Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: You don't have years to test the technology and the products are changing so fast. You want to get those answers very quickly.
[00:00:13] Speaker B: Hello everyone and welcome to the Robot Industry Podcast.
I'm here at the Emerging Technologies in Automation and Mobility Transformation with Invest Windsor Essex, and with me today is Matt Hortop and he is with avl. Matt, welcome to the podcast.
[00:00:30] Speaker A: Thank you.
[00:00:31] Speaker B: And Matt, how did you get into this industry?
[00:00:34] Speaker A: In the industry? So I've been doing electrification of vehicles since the 1900s, I like to say, at large automotive companies and small automotive companies, and then eventually in the last eight years at avl.
[00:00:47] Speaker B: And AVL is a battery technology company with engineering, simulation and testing solutions, among
[00:00:53] Speaker A: other aspects of powertrain. We're focused really on powertrains and battery has become a very large portion of that in the last few years.
And that's where we bring in everything from testing solutions to engineering the products and stuff for our customers.
[00:01:08] Speaker B: And Matt, how long have you been with avl?
[00:01:10] Speaker A: I've been eight years, almost eight years on the nose today.
[00:01:13] Speaker B: And you're an engineer?
[00:01:15] Speaker A: I am an engineer.
[00:01:15] Speaker B: That's your background and what do you do?
[00:01:21] Speaker A: So I work with our, I'm on the sales side and I work with all our customers and our customers. AVL's customers are worldwide. Pretty much everybody who does some sort of powertrain development, whether that's engines, whether that's electric vehicles, it could be aircraft, snowmobiles, everyone along that line, as well as stationary storage, stationary generation.
So almost everyone on the planet that does touches that somehow is involved with us.
[00:01:50] Speaker B: So what, you know, with batteries, I've always been interested in testing batteries and the ones I'm used to are like alkaline or lithium now batteries. And you do these little tests at home to see how long, how much power you have in batteries. But your technologies go far beyond these ones. And what are some of the things that you have right now that you might be, if I was an automotive oem, I might be interested in?
[00:02:14] Speaker A: So like, like you brought up, I've been doing this for 30 years. When I started, it was lead acid batteries. That was, that's what was powering our electric cars. The first, the first EV or first hybrid plug in hybrid we, we call it today, I built was lead acid and then went nickel metal hydride and finally the lead, the lithium ion as a family that we settled on for the last 15 years.
But even those are greatly diverging into different chemistries as they join. And each chemistry has its pros and cons for every application Whether it's robotics, whether it's vehicles, even different vehicles have different reasons to pick different chemistries. And that's what all our customers are really talking about right now. A, how do I pick the right chemistry? B, how do I test these batteries, make certain they do what I'm expecting them to do? They're going to live as long as I think they're going to live and our customers will be happy about them. And then to do all that very, very rapidly. A lot of the historically these battery tests, these lifetime calendar tests, they're years of testing. You don't have years of tests. The technology and the products are changing so fast, you want to get those answers very quickly. So we, along with our customers, we've been supporting our customers doing this, A suite of tools from simulation in, through actual testing of the batteries, destructive tests and everything like that to speed this up, to get faster answers for your questions by your technology, left or right, high or low, or even just developing something new that no one's seen before.
[00:03:45] Speaker B: So you've got very different calendars, right? Because if I'm taking years maybe to develop a new battery and you taking years to develop a new test, well, no, that can't work.
[00:03:53] Speaker A: Right.
[00:03:53] Speaker B: You've got to be very, very fast. So what are some of the things that you do? Do you do a lot of pops, a lot of experiments, a lot of working with your customers before they, while they're developing their packaging.
[00:04:04] Speaker A: So we're part of our engineering services site will help you anywhere along that route, anywhere where you're feeling like you have a gap or you just need some guidance along that way to doing a whole pack for you design or cell testing or cell evaluation. So it's really working with our customers to figure out where exactly is, are they trying to do something new? And maybe they want some of our support because we have a great wealth of knowledge given that we're working with everyone or they're looking for just someone else, some other hands to come in and do it for you. And then in the space of the cell testing side, do you need to generate new testing plans? Like I said, these are years. How do I get those down to months?
How do I effectively.
