry from a manufacturing cost and scale perspective.

When you look at all these factors in combination, the reality is that batteries with energy densities of well above 500, if you talk about seven to 800, are probably more in the 2035 to 2040 timeframe when you’re looking at commercialization timelines in reality. This will still be impactful for the aviation industry because it is one of the industries that will benefit the most from these very high energy densities and where you can really start to imagine much broader deployment of electric flight, which is extremely exciting. But we also have to be, I think, reasonable in terms of expectations on how fast batteries will improve because it is the kind of process that is slow and steady and takes significant investment and patience to really get something to market.

You touch upon two topics. One is the topic of the cycles that you can do with your battery. I think the previous iteration of the battery was quantified at around six or 700 cycles. 

Yes, that's correct. I think 670.

Okay. What about the new one?
We are currently running, those tests were done previously in a smaller cell, so when we get to the amp-hours, that was a five amp hour cell, whereas our commercial product is a 20 amp hour cell. The chemistry hasn't changed from that version to what we're now producing in the larger commercial format. We have not yet changed the chemistry. it's more a change in terms of the cell design to get to the high performance commercial format. 

We expect cycle life to be pretty similar in the six to 700 range compared to our five amp hour samples. we're running updated independent testing that will come out later this year with our commercial cell, but that's still the current generation commercial cell.

As we look towards our next generation chemistry, which will come out later next year, I would expect getting upwards perhaps 800 plus cycles by end of next year.

What about the materials? Is there any, Let's say scarcity of materials we should take into account here or do you anticipate any issues with the sourcing of materials? I don’t know if there's any rare minerals or something like that involved in the manufacturing process.

In our cell chemistry, there are no rare materials that are unique compared to a lithium ion cell. The lithium ion industry in general has a lot of sourcing stress in terms of nickel and cobalt in particular as well as lithium, to some extent, these days. But that's because people are building so many gigafactories around the world that the demand for these minerals is outstripping the current mining capacity. 

The mining capacity has to catch up, which takes some amount of time. There is some shortage of materials, but nothing that is unique to our cell chemistry. We have I think a fairly friendly design from that perspective. Ultimately, especially for the aviation industry, I think it's not an area that will be of as much concern because the volumes of the aviation industry are dramatically smaller than the volumes in the automotive world. It really will be the automotive players for the foreseeable that will be in really the core of I think competing for scarce battery materials.

What happens next? You are based in California in the Bay Area. you're planning to build industrial scale factory there, or are you planning to produce this at one of Northvolt’s gigafactories? what's the plan now for, Let's say the industrial production of your batteries?

We are still looking at different site selection opportunities for our factories. The first factory that we will build will still be quite small by automotive battery industry standards. If you look at maybe needing to supply upwards of a few thousand aircraft per year, this is a pretty large volume from an aviation perspective, but still a very, very small factory by battery industry standards. We think that first factory could well be based in California because it has the advantage of having a proximity toward development facilities and allows us to develop and scale up more efficiently and faster. Or we could also look at opportunities in other geographies. Long term, as we get to much larger scale and perhaps we're serving tens of thousands of aircraft per year, and this might be 2030 or even beyond, that's when we would really look to integrate into a Northvolt factory, when it gets to comparable scale for what Northvolt also manufactures. But we think that it will take some time for the aviation industry to scale to that volume.

Because in terms of production volumes, you mentioned a thousand aircraft or tens of thousands of aircraft, but I'm assuming that each aircraft will need several batteries if it's used in a very intensive way because of the limitation and the number of cycles.  What sort of volumes production capacity are we talking about here?

That's correct. Depending on the utilization of the aircraft, you might be looking at swapping out batteries roughly every one year or so. We also have taken that into our volume forecast assumptions.

But even with all of that I think being considered, the reality is that I think many people don’t expect the electric aircraft industry to scale enormously in the next few years because of challenges with certification and timelines to get these through to market in a mature fashion. If you look at the battery volumes, we have what are called gigawatt hours. Gigawatt hours is a billion watt hours, or maybe a better way to envision this is a Tesla Model S is a hundred kilowatt-hours. 

A gigawatt hour is I think 10,000 Model S, for example, worth of batteries. An electric aircraft maybe has a battery two to three times bigger for, Let's say a four-passenger.

Let's say several thousand electric aircraft per gigawatt hour. A Northvolt factory, typically 60 gigawatt hours is a full-fledged Northvolt factory. you're talking about almost a million cars; worth of batteries coming out of that facility each year or easily still several hundred thousand aircraft per year, which is an enormous volume by any kind of aviation industry volume concept. Even if you look at replacement volumes and you look at the fact that the batteries are bigger, it will still be substantially smaller than a single Northvolt factory in terms of global demand, at least I think through 2030 or beyond.  That's why we expect still volumes to be in the maybe one to several gigawatt hour volumes by 2030 is our rough estimate based on our view of aircraft scale assumptions.

What's going to happen with all the discarded batteries? Is there a plan to recycle them or is it possible to recycle them? what's going to happen with all that material that's going to be discarded?

It's a great question. I think that this is an area that the aviation industry has not really looked at with real effort yet. Most companies, I think reasonably, are still trying to raise funding, trying to get through their flight test campaign and get through certification. they're not yet thinking about the full life cycle considerations for batteries in particular, because batteries will be the single biggest OpEx driver, likely, or one of the biggest OpEx drivers for electric aircraft. They will have to go through this regular maintenance cycle every year where the batteries have to be replaced. And then you also have to figure out what to do with the batteries at end of life, whether you're finding a second home for them in another application or if you're recycling them.

This is an area where I believe the aviation industry really needs to leverage the broader automotive battery industry, where a lot of these capabilities out of necessity have already been developed and are probably a decade or more ahead of the aviation industry in terms of how those needs are developing.

With a vertically integrated company like Northvolt, this is where we see the ability. Because they're integrated from raw material sourcing all the way through to cell and systems manufacturing and recycling, that the company can really deliver complementary capabilities throughout that life cycle of the battery. We are planning to build out a much more complete end-to-end solution for our customers, not just shipping the batteries, but also really taking care of the batteries once the customers are done with it and ensuring that it's really accommodated for the full life cycle.

In terms of timeframe, do you have a goal to go into industrial production?

Yes. We intend to go into industrial production roughly in sync with our aviation customers or maybe a little bit earlier because we have some other customers that have need for batteries that don’;t need type certification through an aircraft. We expect a first industrial production in either 2025 or 2026.

Very good. People that wish to learn more about the research you guys doing, product development, where would you send them to? What website, social media channels, etc?

Yes. Our website, cuberg.net, is a great start. We have under there a news section that refers to a lot of our press releases and blog posts and also media coverage. That is a good centralized resource. And then in addition, we are reasonably active on LinkedIn, so we’ll usually post major announcements are covered on our LinkedIn.

Excellent. I’m going to be adding some notes to the show notes so that people can find it easily together with the previous interview we had two years ago so that people can get the full picture about what you guys are doing. I think there’s lots of people out there that are hoping you guys really succeed, because that that’s going to open lots of opportunities for electric aviation to make progress, which I think is something we all need.

Absolutely.

Thank you so much, Richard, for your time today.

Wonderful. It was a pleasure to speak with you again. Thank you.

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