Doron Myersdorf – StoreDot

David Hunt 0:32
Hello, I’m David Hunt, CEO and founder of Hyperion executive search and your host for the leading clean tech podcast. As we await optimistically, some game changing policy commitments from our world leaders at COP 26. I’m delighted to have as my guest this week, the CEO of a clean tech company with a truly game changing battery technology, addressing the speed of charging an electric vehicle. But before we get to that, just a quick reminder, I’ll be speaking at the server and storage live event at the NEC in Birmingham in the UK on the 24th of November. I’ll also actually be recording a special episode of this podcast that the show on the Wednesday with a couple of guests, which obviously more of knew at the time and details to register for the event will be on the episode page. I hope some of you may be able to come and share a coffee or a conversation. But onto business. My guest today is Darren Meyers Dorf, CEO of store dot, a pioneer and leader in the extreme fast charging batteries sector batteries that overcome the critical barrier to mainstream Evie adoption, namely range and charging anxiety. The company has revolutionised the conventional lithium battery by designing and synthesising proprietary organic and inorganic compounds, making it possible to fully charge an Eevee in just five minutes. Among other things, I’m keen to explore how research into the Alzheimer’s disease led to storage and battery breakthroughs. Fascinating World fascinating background, and I hope you enjoy the episode. Hello, and welcome to the leaves and cleans podcast. It’s great to have you with us.

Doron Myersdorf – StoreDot 2:01
Hey there. Thanks for having me.

David Hunt 2:03
So it’s been a super interesting right to watch from outside the evolution of store dot and really keen to dig into that I think I first met some of your team at the move event in London, pre COVID. And clearly much has changed since then. So really keen to look into how the company has evolved and where we are at the moment. But it’s customary in the podcast to start a little bit of the entrepreneur or the founder background. So be interesting if you could share a little bit of your experience and what led you to the situation where you co founded startup?

Doron Myersdorf – StoreDot 2:34
Sure, yeah, actually, my background is in the semiconductor industry in previous life. I was heading the solid state drive SSD business at SanDisk. That was later acquired by WD Western Digital. And we were looking for new materials that can actually improve the right speed into the flash memory. Now the memory there’s reading, there’s right. So usually, there are issues with the right. And we were trying to see you know, which which kind of materials can actually help us. And I came across some very interesting research at Tel Aviv University around peptides and some organic materials that could be the future of semiconductors, there was actually a paper in Nature that that caught my eyes. And they collaborated with our chief scientist at the time. Professor Layton and there was this professor Rosenman, he was also a co founder at the University working on these peptide materials. And this is how we started. This was actually some outcome of research over the Alzheimer’s disease. As they were looking for a cure for that, they came across the ability to manage the self assembly of the peptides. And this is how we started we we looked at how to improve flash memory that came out of the research on Alzheimer disease cure. And somehow it it started this way, but it turned out to be a battery innovation group. And we showed very exciting things early on. And this is how we got our first investment from Samsung, and then Mercedes and then from BP and TDK. So it all started in a very interesting way.

David Hunt 4:29
Yeah, always fascinates me how innovation and creativity. don’t always go the way that you plan or you learn from things in a way that wasn’t quite expected and clearly, whilst research and downtime is phenomenally important, it’s interesting that that some research there has led to the breakthroughs that startup have achieved and are continuing to achieve in as you say in the battery space.

Doron Myersdorf – StoreDot 4:54
Especially you know when you combine different disciplines, because we are talking about medicine and about organic synthesis, and nanotechnology. And now also AI, you know, with machine learning, when you combine all these disciplines together, you can actually achieve something that is really groundbreaking.

David Hunt 5:13
Yeah, I mean, how do you see, just to sort of go on aside because I’ve had a few guests and a number of clients who have come out of Israel, where there’s a really phenomenal technology, innovation in a number of areas, is there some kind of no secret sauce, or some kind of focus on cross, as you say, cross sector collaboration, or cross discipline, collaboration to fuel the type of innovation that we’re talking about?

Doron Myersdorf – StoreDot 5:41
Yeah, I think it’s a combination of several things that are unique to Israel. You know, the first thing that comes to mind is the military service, where you actually do things that typically, you know, an 18 year old kid will not do, and you’re exposed to large systems, you’re exposed to really fascinating technologies. You know, so for example, both our VP r&d and the VP engineering coming from elite units for material science in the Israeli army. So, and there’s also the collaboration model in the army where you don’t really I mean, there is the hierarchy of your commander. But because these, these are roles that depend on science, there is less of this hierarchy that comes into play. And there’s a lot of collaboration between different ranks, that supports, you know, the startup mentality, or basically, every New Scientist, every junior guy can actually come with a great idea can actually make a difference?