This is not low cost equipment to build to buy this stuff, but how do I effectively use it? So I'm getting that uptime up faster and more and more time in the test lab using that test equipment and getting those answers faster. And how do I do it without taking all my great engineers and having them just simply bolting things together. I want those engineers innovating on my product. I want them making the next best thing that makes the customer say I need to buy that car, I need to buy that whatever. Instead of just oh, it's the same as. Same as. Because you didn't take the time to innovate.
[00:05:25] Speaker B: Matt, can you tell us a little bit about AVL?
[00:05:27] Speaker A: So AVL is a, we are 12,000 person company based out of Graz, Austria.
We work with and we're focused on powertrains worldwide. Powertrains, whether it's stationary generation to vehicles, to airplanes. We're working a lot with electric VTOL people.
Everyone that's electrifying now.
And we work with our customers to do this. We don't actually produce powertrains, we don't actually produce equipment or engines or inverters. We do produce our own equipment to do that testing. But in terms of working with our customers, they are still all producing their products with their DNA and we just support them in doing that, making them brand differentiate or do the technology development that they really are looking to do.
[00:06:15] Speaker B: So, so what are some of the typical questions you get? Because I can imagine like just going through my mind, I'm like what's the cycle time of a battery test? And like what are some of those early questions you get?
[00:06:24] Speaker A: Oh, we'll get them all. Everything from like people will come in and they know, they know or they think they know their test plan. They know exactly what they need to do. Hey, we just need this equipment. Let's start walking through that. A lot of times we'll sit there and start asking questions back. Have you thought about, you know, it could be something as, as simple as. Simple is not the right word but something as apparent as safety that someone's forgotten about their whole plan. So we'll work with them in developing that safety plan. Other people come in and are looking at, well, what are the trends? What are the most recent trends? What are happening with iron phosphate is a big thing to discuss right now. How's that supply chain looking? Where are the pitfalls that we're not expecting there? Given that I'm coming from say nickel based thing into an iron phosphate, what are the different testing that's going to, that's going to uncover problems where maybe I didn't need to do the testing with one brand of iron phosphor with one family battery. Now I need to really focus in a different direction.
And we get that whole range of questions.
Sometimes we don't get any questions and we just try to ask the questions, to get it out of them, to get down into those details that we're seeing problems come up. But we'll get the people that are really fun to work with will just ask questions and questions and questions and dig and dig and dig on us.
[00:07:41] Speaker B: You must know a lot and sign a lot of non disclosure agreements every day.
[00:07:45] Speaker A: Yep. Yes. Lots of NDAs. Yeah.
[00:07:47] Speaker B: What's a typical test system look like and where do you make it?
[00:07:52] Speaker A: So let me start with the second question first. We're making our products. We have a number of centers around the world for battery testing. And it really depends on whether you're testing the cell itself or you're starting to put that together into a module size device and then you get to a full pack. So you're really kind of looking in a voltage range. A single cell is 4 volts more or less. A module can be anywhere from 20 to 100, 200 volts and a pack will go up into thousand volts.
And they're different power levels and they're different devices. So we have different centers around the world that are focusing on those different basically those different use cases. And so then when you go back and you take that and you put it into a lab or I need to set up a lab, it really comes down to what are you doing?
Are you just. Not just, but are you a cell manufacturer? Are you a cell evaluator? You only need that one side of it. If you're doing packs and only packs, you only need that other side of it. But if you're say an automotive oem, you probably have a span that goes all the way from research based little tiny coin cells all the way up to giant packs. And that's a design that's not just the different equipment you need and the different tests you need, but you need to start thinking of the workflow. You have these giant labs. It's not easy to move 1,000, 2,000 pound battery packs around. You need to think about how a forklift fits through a door. Like all these things that you're just not a lot of people don't see in the first pass. But once you start setting up large labs for them, you start learning even how a door swings will change whether you're getting good usage out of your battery lab or not. So these are all these little things
[00:09:29] Speaker B: when you talk about batteries. I mean we're all assuming cars here and you mentioned airplanes.
[00:09:34] Speaker A: EVTOLs. EVTOL stationary. Stationary storage is a huge. Micro grids is a very big thing. You can get it down into anything in robots and drones. Drones is a huge thing, although they tend to be smaller in space than our bigger equipment, but they're still the same cells. So we'll work with our. We have customers in the drone space and battery cycling. Yeah.
[00:09:55] Speaker B: So your customers are like in every industry right now.
[00:09:58] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:09:58] Speaker B: So you must be super busy.
[00:10:00] Speaker A: Very, very. Yeah.
