Episode 242 - What is the Future of the Car?

Grayson Brulte:

Hello, I'm your host, Grayson Brulte. Welcome to another episode of SAE Tomorrow Today, a show about emerging technology and trends and mobility with leaders and innovators to make it all happen. On today's episode, we're absolutely honored to welcome Joerg Grotendorst, Senior Vice President, Corporate R& D, Magna International.

On today's episode, we'll discuss Magna's approach to the future of mobility. We hope you enjoy this episode. Joerg, welcome to the podcast. 

Joerg Grotendorst:

Thanks for having me. Happy to join the show today. 

 
Grayson Brulte: 

It's great to have you here. Magna does more things than you could probably count in my head for vehicles. You make parts, you do strategy, you make components, you do all sorts of wonderful things, which puts Magna At the core of the car.

Yeah. Obviously you have to think about the future of the car because all the parts and different business lines that you have in the vehicle, in your opinion Joerg, what is the future of the car? 

Joerg Grotendorst:

Oh, wow. That's a great question. There is not the one future of the car, we talk about different kinds of applications.

We talk about different continents, different countries, and different kinds of customers. But that's what makes this job so interesting. We talk about individual mobility; public mobility is already installed. We have trains. We have all the other devices to go. We have buses, but individual mobility means that customer can choice different kinds of cars, different kinds of vehicles, different kinds of transportation, and that's what it is about.

Grayson Brulte:

Do you see it from different continents, countries, cultures, perhaps the design of the vehicle changing or the interior of the vehicle changes because of local customs? 

Joerg Grotendorst:

Yeah, definitely. We have different kinds of interests we see right now, especially in Asia. Front running in terms of in-vehicle entertainment and vehicle connectivity, seamless integration of mobile devices, individual lightning systems, et cetera.

Whereas I would say the Western country, Europe is still a little bit more in sporty cars. We have in Germany still no, no speed limit on the ban. Yeah. And when we change over. To the Americas and look as well to Australia, the cars definitely are much larger, bigger. There are more kinds of transportation.

We have much more trucks, not really a problem of parking and stopping the vehicles as we see, for example, in Japan. So yes, we see a wide variety of future cars and not a single one. It would simply be boring if there is. One car is the future that everybody would work to. 

Grayson Brulte:

They don't want boring. Yeah. It's simple. Consumers don't want boring. If you look at the Asian markets, historically, Japan has been a very incredible engineering culture around electronics. And if you look at the APAC region, if you look at China today, and you look at the Beijing Auto Show, there was a common denominator of the Beijing Auto Show.

Everything was built around infotainment and the in-car experience from the Xiaomi car to the Xpeng car. It was all about the experience. Do you see that infotainment experience that we're seeing at the Beijing Auto Show and various Chinese auto manufacturers? Start to come West at some point that experience starts to come West.

Joerg Grotendorst:

If you look on the current markets of global vehicle players and manufacturers, there's a huge difference in what, especially what you mentioned in Beijing and what we see in APEC Asia right now. At the moment, the Chinese automakers are especially focused on the Chinese market. That's where we have a really high acceptance of in vehicle infotainment system, where we even have the infrastructure and where vehicles can be updated pretty fast.

Yeah. All the established players, yeah, they have a totally different approach. of vehicle designing. They try to design platforms where they then have derivatives of in the different kind of countries and areas all around the globe. This is of course much more complex because if you have a vehicle design that is Shell fit for the Western world, the Eastern world, different kind of body set you have on top.

Yeah. May this be a limousine, may this be a wagon or even a spider application. So that's totally different kind of vehicle design approach. And this is why we see right now in China a much higher speed than we see in the rest of the world, because at the moment they are dedicated to the Chinese market.

But yes, yeah. Once they have the experience and technology that they can provide, we do expect that Chinese OEMs will come over into the Western world. We see it right now. The first OEMs are talking about building vehicle factories in Hungary, for example, Mexico or whatever. And then they are approaching the Western world as well.

But That's the history and the way of learning they have to do, which on the other side, the global players already have. 

Grayson Brulte:

The common denominator that's going to connect us is going to be software. The software of the vehicles with the over the air updates is going to change from an infotainment standpoint, from a performance standpoint, from an autonomous standpoint, which raises a question.