David Hunt 6:51
Yeah, yeah. No, that’s interesting. Thanks for sharing that. I mean, in terms of the start, point for story, your background, as you’ve alluded to, and obviously we’ll post some details online so people can see a bit more. You’ve worked for some fairly sizable companies as well as startups. When you started, store dot, you obviously found this potential, at least simple materials that could make an impact. How was the startup because quite quickly, you raised money, which is often a challenge for startups. But what were the sort of the early challenges that you faced as a co founding team,

Doron Myersdorf – StoreDot 7:24
so that you know, the challenge is always for a startup when you want to show something to demonstrate that, you know, what you have is not just vaporware, or vaporware in order to show with things. So here, we were lucky because we could use the facilities at university at Tel Aviv University. And we demonstrated various applications for this. At the time, we call those nanodots. These are those peptides that we kind of manage their self assembly process. And we showed how we can use them in lasers, or in in their flash memory or in a battery. And once we had these initial demonstrations, we could invite some investors. One of them was Samsung ventures, they actually got really excited. And eventually after I’d say like nine months of due diligence for various applications, they led the round of the first $6 million back in 2013.

David Hunt 8:27
Okay, okay, so reasonable sum for quite an early stage. But as you say, having something tangible to show is, does help when there is so much as you say vaporware of one description, or other out there a lot of hype and froth in many markets. So when you started the business, as you said, there are many applications clearly we’re going to focus on and you’re very focused on the charging of electric vehicles at high speed, which we’ll elaborate on shortly. But was that always the case that you always see that batteries was the main application in EVs particularly because of course, that market has grown exponentially, but even a handful of years ago was nowhere near the market that we see today.

Doron Myersdorf – StoreDot 9:00
So yes, because we did see the potential of organic materials to reduce the resistance of the battery. And you know, once you reduce the resistance, then you can actually push the ions faster and there’s less heat that is being generated when you charge the battery. So we showed how you can take these materials and improve the composition of the anode. This is the negative element of the battery will all the ions need to come into as you charge and very quickly we demonstrated a smartphone that can be fully charged in 30 seconds. And you know we’ve put this demonstration online in a very simple video clip. It got like three and a half million hits in like 24 hours. So that told me that there is a there is a real problem here that that we can solve.

David Hunt 9:52
Yeah, yeah. And I know there are some other videos and we touched on this when we spoke before about obviously starting to do live demonstrations of of small and micro mobility solutions which we can we can elaborate on. So tell us a little bit, we’ve got quite an educated audience. But tell us a little bit specifically about store dot and how your technology works as best as you can without actually breaking any commercial details, but what’s the the key elements of the technology and what’s the main problem you’re solving or planning to solve in the coming years?

Doron Myersdorf – StoreDot 10:22
Okay, so you know, for the adoption of electric vehicles, which is, I think, the biggest revolution that is happening in our lifetime. And we can touch on that a bit later why I think this is like the number one disruption to the entire supply chain in the market. And the user behaviour, the driver behaviour and mobility is all. But the number one problem today for adoption in the many reports, and we’ve done our own research, is the range anxiety and also adds to it. So this is the charging anxiety, where the difference is the range anxieties, if you’re worried that you will get stuck on the highway, right, and the charging anxiety is that you already have reached the charging station, but the like 10 cars in front of you or you need to sit there for two hours charging, this also disrupts your trip. And you know, this is really a factor that makes people believe this electric vehicle adoption altogether. So solving this problem, this number one problem is our mission. And the way that we do that is through the fast charging some other companies, some competitors. And also by the way, all the big players are including Tesla, by the way that maybe we’ll touch on them later on, I’ll try to increase the range. So you know, 400 miles, for example, is is a range that everybody believes in one charge can solve the range anxiety and in order to do that people are adding some silicone to the graphite of the anvil. In order to increase the energy density, we are taking a different approach, we are also using silicone in the unknown, but we are almost totally replacing the graphite with silicone with Nano silicone. And the reason that it is nano is in order to increase the surface area of the approach of the ions into the active material. And as you have more of these tiny elements, these particles, you have more place, more porosity and more ability of the ions to come in faster. So this is what we do, we are replacing the graphite in the anode, which is the standard active material in batteries, we are replacing it with silicone. And we are doing that in in conjunction with the organic compounds. These are those peptides that historically we started with that allow us to protect the silicone as it’s being charged, because it is a known problem that Silikal and by the way, also team also germanium, all the metalloids that are under, you know column for you know, on the home for you have the carbon, the silicone, the germanium, the tape, all those can have good energy, but they also have a problem of expansion. Yeah. So, the ions come in, it inflates like a balloon, and as they come out, when you discharge it, it contracts. And this this motion of expansion and contraction creates these cracks and say instability as the battery matures over the cycle life that is being charged in discharge over time. So the organic compounds allow us to protect these nanoparticles and provide some hosting matrix that holds the silicon in place and relatively stable and we can reach hundreds and even 1000 cycles of fast charging continuous fast charging of the battery. And when we say fast charging, we mean extreme fast charging meaning full charge of the battery in minutes, as opposed to hours in graphite based batteries.