[00:10:02] Speaker B: What is the ROI of a test system? And I know this might be an unfair question, but if I was a, if I was buying a tester, I'm like, hey, what is our roi? Or is it. It's like there's no such thing.
[00:10:14] Speaker A: That's a good question.
So if you're just, if you're, if you need something, you need to get a proof of concept out the door. You know, you buy your test, you buy your cells from a manufacturer and you hope that that data sheet is right. You've got some stuff going out the door. You don't need a test system. You will need it. When you start shipping product. And you want to make certain you, you've, you're. You're getting the most effective cost in your device. And so you'll start buying cell cyclers at a certain point. I'm just. As an, as an example, cell cycling, you can take this to pack cycling as well. You'll start buying that equipment at a certain point. That's just a minimum investment. You sort of, you need, you need to do these tests.
You need to find a way of proving out your designs and making certain that it's your customers. You don't want your customers being your test field.
You want your own test field. Then when you start saying, I want to get deeper and deeper, I want to get more specific on these discussions. I have some new creative ideas. Then you start really maybe thinking about ROI to add additional cyclers to do these sort of R and D things, to start adding automation systems to try to pack more time or more testing into the same equipment that you got.
That's a really long way of saying, I don't know what the ROI is on a test system, but it's really gonna balance out on where your priorities are. Is it just getting something out the door and tested before your customers test it, or is it you're trying to squeeze that much more innovation out of your team all along the path?
[00:11:48] Speaker B: When I have a certain tak time or a certain cycle time on a battery test, kind of the only way to shorten my time is to buy additional test units. Is that correct?
[00:11:59] Speaker A: Yes. Right. Unless you can get Creative in those test procedures and saying, okay, this test used to take six months because I just did these cycles. But really let's take that apart now. Let's say what are the things about these cycles that I'm interested in and how they're affecting the battery cell? So you can maybe change the test a little bit and just focus on.
It's hard to give an example here on radio without a whiteboard. But how do I take that six months down and down to a one month test where I'm just focusing on aspect A of the battery thing and I take that same six month thing and I cut it down to one test, one month test that it focuses on aspect B. So now I can get very detailed information for these different failure modes or these different performance characteristics. But I've shortened it overall and now I also have the ability to put it in parallel. So you could use the same test asset. You don't have to invest into two test cyclers, but you're still doing it shorter one after the other. Or you invest in a different cycler and you save yourself even a further month of your development time.
[00:13:03] Speaker B: Matt, you must save a lot of your OEM customers a lot of money by not making a bad decision.
[00:13:10] Speaker A: I would hope so. I mean, that's the goal.
[00:13:12] Speaker B: So how does having maybe better testers help some of the innovators in the industry create. Create better products or go after better batteries?
[00:13:23] Speaker A: That's a good question, right? Cause some testers, you are gonna run some tests, you don't really care, they're really high quality. But higher performance cell testing gives you that opportunity to minimize again, going back to minimizing time, minimizing money, maximizing your innovation time, your time to innovate on new concepts in that space.
[00:13:43] Speaker B: I keep thinking about buying products, electrical products that come with a battery and then being maybe disappointed because the battery
[00:13:53] Speaker A: fails early or has some other things. I recently bought an electric chainsaw. Love it, it's great.
Battery wants to overheat. And I'm sitting here thinking all the ways, if they just let me at the data, I could work around this and kind of adjust my working to get through this without letting it overheat.
So there's all this low hanging fruit out there everywhere in the battery industry of how do you support your customers.
Yeah. And produce that better product. And you only do that by generating the data by getting that hands on time and then taking it back into the lab and figuring out how do I turn this into a feature, how do I turn this into a feature for my potential customers.
[00:14:35] Speaker B: Let's dig into that a little bit with the electric chainsaw because it's a perfect example, right. Of a customer who goes and buys a thing and wants to be a brand advocate and wants to buy more batteries. But you what, what could you have done if you had been on the battery testing solutions team?
[00:14:54] Speaker A: I. I'm not going to speak specifically for this battery design but more airflow would have been better for an air cooled battery. Right. But now there might be reasons why they chose not that. And chainsaw is a really dusty, dirty environment.
Air. Air is going to be. Air is going to be a mix. So I don't know all their details and I don't want to call them out for
[00:15:14] Speaker B: that. Could be a good fix. Right?
[00:15:15] Speaker A: Right. Maybe that's the fix. But they use it in other equipment as well.