When does the phone become the key? So you go in your vehicle, and I perhaps go in a similar vehicle, you might like a blue interior. I might like a white color interior with the lights. I might like To listen to classical music on Spotify, you might want to listen to rock music. When does the phone become the FOB?

So when you get in that vehicle, it's the Joergmobile, and when I get into the vehicle, it's the Graysonmobile. When are we going to get there? 

Joerg Grotendorst:

We are already almost there. First, vehicle approaching and unlocking or locking with a mobile device, that's standard, meanwhile. And yeah, good question.

You're asking if you talk about illumination, different kind of interior and even exterior. Yeah, if you have an idea or if you have a wish come to Magna, that's something that we do offer in our lightning division. Yeah, we are working on this. And to be honest, it's not a design that is directly given to the car as a styling design.

No, what we try to do now is a more luxury approach. Yeah. That for example, you have hidden lamps that we provide materials that fully cover the illumination. So you don't see it. Mazes be on the outside. You don't see a blinker anymore. You don't see, internal lightnings, LEDs, neither bulbs or whatever.

And yes, when you approach the car, suddenly you wonder that we have a shine through technology that then illuminates a car in your personal style and get the way you like it best. Yeah. And that's something. Which I think is it's really a nice styling feature. And yes, me personally, I do like it. And yes, I trimmed the vehicle to the style that I like, and sometimes I change it even while driving, depending on my mood or my attitude or the length of the journey or whatever.
Yeah. But that's something we definitely work on. 

Grayson Brulte:

Now I'm going to give you the Walt Disney phrase, plus it. And cause Magnet does, you do really great engineering. So we're going to, we're going to plus it. When does augmented reality and AR enter the picture where the glass becomes augmented and you start to enhance that experience?

Joerg Grotendorst:

That's currently under development. Yeah. Not so easy in a car. Yeah. As always, you have to consider different lightning conditions, weather conditions, driving scenarios under development right now. Will this be? A huge step forward? No, I think automated reality in the windscreen or at least 3D simulation we will see in the next three, four years on a broader market application.

But will this be something that we have in all the cars? No, definitely not. Because yeah, due to different, Classes of vehicles, pricing classes, application. It doesn't make sense for everybody. It always depends on the purpose of use. 

Grayson Brulte:

Do you feel that the hardware or from a strategy, the hardware will be shipped and then your customers, the OEMs could then activate it for a subscription fee, depending on the different types of vehicles.

So you're, so Magna's shipping the hardware there, and then your customer has the ability to activate it if they want. So you don't have to go through this whole. redevelopment redesign cycle? 

Joerg Grotendorst:

This is a real good question because currently are very intensively discussing what is the end customer willing to pay for the application.

And from a technical standpoint, of course, it would be the easiest to equip the vehicle. Let's say, with all majorities that customers may take and then the customer can pay per use or pay or load software up, download software afterwards when the car is not even anymore brand new, but therefore the hardware has to be in the car.

And I think that's something which is typical for the automotive industry. It is very price sensitive. So I assume that not for features, for example, electric seating, if you want to download software for electric seating and activate it afterwards, you have to imagine the ECU and the motors have already to be installed in the vehicle right at the beginning.

And what if the customer doesn't want the function, then it may not be a positive business case for the OEMs. So if we talk about all the devices that are mandatory in a vehicle, a large performing or large and super performing control unit and displays and everything, that definitely can be added with future functions afterwards, definitely.

But if we talk any kind of. performance of the vehicle, braking performance, seatings, electric windows, roofs, or whatever, where you have to install real physics hardware, I think this will not be something that will, that can be downloaded to add another function afterwards when we talk about mass production.

The risk of underutilizing and having much more hardware We are inside the car that drives the price and the cost up for the OEMs and the end customer. I assume it's too high. 

Grayson Brulte:

It's a double-edged sword. We had the GM earnings yesterday and I read all the wall street analyst reports and wall street kept saying Okay, GM, turn on the spigot for services for the in-vehicle activations, but you're right If GM's going to do that, they're going to have to contract with Magnet to put the parts in there to turn it on.