David Hunt 14:24
Yeah, certainly game changing to to achieve that even for those of us who are used to driving electric vehicles and you kind of adapt to what’s necessary. But of course, the ability to fully charge in that timeframe change everything I think for for most people. Before we get a little more into the technology, just picking back on something you discussed that there and it’s kind of something that comes up often is almost a bit of a cliche. Now that kind of the, the modern electric vehicle is more of an iPad on wheels than it is a traditional, you know vehicle as we know it. And that goes back to disruption clearly I Phone or the smartphone more specifically was a number of technologies all evolving at the same time, creating a perfect storm. And we’ve all seen how smartphones have changed pretty much the whole world. And the way we do our business where we conduct our lives, the transition to electrification of transport, likewise is monumental. And you pick it out is one of the game changing, or more than the sort of the most significant disruptions that are going on amongst many at the moment, yes, big

Doron Myersdorf – StoreDot 15:29
time, because I think the number of revolutions that are taking place all at once, and you know, because we are at the eye of the storm, we don’t really, you know, look at it at the big picture. But, you know, the evolution of the autonomous vehicles, as well as the connected, everything is connected to the internet, and the vehicles are connected to the between themselves connected to the grid connected to the server. So there’s the connected, autonomous, and there’s also the shared mobility, which is happening also big time, in in many models of mobility. So you know, especially the Generation Z, not everybody needs to own a vehicle, in order to get from point A to point B, and N, all of these are being enabled with the electrification. And all of them really require fast charging, in order to obtain a continuous mobility, a lifestyle, that people can actually rely on the energy to be available for them when they need it when they need it. I mean, if we look even at, you know, the, what is the challenge of humanity, when it comes to energy, so up to let’s say, 50 years ago, even 40, it was, you know, how we gonna take the oil out of the land, or gas, and coal and burn it, and get, you know, the steam in order to generate electricity. This was like, the number one mission of MIT, and we didn’t realise that we actually hurting ourselves, we’re hurting the planet. And it’s a very limited horizon, in terms of, you know, this solution to the energy problem. The problem now shifted totally, because there are ways to, to have alternative energy like with wind with solar with, with the hydroelectric in the many ways there’s, of course, nuclear. But the, the problem of extracting oil out of the earth is is no longer, you know, everybody understand it’s not sustainable. Now, the problem shifts to, you know, take the energy and storage. And the only way to do it really, in the, let’s say, in the next decade, is with lithium ion batteries. I mean, there are other alternative ways people talk about hydrogen. Yeah, it’s a viable solution, but it’s most likely a niche solution. People talk about other fuel cells or ideas, all of them can work. But for a vehicle, I think all the experts agree that lithium ion is the only solution that is viable in the coming decade. And this is what we’re focused on how to improve the lithium ion battery. That by the way, if you look at the Nobel Prize of 2019, for in chemistry, for good enough, and at all, basically what they did, it’s a great innovation that say you can take lithium ions and store them in an active material. And the active material of choice was graphite. Why? Because it’s abundant, and it’s relatively cheap. But the problem is that it has high resistance, and it’s very slow in charging. But this is was not one of the goals, they didn’t think about fast charging, this wasn’t the problem to solve. So what we are trying to do is to leverage on this great innovation, and basically say how we take it a step further, and make it really fast charging that, you know, in minutes, you’ll be able to store this energy, or even seconds down the road. And this energy will be available for you in your vehicle, or in your house or wherever you need it. And this is like the biggest transition that is happening is being able to have the energy mobile and this is why I call it batteries is the new oil. Because because you don’t need to extract oil anymore. You just need it in a battery. But of course, you know, it needs to be with good materials that are good for the planet that you can recycle them. And basically, you know, we don’t want to create a new problem of sustainability with batteries that actually, you know, hurt the environment.

