Landing a successful electric aircraft program – The Battery Podcast S02E02 – Transcript
The avenues for electric aircraft are many, from point to point delivery services all the way to commercial aircraft. But making each path a possibility requires the right tools and a fresh mindset on development. Listen in to part two of our discussion with Todd Tuthill, or read through the whole transcript below.
Nick Finberg
It’s time for episode two of the new season of the Battery Podcast from Siemens Digital Industries. I’m your moderator Nick Finberg, with our host and expert on the battery industry – Puneet Sinha. We are back to finish up our conversation with the VP of Aerospace, Defense, and Marine Industries here at Siemens Digital Industries Software – Todd Tuthill. If you missed part one, we covered the emergence of battery and aerospace industry cooperation for the creation of EVTOLs. Let’s dive into the design process and safety considerations of electrifying the aerospace industry.
In part one, we talked a little bit about the challenge of charging heated batteries and the durability of these cells in high-stress applications. I’m curious if new cell architectures, like solid-state could help because there is not a semi-aqueous solution that can contract, expand, and impregnate the more solid features of a cell.
Puneet Sinha
So I will take this question nick um so solid state battery definitely holds a lot of promise for many reasons one is uh solid state batteries it can offer a lot higher energy density to battery that that again unlocks batteries as a for mainstream air transportation starting with evtol but also the thing that you said there are the e because the electrolyte in there is not liquid and is is free of some of those volatile contents it can potentially offer and i am underlining potentially it can potentially offer more robustness from lifespan and longevity perspective and safety perspective. The reason i said potentially is there is still a lot of work to be done. Companies are across the ecosystem, large enterprises who are doing battery manufacturing and engineering for many, many years to the new start-up, all of them are investing their efforts to improve the technology, solid-state battery technology to make it ready for commercialization. And that is not just the what materials and design but also how to take the cost out from manufacturing perspective so that those batteries are a lot more cost-effectively viable. So is solid-state an answer? It definitely holds the promise, but I would say there is still a lot of work to be done. Todd, are you seeing something more or some of those conversations when you talk to EVtol companies?
Todd Tuthill
I haven’t heard many people talking about solid-state batteries yet, but I think you mentioned some of the issues around solid-state batteries. We haven’t talked about safety yet, but I assume we are going to go to safety. When I think about the conservative nature of aerospace, especially aerospace when it comes to paying customers, where you are putting civilians, paying civilians in there, there is a very conservative approach to critical technologies like propulsion and energy in the use in aerospace. So I think you are going to see them in cars long before you will ever see them in aircraft, is what I would say.
Puneet Sinha
And I agree. I think, again, my impression, and again, it is not a judgment on how the battery industry at large is looking at it, but everything that I am seeing, it is highly likely that solid-state batteries may first come in more of a consumer electronics applications, then to the cars, and then to the more safety-critical system like aircrafts. But that is just my impression. We’ll see if there are some major breakthroughs happen that can change the curve of this commercialization.
Todd Tuthill
Yeah, and I completely agree, Puneet. I think that’s exactly right.
Nick Finberg
All right, well, lets dive further into safety then. So it’s definitely a critical component for aerospace and batteries with volatile chemical compounds as well as some of the altered requirements compared to internal combustion engines. But I’m curious, how is this shift in risk assessments changing the safety systems included in these aircraft?
Todd Tuthill
Well, I guess I’ll start there, and we’ll talk about that. We’ll talk about aircraft architecture at a high level. Again, one of the big differences, if you think about operating an electric car in an aircraft, is the failure state. And again, if I’m driving down the highway, unless it’s very cold and I’m stranded and my engine dies, I’m going to pull off the side of the road. I can walk outside of my car and I’m okay. I may have to be rescued. Somebody’s got to pick me up. I’m having a bad day, but I survive. If I’m 4,000 feet above Manhattan, and all of a sudden the batteries on my air taxi stop, it’s a really, really bad day. And I’m probably not going to survive the landing, and the people that I happen to hit down on the ground aren’t either. So that drives a whole lot of design decisions when it comes to powering an aircraft with batteries. It’s this idea of redundancy. I can’t just have one set of batteries that could fail. I can’t just have one wire that connects the battery to all of the rotors. I can’t just have one rotor necessarily that could fail. I’ve got to have all those things in place to make this work. One of the other issues, we alluded to it earlier, is landing with spare capacity. If you think about a fossil-fueled powered aircraft, it gets lighter as I burn the fuel. And a battery, as I burn the power out of a battery, it doesn’t get lighter. It weighs just as much when it lands as it did when it took off. And you’re going to… And you don’t land… I can’t land an aircraft safely with little power left. I’ve got to have some reserve. We’re probably looking at 10% to 20% spare power in those batteries every time I land. And that becomes an issue of safety and redundancy, too, to think about all those things, which just compounds the problem even more that I’m landing with 20% power on my battery every time. It just reduces my range and reduces my ability to be profitable. But it’s absolutely necessary when it comes to… safety. And then you alluded to it about the chemical nature of a battery. You know, a thermal runaway in a fire in an air taxi, that’s devastating, too. Something that just can’t ever happen. And, of course, we go back to, well, how do you cause a thermal runaway? Well, one of the worst ways is to charge it improperly and charge it hot, which we talked about, you know, some of the issues. So there’s all kinds of interesting technological and engineering challenges when it comes to providing for… safe use of electric power with a battery in an aircraft. So there’s all kinds of… And we just kind of touched on some of them. And I think Puneet can probably go into some more details about what it’s going to take to safely certify and use commercial aircraft with batteries.