They're going to have to run the business equation. And so it's that chicken and the egg. Which one are you going to do? Because as very well our listeners know, the margins in automotive are very small. Sometimes it's pennies on the dollar. For certain components. And you start mass manufacturing it.

The vehicles, and you and I both know they're changing, sensor, are becoming ambiguous in the vehicles. As the vehicles start adding on SAE level, 2, 3, 4 levels of autonomy, how do you see the sensor suite change? 'cause right now the majority of the individuals believe that it's for level four, it's lidar camera and various centers that's part of the stack.

How do you see that changing? Because to me, when I run the numbers. Not every individual can afford a $400,000 car with a souped-up sensor suite to achieve the level four. How is that going to change? 

Joerg Grotendorst:

I absolutely agree with you. We believe that it will take us a while to offer level four autonomous driving for the next decade.

We assume that level two and level two plus will make it even the jump or the next step to level three is already a burden for the industry because the major difference in between level two plus and level three is that you have to add more computing power we call it soc yeah and so you have to have a redundant soc compared to level two plus that's some hundreds of dollars you have to add to the vehicles and I think, and yeah, I agree with you, not everybody can afford it and not everybody wants to afford it because it's not a business case for everybody.

If you go on a daily route into the office or sometimes on a long-range ride, it absolutely makes sense to have autonomous support for highway driving, Autobahn driving or whatever. But is it really a business case if I go downtown for 20 minutes and my vehicle then guides me fully out autonomously throughout the city forward and backward?

I think that will take us a while at the moment in terms of costs. We are at a too high level. Doesn't mean that this will always remain, but we are at too high level. And I assume for the mass of mobility, it's not a business case right now. 

Grayson Brulte:

It's always going to come down to cost. There's no way, there's no way to slice it. It's going to come down to cost. 

Joerg Grotendorst:

Yeah.

Grayson Brulte:

There's no way to slice it. If you look at costs, LIDAR is very expensive. There's public data on that. And then there's a big debate. Will 4D radar, will there be an imaging breakthrough with cameras? Will DepthSense technology, will the CMOS technology, will there be a big breakthrough there in your opinion?

Will LiDAR always play a part of the stack, or could there be some technology out there that's emerging that has its chat GPT moment and the world says, Oh, wow, but the big difference is this technology will not hallucinate like the chat GPT does. 

Joerg Grotendorst:

Yeah. So we are working of course, on different scenarios. How far can it go? We can. Match different kinds and classes of perceptions that have different kinds of sensors. So imagine we are one of the largest supplier for thermal sensors and cameras on the world. Yeah. Imagine we can just patch in real time camera images with thermal, so video camera images with thermal camera images.

There are some companies outside there in the world that work on different frequencies of radar. that are not at the same performance as LiDAR right now, but almost. So you can imagine, once we have the tool suite and the software ready to put it all together simultaneously, same timestamp using, then we may have the same information that brings us close to level four.

And maybe we don't need LIDAR for that. I cannot grant it right now. We are not there at the moment, but of course we are intensively working on that, making use of the sensors that are currently available and how to improve the performance. To get in a more far out range to detect OB obstacles and see if this could get to a imaging ladder performance.

Grayson Brulte:

You hit the nail on the head that the L four stack is gonna change over time. You and I don't know which way it's gonna change. Your scientists and the engineers out there will figure something out how to change it today. What do you feel is the best L two stack? Is there an ideal stack that Magna sells to your customers?

End up with the end customers that you feel from engineering perspective. product quality, performance perspective, that is the ideal L2 stack today? 

Joerg Grotendorst:

Yes, of course. We have discussions with most kinds of all OEMs all around the globe, and of course we have. Maybe the largest toolbox of any suppliers in the world.

As said, we offer cameras, radars, ultrasonic, thermal sensors. So we have the full tool suite and we definitely talk to customers that want more than 10 cameras around the vehicle. Then they try to combine what is their best solution. As you said, some of the OEMs bring in their own driving maneuvers or autopilot functions, so they better rely.

For example, for value parking or better on cameras and on, on ultrasonic sensors. And yeah, we have to adapt to, but as I said, we have the full range of sensor, maybe the widest in the world. And of course we have the ECUs with the performance, high performance control units additionally. So we think we are well prepared, but if you again ask, is there one sensor set that all OEMs go for?