David Hunt 19:49
Yeah, yeah. So exciting and also a dynamic space. We work with a number of companies across the battery evolution from from LG Chem to A lot of long duration storage, which obviously is not not lithium ion. But there’s there’s so much innovation going on. And even in within lithium ion you’ve seen, of course, the striving to be rid of cobalt and some of the more damaging and harder to find materials. But ultimately, I think it’s about as you say, speed of charge and energy density, clearly if we can have lighter batteries that helps from a vehicle point of view. And clearly, the fast charging we’ve touched on is a critical factor. You do a lot of a lot of research, research r&d, both in Israel, of course, but you recently opened an r&d centre in the US, what’s the kind of primary challenges that you’re looking at through your next level of r&d?

Doron Myersdorf – StoreDot 20:37
Yes, so we understand that, you know, we need to keep improving on the energy density. Right now, we are in the neighbourhood of 300 Watt hour per kilogramme, which is maybe the state of the art. But, you know, for we really, we believe we can reach 450 Watt hour per kilogramme, and the only way to do that is with solid state batteries. And solid state batteries is a great promise. But there needs to be major innovation in the material level, those materials, those ceramic materials that are in combination with polymers, that would need to replace the liquid electrolyte, and they are available. And we do synthesise those in our labs as well. By the way, we have 37 PhDs here in Israel, that walking on the materials, both on the Nano silicone, the organic compounds, as well as the solid state electrolytes. And we see, I would say, some limitations in the ability to reach these new materials, these new innovation in a reasonable timeframe. And when I say reasonable, I’m talking about 2026 2027, to be in mass production of solid state. And for that, I felt we need additional talent, that we kind of already exhausted what we could have found in Israel, I’d say six to seven, maybe eight researchers that say, world class, graduating PhDs in Israel, we already hire, but we think we can double that by opening an r&d centre that is close to let’s say, Stanford, or even people at MIT, definitely Berkeley. And this is why we are looking at California. But of course, we will take people from all over the US where they actually looking at the challenge of this, the scale up of this new generation of materials that are either ceramic in polymer or polymer in ceramic, depending on what will work best on the anode side on the cathode side. So this is the purpose of the r&d Centre in California.

David Hunt 22:55
Right, right. And it’s great to see that that again, global problem harnessing global talents to to solve these issues. One thing that’s interesting, because there is so much evolution and so much everything from investment to innovation in and around batteries. So many Giga factories either play or being built, not just of course, by by our friend Elon, what’s the business model for stored? Are you looking to licence the technology produced the materials become a battery manufacturer? How much of that? Can you share?

Doron Myersdorf – StoreDot 23:33
No, I can actually share because it’s very easy, we are trying to be all of that. But, you know, in a smart way. And the reason is that, you know, for a company to really have its destiny in its own hands, we need to own the product. And we need to own the supply chain. This type in a battery, you cannot really licence it. Because it’s not about one patent or even a group of patents. We keep innovating new materials and new ideas all the time. And we keep upgrading the the formulation of the anode, the cathode, the electrolyte on a continuous basis. So there can’t be a model of pure licencing. And this is why you know, we are doing these joint ventures like the one we have in China with Eve energy, but we’re working on several others in the UK. In Italy, we’re working on one in Texas, in Arizona, the idea is that there’s going to be this joint venture where we provide our technology for in exchange for captive capacity. Meaning let’s say in China, for example, we have six gigawatt hour initially in the first year 2024 is the year of mass production. So this six gigawatt hour would go to a potential customer such as Daimler who is one of our lead investors and others that we’re working on, but we would need Several of these in order to have significant volume, like each gigawatt hours, let’s say like 20,000 vehicles a year. So we are trying to reach several hundreds of 1000s of vehicles a year with extreme fast charge, let’s say by 2028. And in order to do that, we’ll have maybe five or six or seven of these joint ventures. So it is also licencing. Because those joint ventures would allow the battery manufacturer to produce our battery. But we’ll get royalties out of that. So that’s licencing. But we will also have our own captive capacity that will allow us to guarantee volume to our customers, because everybody understands, and I’ve been saying this for years, the market is entering an era of significant over demand, very serious, we are already looking at shortages in batteries, big time. And it’s going to get much much worse. And I’m looking at maybe three acts of demand over battery supply over the coming decade. So you know, we need about 100 of these Giga factories to be built. And there are only like 20 or 25. That in design. And this is why I think it’s going to be major shortage in batteries. So for a startup with a new technology to survive this market, the only way is to own capacity through these agreements of captive capacity.