Puneet Sinha
Yeah, everything Todd already said, I fully agree. You know, for the electric aircraft, EVTOL, the safety requirements are much more stringent than they need to be for a passenger car, for all the reasons you mentioned. And that means how it is as much about how companies are monitoring the behavior of the battery while it is in operation as much as the right design and right manufacturing. Those things are absolutely critical. They need to be designed correctly. They need to be manufactured correctly without, you know, with a very high level of quality. But that alone is not good enough. There is, based on, let’s say, the last 15, 20 years of industry working with high-voltage battery in electric vehicle systems, it is clear that safety is not assured just because you have safe chemistries or safe materials and you have designed it, you know, very well and you’ve manufactured it very well. How it is being operated, how accurately you can monitor the battery is equally important. So then if you look at it from the criticality of safety and that comes with any electric, any aircraft, there are going to be a lot more stringent requirement on how accurately you can monitor battery. And I’m going to take three examples. One is if you look at your laptop, we all have experienced that some year or two into our usage of laptop, when the laptop says, “Okay, you have 60%, 80% of battery,” sometimes it goes from 80% to 5% in a matter of minutes. And one reason for that is how accurately that, you know, state of charge is being predicted. Electric car, a lot more accuracy in there. There a lot of the focus on, if I think from electric cars perspective, electrical perspective is state of charge, state of health. Those are the two very big criteria for any battery management system and the algorithm and software that come with it need to monitor. Now if you come to eVTOL, for all the things that we have talked about, of course it is about very accurately measuring and telling what is this, how much charge is left, it needs to be very accurate. You need to have very good measure of state of health. But then state of power, state of power is going to be a critical criteria that needs to be measured and monitored very accurately for all the cells in a battery pack. It is not just one cell. There are thousands of cells or hundreds of cells for each of that. Because as Todd said, when the aircraft has to land, FAA will require you need a certain amount of power left in the aircraft or air taxi while it lands. How can you measure and make sure that it is there and then the landing can be safe? So a lot of those requirements that come with any aircraft will be critical for battery industry to understand and account for them not only while at the material level or the cell and pack level, but also how those batteries are operated in this larger high voltage EVTOL system. And that’s where I tied back to very first point in the very beginning Todd mentioned. That is he said that when he talks with a lot of electric aircraft companies, he mentioned a lot of them are looking to build, make their own batteries. Why is that? Think of that. It’s not about just cell. It’s also about having tremendous control over how each cell is being measured and monitored and where they’re going to put it. So all of those things become very critical for an EVTOL company, for an air taxi company to have a strong expertise in which goes beyond just the hardware. It also encompasses the software and control algorithms and all the cybersecurity and software-based product development it comes with.
Nick Finberg
Is there something in the aerospace and battery Venn diagram piece that really captures either of your imaginations that we haven’t covered yet? I know, Todd, you talked a little bit about the Jetsons and delivery aircraft, but what’s something else that’s super interesting to you that you might see in the next few years?
Todd Tuthill
So we talked a lot about air taxis in the limited range of an air taxi, 80 to 100 miles right now, maybe 200, 250 if we can double the energy density. But let’s talk about what it’s going to take to electrify regional aircraft. Or longer range transport aircraft. And as Puneet said, there’s no foreseeable battery technology that he’s aware of or I’m aware of that’s going to let us fly across an ocean. It’s just not there. And if we think about this desire to decarbonize aviation, it’s going to take something more than batteries. And there’s this whole range of things called hybrid electric, where we’re talking about combining batteries and hydrogen power. Or I’ve even… I’ve even heard people talk about… I’ve talked about these things called small modular reactors, which I think right now you’d say, gee, Todd, you’re insane. You’d put a nuclear reactor on an aircraft.
Todd Tuthill
I don’t know that we’re ready to do that in the next couple of years, but those are the kinds of innovations it’s going to take to truly decarbonize aviation. And while it might not just be completely a battery providing all the power, certainly batteries are going to be a key part of the redundant system and the operation of those aircraft in combination with other kinds of technologies it’s going to take for us to truly get hydrocarbons out of aerospace. And that’s interesting to me and what that’s going to look like in five or ten years and the kinds of innovations we’re going to come up with.