No. Yeah. We have to adapt that individual. Due to maybe even the performance the OEM wants to get. Maybe even brand related, as I say, we do it with cameras instead of other sensors or whatever. 

Grayson Brulte: 

That's fascinating. The OEM come to you and say, for example, let's say, let's call it Acme OEM comes to Magnum and says, we'd like to develop, work with you to develop an L2 system.

Perhaps they take parts of software from Magna and software from their side, and you work together to build that ideal. Product that the OEM is looking for. 

Joerg Grotendorst:

Yes. Yes, definitely. Yeah. And that brings us to another topic, of course. What is the electronics and software architecture of the future? Yeah. You as an expert know, as well as I, that we are coming from a distributed organization in, in, in a distributed architecture and a vehicle talking sometimes ECUs.

Now intermediate, we talk about domain controllers and high-performance computers plus domain controllers, but we believe the future will be high performance and luxury vehicles, at least at the seasonal architecture where we have high performance bus systems in between the ECUs. And then if it comes to software architecture of the future, we may even think about containerization of software.

So for fail safe reason, as in a plane, if a function, or if an ECU has a male function that we can shift task and jobs from one ECU to the other, that of course would be the. The best architecture in terms of safety and redundancy and the easiest one to maintain once it comes to software updates and OTA applications.

Grayson Brulte:

Then there's the issue of power, especially as you go towards electric vehicles. How do you engineer for power efficiency? 

Joerg Grotendorst:

Whoa. We, yeah. Yeah. That's, that's a great question. And here I think we can play the power of Magna, how we call it. Yeah.

If we talk about efficiency as Magna is such a wide theme.

We started body design, yeah, using different kinds of metal welding and screwing technologies, bringing together different kinds of metals and always we look for lightweight. We have great applications starting even with battery trays. Yeah. How to create lightweight for battery trace. Then of course, the heart is powertrain with e Drive train that we design and produce in-house and we do full drive train, and even brake applications.

We have designed in Magna. a software suite that we call Magna Operating System. That's a software that controls driving behavior for steering, for the powertrain, for braking, and for battery control, and thermal behavior in a car. So it's a mastermind. Yeah. And if we have OEMs that may be new to a Western or whatever kind of market and ask us for application, yes, we can almost deliver a turnkey solution and tell them this is an electric vehicle.

This is how we would design it. And this is, in fact, a specification that we are. Approach with from different kinds of customers that say, we have a limousine. We want a drag factor of this kind. We want power consumption of this kind. We want a range of this kind. And then, yeah, it all comes together with all the product groups that we have our body and white, our electronics. division, our powertrain division. Then we have a mechatronics, mirrors, and lightning, and then we get it all together. 

Grayson Brulte:

You also have a design division, obviously, when plays a drag from the wind, there's all these little elements, material, materials, fabrics, the treads on the tires.

How is magnetic and all that, let's call it the collective resources of Magna. How are you putting those together to optimize for the range of electric vehicles? 

Joerg Grotendorst:

That's really something we have a, we have a. A know how in house where we have, let's say design engineers that really can supervise full vehicle design, which we then do on a contractual base, of course, for OEMs, so we can do full vehicle design.

We can even do full vehicle manufacturing, and then we break down the overall. specification into product group specification. This is another domain right now where we heavily use artificial intelligence tools because it's not so easy. If we talk about the drag factor, yeah, there's always a compromise in designing the mirrors, the front grill and the windshield, for example, totally different divisions.

So how do we bring them together and not allowing one group to say, we want the bigger, but nicer mural than This impact on the drag factor is negative. So the boys from the front drill, they have to further optimize the tool and that's, yeah, nowadays an iterative process where we more and more get to automatization as well to bring all these requirements into different products into a balance.

And with that, of course, fulfill the customer requirements as good as we can. 

Grayson Brulte:

It's the little tiny details that Magna is very good at figuring out that you can extend your range even by a mile, two miles.

That's going to help with range anxiety. We have charging, so we'll get in a minute, but range anxiety.

Has Magna done research or spoken with your customers, the OEMs to determine what is the ideal range that they're eventually going to want to deliver to their customers? 