David Hunt 26:27
Yeah, yeah. I think there’s always that as you say, I guess benefit of both having financial investments which clearly have but also their strategic partners like with Daimler, who are a sort of an internal market, so to speak, and an opportunity to both evolve the product, but also to have that capacity for building a market for revenue generation. Tell us a little bit of where you are, where the technology is, at the moment, we touched on the the iPhone in 30 seconds, where sort of people can see or what their level of demonstration is at the moment. And when do you think we will first see a electric vehicle a passenger vehicle, able to utilise the startup technology and charge rapidly or ultra rapidly as we’ve discussed,

Doron Myersdorf – StoreDot 27:09
okay, so actually made that much progress recently. Last week, we got the finally we got the certification and the UN 38.3. For transportation of batteries. And these are 430 amp hour cells that produced, you know, joint venture in China, these are pure silicon anodes that we’ve produced. Through our joint venture, we have produced a large quantity for sampling, we call those eight samples, it’s still not at the final energy density, it’s still not at the final cycle life, but it does allow us to build packs, with our partners and to start demonstrating a full fast charging extreme fast charge vehicle. We also recently published our relationship with vinfast. In Vietnam, they are a newcomer very aggressively taking over also the US and European markets. So we’ll probably demonstrate something with them as well as with Daimler with with these new air samples, so we are already working on the vehicle platforms. But we still have ways to go in terms of the final formulation that reaches as I mentioned, the 312 kilowatt with at least 1000 charge discharge cycles of all of them. Extreme fast charge cycles.

David Hunt 28:38
Yeah, yeah. So do you think we were months or decades or years away from from hopefully getting to the point where we are at that level. So we’ll show

Doron Myersdorf – StoreDot 28:48
something at CES, which is in a couple of months, but we’ll show maybe a bigger thing at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, that’s in like, three, four months and the February and by the end of 2022, we should be with the full platform with the final performance.

David Hunt 29:07
Okay, which is pretty not too far away at all. You touched on a few quite a few things. There are many data sets to dynamically run one of which is around cycles already have this argument with many people that you know, the the battery will outlast the car, not the other way around. Pretty pretty soon. So there’s the cycle ability, but there’s also then sustainability and supply chain you talk about the Giga factories is around getting the materials to the Giga factories. And then of course, end of life, the recyclability. So what’s your thoughts or focus on the sort of the circular economy elements of the technology developing?

Doron Myersdorf – StoreDot 29:41
Right, so, yeah, unfortunately, you know, lithium ion battery is a lithium ion battery. I mean, yes, we can get rid of the cobalt, which we are working very hard on. We already moved from the cathode of six to two and MC 2811. And we actually experiment Now, with the nine half half, so only 5% of cobalt is active material in the cathode, but we still have, you know, the lithium, we have the nickel, we have the manganese, all these are recyclable. But in order to make it a sustainable business, there needs to be significant volume, which I think the entire market is still looking at these opportunities is something down the road and not very economically and yet, but, so our aim is to eliminate the difficult I would say the most problematic materials, Cobalt is critical because of the child labour issues in Congo and so forth. But also the all the other metals that would need to be recycled. And of course, this this, like you mentioned this the second life way before you would recycle the battery, no, the warranty of the vehicle goes away after it goes down to 80% of its original capacity. But after that, those batteries can still serve many years as secondary support for let’s say, the fast charging stations for the infrastructure. Yeah, because you would need a buffer in order to level the demand that peak demand for fast charging, especially during rush hour, or when people go back home and everybody wants to charge for the next day. All those would be supported by Second Life, batteries that are coming out of the vehicles. So there are a lot of models that we are trying to align to. But at the end of the day, we have to admit that lithium ion batteries is not to say the best combination of materials for the long ones, as we move to solid state. Because the energy density goes up, let’s say by 50%, then, of course, you would need less of these materials because they are more efficient. But down the road, they’re still going to be a serious business of recycling the materials and bringing them back into the economy.