And then also just giving me more feedback. If they had given me different feedback, if I could see the temperature changing, I would have done. I would have had maybe a different duty cycle on this while I'm powering it. Take more breaks or something along those lines. So just being able to have that give and take feedback for the customer as opposed to just being a dumb like alkaline. I stick in a battery and I run it till it's empty.
Maybe there's other ways to do it, especially when you get to these higher performing devices.
[00:15:48] Speaker B: I had one of the early Nikon cameras that had video on a 35 millimeter DLSR and it overheated after about five minutes. You couldn't take any more video because it just. Camera ran really hot.
[00:15:59] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:15:59] Speaker B: And so there's a really good example, right?
[00:16:01] Speaker A: Yeah, exactly. Yeah. It was just whether that was in a system engineering aspect. Someone didn't bring that in. Whether they're trying to reuse. I'm guessing they were probably trying to reuse a battery design from another non power hungry or long duration videos thing and they just hadn't yet gotten to the new device yet.
[00:16:19] Speaker B: The new chipset came out and I probably solved it. Yeah, of course I switched brands because
[00:16:25] Speaker A: of that or because.
[00:16:26] Speaker B: Well, that was just kind of. I think it was one in the back of my mind. But I went to another brand that certainly doesn't have that problem. But that was a bunch of years later.
[00:16:34] Speaker A: But you went to the other brand because it had better features as well for the price. Right. And that's about that. I keep going back to that innovation. Those people were innovating on more features.
[00:16:42] Speaker B: That's what brings you crap so one of the things that the chainsaw guys could have done is they could have done a bunch of tests using your electrical testers with and without the housing, say all of a sudden. Or take temperature tests along the way.
[00:16:54] Speaker A: Yeah, I'm going to.
I'm loathe to say what. To say what they should do because hopefully they did a lot of this stuff. They just. Whatever use case I'm in or whatever battery choices were made before weren't perfectly right for my use case in that thing. I still like the chainsaw. I'm not ragging on the chainsaw, but it just would have been better to have that feedback that I could control early on.
[00:17:15] Speaker B: Give it lots of rest.
[00:17:16] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:17:17] Speaker B: So I wonder sometimes who your customers are. Is it the quality department? Is it the brand department, like the marketing department? Is it the engineering department? Like, who do you deal with on a basis?
[00:17:28] Speaker A: It's the engineering department. Especially on cell cyclers. People are like, I need a cell cycler because here's a set of tests and the only way to get through this is to realistically is to cycle it. Or the pack cyclers is the same situation.
It's that engineering group. And they end up being. Now engineering is a broad thing. So it could be people doing R and D, coming up with the new technology, new concepts. It could be people just kind of working through a cooling design. They need to heat the cells and so they're testing the thermal, thermal heat transfer to the coolant. Or it could be people on the validation, the quality side, saying, I'm going to cycle these to make certain that my customers have a good product.
[00:18:04] Speaker B: So we've talked a lot about different chemistries and different packaging and such. Is there some battery technologies that you're very excited about because you have to kind of work ahead of the battery industry almost.
[00:18:14] Speaker A: We do. And so we always have to stay ahead of whether it's voltage or power ratings or the amount of energy someone's trying to put in a cell changes the amount of current that flows out of that and changes your cell cycle.
Is there anything that's on the horizon or coming quickly? I've been seeing looks super exciting. We've been seeing it over and over again for the last couple years. I'm waiting for one of these things to hit.
I think the transition, at least in the automotive to iron phosphate comes as a rationale that go back a couple years and everyone was trying to jam more and more range in their vehicle. Range, range, range. And I don't know if you drive an electric car but one of the things, one of the first things to go away once you're living with electric car is range anxiety I don't need to spend that money I don't need to put that in my thing so it's nice they can take some cost out of that now that they're getting the charge rates up faster so there's that nice transition and I think that's a really big enabler for getting more different types of electric vehicles more options in the field for electric vehicles if
[00:19:26] Speaker B: someone wants to get a hold of AVL or get a hold of you how can they do that?
[00:19:29] Speaker A: So AVL.com straight up that's the easiest way to do it we're here in North America in the Detroit area in Plymouth if you need to get a
[00:19:37] Speaker B: hold of us and I'll put some of that information in the show notes on the website Matt, thank you very much for taking a few minutes to me to chat with me thanks Jim thanks.