Joerg Grotendorst:

There's not the ideal range. Again, this is of course, something that is. relevant in terms of pricing, because the majority of all costs and prices for range is still the battery, which is the most expensive device in the car.

But we have taken a car, yes, out of existing series production, a car that and we know pretty well because we're building it from a customer and then we rebuild it. So current mileage on the road is roughly about 400 and in the same vehicle using our software and using a different kind of cell chemistry, we could increase the range by roughly 80, 80 miles or something like that.

So really significant. Yeah. But of course. As said, a major impact will always be the battery and sizing the battery to what the customer is willing to pay and what mileage he needs. That's of course very relevant for the vehicle performance. And we see right now even customers changing the range or even select vehicles where you can change the batteries on battery swapping stations, yeah?

So total different kinds, short range, mid-range, long range, and battery swapping. We will definitely see all these solutions in the future markets as well. 

Grayson Brulte: 

How much more aggressive can regenerative braking get to help increase the battery? Could there be a software breakthrough? Could there be, could it be more intense?

Because I've had an electric vehicle and I've noticed that the regenerative braking over the last year is pretty much kaput and then turns out the brakes went kaput. So I had to go get the brakes fixed, but can you make the regenerative braking stronger to increase battery life? 

Joerg Grotendorst:

That's something where people have to be educated when they buy their car.

Unfortunately, I have to dig a little bit more into the technology, but I think I have a good example. Accelerating and decelerating the vehicle. Imagine you have two glasses of water, two water glasses, sorry. One is full of water. The other one is empty. So now you accelerate the vehicle. It changed completely from chemical energy in the battery to moving energy, rolling energy.

So you completely give it into one, but you have losses. You always lose water. Yeah, and when you break and regenerate, you bring it back into the original glass, but again, you lose energy. And most batteries these days are optimized, and the inverters are optimized for energy to be taken out for acceleration, not for deceleration.

So you lose more water when you try to bring it back into the battery, then you have it for, and the more powerful the regen rating is. the more you get into accelerating and decelerating. And imagine you always shake water. So it's, it, the best is to have a smooth software. And therefore, I'm personally not a friend of this one pedal drive.

When you push the gas pedal as you accelerate and you release it, you directly brake because then you exactly do with the water what I just explained. It's better, to fill the water more slowly in and if you really want to go high speed and you see an obstacle in front of you break right in time that you make sure you have a smooth water flow back into your original glass because if you press too much you always got in losses and then of course there may be customer dissatisfaction that the range is not as good as prospective 

Grayson Brulte:

it's very it's fascinating to say that there's some individuals i know older individuals that went and drove a tesla And I can't say the four-letter words here.

We'll leave that, it's children programming here. But the one pedal driving, this person was in their 80s, and there were more four-letter words than you could imagine. I said, you can turn it off. That's not the point. Insert more four-letter words.

There was this, it's interesting when you get an older individual, let's say, north of 70, that's used to having a brake and an accelerator.

Do you feel that's a deterrent? Because they're not, they don't want, they don't know that you can turn it off, even though. The vehicles that you made, in fact, you can turn it off and they just try this thing on a test drive and insert your favorite four letter words here. 

Joerg Grotendorst:

Maybe the right solution is even to give the customer a chance to trim it.

The first vehicle, which I know on the market, it had still a potty in the middle. And that you really had a small wheel where you could trim your regen braking and find your individual optimum. Of course, if people really like the one pedal drive and they love it, yeah, it's a feature that, of course, you should allow the customer.

But the danger is you have to be very sensitive with your system. With your food and the impact on the range, maybe significantly without that, the driver really realizes what happening with the water, even being exchanged in between the two glasses. 

Grayson Brulte:

To achieve the all electric future we need infrastructure, but I'm going to caveat that with infrastructure that works and that's reliable.

What can be done to ensure that the charging infrastructure is always operable and reliable? It's working. I can't tell you how many stories you go broken, broken, broken. Or the, it gets the, you have the plugin and then the software has an issue. What can be done to fix that? 

Joerg Grotendorst:

We need a definitely a smart infrastructure on that. Yeah. So all the charging pillars, they have to be online and by the energy provider continuously monitored via software and immediately fixed. I, Yeah. As I am a, an e mobility driver as well, that's something I really hate most. Yeah. If you navigate from place A to B and then you do your optimized routing and then you get to a, either to a charging spot or even to a fast-charging spot, and then it's defect and cannot be used.