David Hunt 32:06
Yeah, yeah, no, absolutely. There are a number of people who are focused specifically on that. And it’s great to see both actually say, firstly, Second Life usage, but then end of life, recycling as best as possible. We will not none of these things are a zero sum game. Of course, there are always environmental impacts to everything we do. But clearly, Anything’s better than big oil and gas out of the hole out of a hole and burning it. And talking of which we’ll come back to this in a minute. But I know that it’s obviously I guess, this week, particularly talked about both of them not quite been in Glasgow for different reasons for cop 26. But taking the sidestep a little if you if you like what are you hoping for? What would you like to see from a policy or an investment perspective that will help not just store that, but the whole transition to electrification of transport.

Doron Myersdorf – StoreDot 32:51
So I think that bottleneck really for the adoption, once we solve the, say the chemistry and the physics of extreme fast charging, the infrastructure is the number one bottleneck because at the end of the day, the grids that we have, both in Europe, definitely in Israel, but also us. And even in China, they are not, they will not plan to sustain this high power that is required. And then upgrade to the grid is really critical. But this is only the beginning. Because the grid is let’s say, you know, the government can help and maybe some private electricity companies can support but at the end of the day, when you get into the charging station, there needs to be a very powerful charging station that can support extreme fast charging. So we are looking at at least 350 kilowatt, even half a megawatt of charging for each vehicle. And its charging stations are still not available. Maybe it’s small amount of small numbers, but we will need them at a very large scale. And by the way, this is the reason that BP British Petroleum invested in stalled because they have 18,500 gas stations, and all of them would need in over the coming decade would need to be repurposed for charging, because otherwise the whole folk model does not work, not the real estate in the centre of London, and not also the retail that is associated with this focus. So you know, people need to be in and out of the station in a matter of five to 10 minutes. Otherwise, you know, adoption will be very slow. And this is why you know, the investment in infrastructure, starting from the grid, all the way to the charging station and to the new standards that are required the new safety regulations. All these things need to happen now, because it takes several years for this to really trickle into the market.

David Hunt 34:54
Yeah, yeah, I think that’s really important but also touching on we’ve talked primarily, I guess loosely around cars or passengers transport for private private passenger transport. But of course, there’s an enormous amount of electrification going on in public transit. And of course, in haulage, still some debates where the fuel cells or hydrogen player parked there, of course, but you already start seeing ABB, I think with megawatt charging solutions. But as you say, it’s not just having the the charging infrastructure on site, it’s having the power on the site to be able to deploy. However many buses, however many vehicles at any one time, so it’s a, it’s a big challenge.

Doron Myersdorf – StoreDot 35:32
Exactly. And let’s not forget the safety aspect of that, because this is all new. And at the end of the day, there is a driver, there’s a person that is sitting at the wheel. And underneath him, there’s a megawatt of charger. I mean, we cannot and especially that some of these stations in the beginning, will will be some combination of gas fueling as well as charging stations, we cannot allow any spark or any safety concerns as you implement these high power stations. And this is something that, you know, everybody needs to work together in order to make sure that that we provide a safe environment for this charging mechanisms.

David Hunt 36:12
Yeah, yeah, yeah, no, absolutely. Critically important. Listen, one of the things I love about the sector, and I’ve been in clean tech since about 2007, when I started my solo business, is just how collaborative of course there’s competition. And always will be and that’s healthy. But there’s so much collaboration. In the sector, I feel both on a personal level and on a company to company level, which is, which is great. If you kind of take your store hat off for a moment and just look a little bit in your crystal ball broadly at the electrification of transport over the next three to five years. What are some of the key things that you’re expecting to see and, and hopefully love in that sort of timeframe?

Doron Myersdorf – StoreDot 36:51
Well, first of all, I mean, we already see that all the major players, including some of the new commerce, let’s say, like Apple and Google with my mind, and these guys, they are moving to totally replace the fleet. With electrification of vehicles, this is already happening. But you know, I don’t think the mass population really understands that or realises that this is already happening, some people are still taking when they are buying now, combustion engine vehicles, they are thinking that hold it for a decade, this is not the case, because you will not be able to go into the major cities, let’s say in Berlin, or in Paris, or London, let’s say after 2030, you will not be able to even enter the city centres with his vehicle. So I think what what I’m hoping to see is, is is a shift in the mindset of the people that electrification is here to stay. And it’s actually one of the key solutions for the planet and global warming as a whole.