Puneet Sinha
And from my perspective, again, I agree with Todd that, you know, when air transportation… It’s not just about air taxis. Of course, that is the first dimension or first area where electrification of aircraft systems can be exercised given all the technological boundary conditions and limitations we have. And it does address one of the limiting factors in our congested cities and the transportation it comes with. But the whole industry. Both battery suppliers but also aircraft companies, they are looking at what will it take to expand from eVTOL to regional transportation to transocean air transportation. And I agree with Todd that at least at this time, there is no battery technology that is on horizon that can ensure a transocean, air transportation. So it will definitely be some sort of hybrid propulsion is more likely to achieve that. Battery will have a key role to play, but that’s where it needs to pair with another energy system, be it whether it’s a hydrogen fuel cells, whether it’s hydrogen combustion, or as Todd said, some kind of a small nuclear reactor. Those things are still to be explored. But everything that we talked about, about battery requirement, how that needs to be accounted for while designing battery, how they need to be integrated in a system of aircraft and how they need to be managed while operation. They all, all those things apply to even large systems. Hence, I am looking forward to, how companies learn and create new best practices of working with batteries in air taxis. And the experience and the learning that come out of it will definitely help to expand the electrification in larger aircraft systems.
Nick Finberg
So our digital software solutions are heavily leveraged across aerospace. And battery is growing quite a bit. How are those solutions kind of helping the pursuit to build and commercialize battery-powered aircraft for sustainable aviation? What are some of the kind of interesting workflows that you’re seeing?
Todd Tuthill
First thing I think of, Nick, is I try to put myself in the place of this CEO or CTO of one of these air taxi OEMs. And they’re going to a venture capitalist. They’re saying, “Please invest in my company. It’s worth the several hundred million, tens of millions you want to invest.” And the venture capitalist says, “Okay, prove it.” And if you think about all the problems that they’re faced with, that they’re up against in terms of battery technology and regulatory issues, they’ve really got to have a… It’s got to be more than just a trust me. It’s got to be, “I’ve run detailed simulation. I’ve done multiple types of simulation with my power system, with my aerodynamics, with All things around air traffic control, with safety. I’ve done all of these studies. And here’s the data I can show you that if I do these things in this way, this is a profitable venture. And it really, to me, a lot of these companies, they don’t have the capacity or the option to build it and see if it works and put it into some kind of an operation. They can’t build it physically. They need to build it digitally first. And that’s really one of the key things that digital transformation allows them. They can make a lot of these decisions. They can optimize their designs, all aspects of their designs, from the power system to the aerodynamics to the traffic flow to how do I stick this vertiport thing on top of a parking garage and where do I put it? How do I connect it to the normal air traffic system? You can do all that digitally now and really simulate that and make a whole lot of mistakes digitally before you build it physically and then take that data to your investors or to your potential customers and say, here’s how you can use this technology to be profitable. And it’s allowing us to do things in ways that just a few years ago we didn’t have the ability to do. And that’s all due to digital transformation.
Puneet Sinha
Yes. Just to echo that point, if you look at both those industries, aerospace industries and battery industries, it’s safe to say that Siemens is preferred technology solution provider for both those industries. And when I talk to CEOs, when Todd talked to CEOs, and when he and I were together last week, and over drinks and dinner when we talk about battery-powered aircraft systems, or aircrafts in general or batteries in general, there is a common theme of what executives of these companies are looking at. And if I put it in one sentence, it comes down to how can these companies make — explore new concepts, new what-if scenarios from a system level to material level, from aircraft system to battery pack design to the kind of material they need to work with and what kind of software they need to work with, how they can explore all of that. Digitally. And accelerate their certification system, more leveraging more virtual verification and whatnot. But then manifest all of those new innovation, new designs into manufacturing. And do it in a way that there is a continuous loop of as the system go out in real world and they are operated, whatever the learnings from usage profiles and how — how overall aircraft, how the battery they are being operated and measured their performance, how that information can be fed back that can help companies to improve the design and manufacturing of next generation of those systems. And Siemens, we excel and have leadership in bringing that digital and real work together with our digital twin technology, with automation technology that we have in our automation technology — automation business unit. But also, and very importantly, with generative AI and data intelligence. That sits on top of it to extract the right level of intelligence. And that’s, according to me, is the key how both these industries are getting benefited by Siemens and as the two industries come together in the pursuit of decarbonizing air travel. And the new challenges and new opportunities that will open up, I’m sure with our — this core differentiation that Siemens brings will be the key to unleash the new possibilities.
Nick Finberg
Thank you both for this great conversation and thanks to the audience for tuning in to the first discussion on season two of the Battery Podcast. We have some great conversations planned and we hope you continue to find these discussions valuable in understanding and evolving the battery industry. For more information make sure to look through our previous episodes or navigate to our website siemens.com/battery. See you next time.