Yeah. We need, we now get to a wider scope maybe, but to really provide green and sustainable energy to the mankind, we simply have to use the sun. That's the easiest way, wind, et cetera. But to have the different kinds of spots around the world, they have to be all interconnected.

And imagine the world as the sun is shining down with almost one kilowatt of sun. per square meter. And me personally, I even wondered when I saw a video recently from an athletics tournament in, in, in Rome, when the drone was flying over the city, that not many rooms were equipped with solar panels.

Yeah. For me, definitely to equip roofs with solar panels, especially in areas where you have high temperatures in summertime, and you need energy to cool buildings down. It's so easy, yeah, to create and produce the energy on site directly and use it for whatever purpose. And this is the same for the infrastructure.

We, we need strong energy and power lines for fast charging at the highways, at the autobahn, but of course this has to be green otherwise. Yeah, it would not be beneficial for the global and CO2, for the global CO2 emission, yeah. 

Grayson Brulte:

Is the connection that makes this all work for the smart infrastructure sensors, where it knows if something's broken or offline or it needs to pull energy from, say, a battery backup or send energy somewhere, does sensors become that glue that enables this?

Joerg Grotendorst:

I think so. It's not the sensor. Most sensors are, in the systems by themself, but the interconnection in between that somebody remotely can diagnose what's going on and in an ideal world send out a service technician that has the right device in hand to be replaced immediately or do a software reboot remotely or whatever.

Everything that we know from a mobile phone right now, that's not rocket science anymore. It's just a question of implementation. And unfortunately, sometimes a question of business case. Yeah. Who earned some money at the end? How do we do energy and cost roaming? Yeah that's an issue. Yeah.

Grayson Brulte:

Roaming. I haven't heard that since the 90s, early 2000s, where if you were in Germany and then you went to Switzerland and then you went to Spain. Oh boy. Oh boy. 

Joerg Grotendorst:

Exactly. And everywhere you need different providers and a different app and. Yeah. Yeah, and that's really an issue, yeah. 

Grayson Brulte:

And then you had to swap sim cards I remember that was miserable because that was the only way you can actually work of your phone to work Without paying an arm and a leg.

Joerg Grotendorst:

Oh, wow, that would be I've never heard about that. But To be honest, I wouldn't be surprised in Europe. Yeah I wouldn't be surprised, yeah. That was interesting. 

Grayson Brulte:

It happened, you mentioned battery swapping. And the, so I've been doing research on batteries and studying batteries and there's a common denominator that keeps coming up across all the research I've done is the weight of batteries.

And then I started going down a rabbit hole, the weight of batteries increases in the turnover and brakes, it's increasing the tire treads in the northern Washington state with the SAM issue from all the tire pollution. What can be done to make batteries lighter and more resilient? 

Joerg Grotendorst:

I think the speed of new designs in battery and new chemistry is still pretty high, yeah?

And you may have heard about that, that GE recently announced they have developed the first solid state battery. Lifetime battery, yeah, that was one of a news that came out during the last I think four weeks or whatever. But in general, we can say that battery technology is moving pretty fast.

And I think we will have a lifetime battery pretty soon. It will not take another decade to be right there. Then question is, of course, do we change? electrolyte to become even more efficient and lighter. Here we have an ongoing technology. Major topic is of course then how can we bring the cost down and will it be affordable for the customers?

From a practical experience, I think right now battery performance is today already pretty good that we have. There may be an anxiety with the customers to buy an electric car because the next generation of batteries may be even better. Same as with a mobile phone. When is the best time to buy a mobile phone?

When is the best time to buy a computer? Because the next generation will always be more performant and may have new features inside. But on the other hand, this is of course. And the way of moving forward, bringing new technology and bringing new chemistry in the cars. For me, at the end, no question, the future is electric. Full stop. 

Grayson Brulte:

The future is going to be electric. What can be done to bring down the cost of batteries? Is it a chemical breakthrough? Is it an engineering breakthrough? Or is it just mass manufacturing that brings down that cost? 

Joerg Grotendorst:

There are some topics that we have to consider. For of course, it is new design of chemical solutions.