David Hunt 38:02
Yeah, yeah, no, I think you’re quite right, we get sometimes in a little bit of a bubble, because I’m sure like you, most of me and my team, we do nothing but talk to clean tech companies and sit in this space day in and day out. And sometimes when you go to an event where you meet a member of the family or a member of the public, and you overhear some conversations, there’s such a lack of awareness of what’s happening and what’s possible. Going back to your point to the fact that you know, after in three or four years time your combustion engine vehicle will struggle to go into many places, as you alluded to. Yeah, there are so many things, I think. I think people don’t often get the nature of disruption. And once we reach tipping points, how quickly things happen once those tipping points are reached, sadly, we see that in the climate, but obviously positively we see it in technology. So let’s again talk about because you touched on this yesterday, I always close with looking down at influences behind entrepreneurs and successful clean tech leaders, be the books, thought leaders, individuals, mentors, however, that inspire you and challenge you and keep you motivated and be good to explore. Yeah, what kind of inspired you along your journey and what continues to inspire you in the work that you’re doing?

Doron Myersdorf – StoreDot 39:12
Yeah, so for me, you know, Elon Musk is is really, you know, a mentor, because he was the first one to realise way before everybody else that a vehicle is something else. The next generation vehicle the electrified vehicle is first and foremost is a battery. And then there’s a bunch of software that sits on this battery and manages the vehicle, whether it’s the autonomous, the autonomous, the connected the shared, all this is software. So the whole experience of the driver is like entering into a smartphone right into an iPhone. And he realised it first and this is why he built the first Gigafactory in Nevada, together with with Panasonic at the time but You know, everybody is now following this lead. And, you know, if you look at diagnose, if you look at BMW or Audi, or everybody, they’re building their own battery factories because they understand that otherwise they’ll have the method, but they won’t have anything to power it with. So definitely batteries is the new oil and batteries is the new vehicle and with the right software, and this is something that I’ve learned first from Elon Musk, and he was right on and he continues to amaze us to amaze everybody with is forward thinking about where the market is going, not only in electrification but you know, in transportation in general. And even you know, putting a colony on Mars, this is something that we we are looking at Elon Musk to do for us.

David Hunt 40:49
Yeah, no, he and the and obviously the Tesla journey is a phenomenal one whether you know, some people are fanboys some some less so but you can’t alter the the dollar judgement that they’ve really moved the Dow forward. I think one of the interesting thing is like you say a lot of the OEM auto OEMs have come late to the party but are starting to obviously actually say build a giga factories and take the supply chain of batteries to heart I think we’ve really seen where so where again Tesla and Elon excels and a lot of the traditional automotive companies have struggled is around software. And the fact that as you say the vehicle of today is is a is a software with wheels rather than some wheels with some software

Doron Myersdorf – StoreDot 41:28
and the battery of course, because without the battery the vehicle you know is worthless, right I mean, the batteries is the centre it by the way, also it cost wise, even if we are looking on the let’s say $80 per kilowatt hour, which is our target for mass production. And you need like, like 100 kilowatt hour battery who even at we’re looking at six to $10,000 just the cost of the battery. And this is almost, you know, half a third of the vehicle depending on you know how luxurious vehicle it is.

David Hunt 42:01
Yeah, yeah, no, absolutely. Listen, don’t we could go on forever. We’ve been it’s been really fascinating to hear a little bit about your story and where started are and where you’re looking to go. Super excited to see further demonstrations of the technology assets evolved towards that point of actualization and market adoption will point the audience to various social media channels and to those online videos of examples of the charging in process and some of the smaller batteries. But in the meantime, it’s been great to talk to you and really looking forward to seeing the further evolution of the company.

Doron Myersdorf – StoreDot 42:36
Thank you, David. It was my pleasure. I always find something to

David Hunt 42:42
Hello, and thanks very much for joining some reason clean tech podcast. I hope you enjoyed that episode and appreciate you joining us again, please do subscribe if you haven’t already. And please do share any episodes that have particular interest within your community. If you do get an opportunity to write a review on Apple podcasts or your platform of choice, very much appreciated. Hopefully see you on the next episode.