It will be larger production, of course, all around the globe, but it will be recycling once we have an infrastructure to reuse material and get recycled material back into production. And this all will help, and we'll all bring together. That's not the one solution. That will make the batteries cheaper.

It all has to come together. And, if batteries are fully integrated in a vehicle when we get to so called cell to chassis solutions, so we take out material for battery covers, and battery housings and we bring it directly into the vehicle to be a mechanical element that grant that grants stiffness of the chassis and the body that of course will take out furthermore weight and costs and with that reduce the price overall but Once we go that route, that of course prohibits in battery swapping because then you would directly interfere with say with the vehicle chassis.

So that's a totally different road in between fully integrated batteries and batteries that may be swapped. 

Grayson Brulte:

Do you see battery swapping being done at a dealership level? Where, or a special battery swap or where do you, if that becomes a feature, how do you see that actually being done? 

Joerg Grotendorst:

We have some OEMs in the world that offer right now, especially in China, that offer already a battery swapping. We have first stations in Europe, but you may remember I'm now more than two decades in the industry. And maybe you remember there was a company at the beginning of the 2000 that was called better place, tried to set up battery swapping stations across all the OEMs and they failed. I will not, to give some arguments why a company failed at the end is pretty easier.

Making it successful is rather more complicated, but it failed because you cannot harmonize battery design across all the OEMs. They have different packages in their chassis.

At the time, we were even discussing about cutting the battery in two pieces. One piece really as a. energy storage, one that could be harmonized for long range, and the other one could be, could have been a different chemistry for the power and performance, so that you use different kinds of cells and different kinds of chemistries to provide power.

That you get high current out pretty easy and fast. And then for long range rides where you don't need that high demand of power just to, to drive smoothly, then to have an energy block inside of the vehicle that may be swapped. But it all failed.

Because you have so many varieties in terms of performance and range that the OEMs have to offer to their customers, that it was not possible to design a standard and then design a standard for swapping stations as well.

Grayson Brulte:

The consistency of what you described, what was talked about today, change. Change is happening in mobility. We are going into a new feature. Same from when we went to the horse and buggy to the gas-powered car. We are going from the gas-powered car to the electric car to the autonomous car.

There is change on the horizon. Your, in your opinion, holistically, what does the future mobility look like? 

Joerg Grotendorst:

The future mobility will still be individually. and I assume most of the car drivers, they definitely enjoy driving and riding a car. That's what is, so to say, against full autonomous riding. There will be definitely application and feats of application for autonomous driving, especially if you use a car for business.

But there are a lot of people that enjoy driving and riding a car, and they only may want to give up the control of the vehicle when they go for long distance and want to relax while driving, or you have a family, and you want to see a video or whatever. But my experience right now is for the future, we will definitely have people that love to ride a car and enjoy it and buy a vehicle just to ride it and to drive it.

So in the future, there will not only be autonomous vehicles and autonomous devices. We don't even know if future mobility, if we talk about mobility, will need wheels. There will be different kinds of applications for mobility, people that love to fly, people that love to ride a car, but it still will be possible to do it individually. And this definitely will always be the cheaper solution compared to complete autonomous riding, flighting, or driving. 

Grayson Brulte:

The bottom line is consumers are going to have choice in the future mobility. They can fly, they can ride, or they can drive.

They are going to have a choice. Yeah. This has been a fascinating conversation.

As we look to wrap up for today, what would you like our listeners to take away with them? 

Joerg Grotendorst:

I'm convinced about that. that the car of the future, whatever purpose it is for, has to be sustainable. We all have to think about climate protection. Resources of the oil will be limited, but we all have to think about that in history, the stone age didn't end because we ran out of stones and the oil age will not end because we run out of oil.

But the better solution is always to the enemy of the good. And that's, I think what we talk about or what we have to look for when we talk about future of mobility as well. 

Grayson Brulte:

History doesn't necessarily repeat itself, but it always rhymes to quote Mark Twain. Today is tomorrow. Tomorrow's today. The future is Magna. Joerg, thank you so much for coming on SAE Tomorrow Today. 

Joerg Grotendorst:

Thank you very much. It was my pleasure.

Grayson Brulte:

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