Inventor of the Super Soaker, Dr. Lonnie Johnson, joins Matt to talk about his most ambitious project yet: the JTEC, a heat engine with no moving parts that converts low-grade waste heat straight into electricity. They get into how it actually works, why Johnson thinks it could run far more efficiently than what we use today, and the long road from a 2003 idea to the first commercial unit. Plus how a billion-dollar water gun quietly funded a quarter-century of clean-energy research.

Chapters

  • 00:00: Intro
  • 05:06: Dr. Lonnie Johnson Interview
  • 32:36: Previous Episode Feedback

Transcript

Dr Lonnie: You know, when I think about what I do, the challenge is what gets me going, what keeps me going. So this has been a fun project to work on. The impact. I'm excited about it. And so that's what, you know, caused me to remain focused on it. You know, I think that will have a huge, huge impact. We'll do the world some good. We'll have, you know, if I can reduce the level of conflict that we have over fossil fuels, I'll be. I'll feel very, very successful, satisfied that I've done something meaningful. Sean Ferrell: This week on Still to Be Determined, we're going to be talking about efficiency in engines, and we're going to be talking about it from an unexpected source, a source that might throw so much information your way that you might feel, let's say, inundated or saturated or maybe even soaked with information. Welcome, everybody, to Still to be Determined. This is the podcast that follows up on topics from Undecided with Matt Ferrell. I am not Matt Ferrell. I'm Sean Ferrell. With me, as always, is Matt. Matt, how you doing today? Little bit of a cold. Matt Ferrell: I caught something. I went down to Disney World. They invited me down to go check out some stuff they're doing with sustainability. And I got some kind of, I think, chest cold on that trip. So.

Sean Ferrell: Travelers. Travelers sickness. I am myself recently back from a trip abroad where my wife and I visited Italy. We had a lovely time and both of us got a head cold while we were there and did not let it stop us. We were still out and about. But for me, one of the highlights of our trip, and I just think this is funny, the thing we saw most often was the pharmacies, because every time they have pharmacies are all signed by a. A large green cross. And anytime I saw one of those large green crosses, we'd be walking in beautiful streets and the cobblestones and the old architecture, and I'd see a green cross down the street. I'd be like, maybe we can go in there. I can buy some more tissues. And. And I do fully believe this. This is not psychosomatic. The cold medicine in Europe works better. Matt Ferrell: It doesn't surprise me. Sean Ferrell: I got what was probably from a, like a marketing perspective, I got what was probably the equivalent of Dayquil, took it, and it worked. It was great. I was like, this is. But what is in this? What is. Okay, it's the equivalent of our Zyrtec. It's the equivalent of our Sudafed. It's. It's different levels and it's Like, I think it's just bad. Matt Ferrell: It's Italian, Sean. It's Italian.

Sean Ferrell: I guess what I'm recommending, Matt, is go to Italy and buy some drugs right now, and you'll feel. You'll feel right as rain. So. Yep. See? So anyway, in today's episode, because I was traveling, I was not a part of this conversation. But there is, luckily for you, all of our viewers and listeners, a long conversation that Matt has with Dr. Lonnie Johnson. And the conversation is around efficiency in heat engines. It is about new developments and changes that might take place to increase efficiency, which, of course, is a big part of sustainability. It's not just, oh, change the source of your energy production, it's change how the engines and the various things that we use work. So that's what is going on in this conversation today. But I mentioned at the beginning that there might be so much information coming your way that you will feel soaked with it. And the reason I said that was because Dr. Lonnie Johnson is known for something a little unexpected. Matt, what is Dr. Lonnie Johnson's resume that might surprise folks? Matt Ferrell: He invented the Super Soaker, of all things. The Super Soaker has an interesting part of this story that you'll see coming up in the interview. But it basically helped to fund his research into the stuff like building this new heat engine that's called JTEC that he's developed. But Dr. Lonnie Johnson has done everything. He's worked on the B2 bomber. He's worked on space missions for NASA. He's done so much stuff in his life. As a teenager, he built. This is in the 1960s. He built a robotron out of basically junkyard parts like his walkie talkie of his sisters, and using a tape deck for the memory bank of this robot that he built. Crazy stuff. The guy is beyond smart. He. And he's just a charming guy. He was really fun to talk to. Really, really interesting conversation.

Sean Ferrell: So on now to Matt's conversation with Dr. Super Soaker. I mean, Dr. Lonnie Johnson. Matt Ferrell: Dr. Lonnie Johnson, thank you so much for joining me today. I'm really excited to talk to you. Right before I hit record, I mentioned the more I was learning about you as a person and an engineer. As we were pulling this video around JTEC together, I started to get more and more nervous talking to you because you have done so much over the course of your life. I mean, you've worked on the B2 bomber. You worked on the Galileo missions. You're working on this new heat engine that could really change a lot of how we make our energy. But there was one that really caught my eye that made me go, what? You were in high school, you built a robot from spare parts. And one of the things I wrote was something like, you were using your sister's walkie talkie and a tape deck. Did your sister know what you were doing with her walkie talkie when you did? Dr Lonnie: My siblings tolerated me and my parents as well. So yeah, I used my siblings toys. You know, that robot back in the 60s. No one had robots back then, but I was watching robots on TV and nobody told me that those had people inside. So what the hell, I decided to try to build one. And he was full of remote control, the decoding system. I did transmit signals to his remote control. The decoding system, though, was all a mechanical computer. And the really real tape recorder was his memory. Uh, so he was a. Quite the. Quite the accomplishment. I didn't realize until many, many years later how significant that was.

Matt Ferrell: Yeah, when, when. When I read about the. The tape deck being the memory, I was just like, this isn't. This is insane. This is like home computers weren't really weren't a thing yet. And it was like, here you are as a high school kid building this. Um, were your parents, like, supportive of you doing this? Because I know it took you a while to build it. Dr Lonnie: Yeah, it took about a year. The robot. I literally built it in my mother's kitchen. She gave me a corner or area in the kitchen where I could and even one of her counters in the kitchen. So I had parts all over the place. You could imagine what it was like screws and wires and sawed off pieces of metal in the whole nine yards. Everything that it took to put them together. Matt Ferrell: That's awesome that your parents were really supportive like that. It's fantastic. Dr Lonnie: Now, to tell you about my rocket fuel story. It was actually literally mixing rocket fuel in the kitchen one day as well. And it literally lit off and almost set the kitchen on fire. Oh, my gosh. Matt Ferrell: I don't know if my parents would have been good with me mixing rocket fuel in the kitchen. Dr Lonnie: Yeah, well, it is funny. I got away with it, Matt Ferrell: I was going to say, and look at you now. I mean, you've had quite the storied history, but the thing that you're most known for, I need to bring it up, is what you were doing in the early 1980s, because this does relate to what you're doing now. You invented the Super Soaker, but you were doing something in your bathroom. With a technology that is something that I'm a geek for. I love heat pumps. What were you trying to do? What were you trying to change?

Dr Lonnie: Well, the concern I had at the time was Freons, which is destroying the ozone layer, bad for the environment. And I thought, what better working fluid for the environment than water? So instead of using Freon, I wanted to have a heat pump that would use water as a working fluid. Because water very large volume at low temperature per unit mass. Like it approaches 1,000 cubic feet, 850 or so cubic feet per pound at ambient temperature. So there's a lot of nothing there. So I needed an exotic way of grabbing all of that volume and compressing it. And I thought that maybe I could use a Bernoulli effect. So I was experimenting with some nozzles and trying to have high velocity flow that would create a low pressure to suck the water vapor in. So I shot this stream of water across the bathroom and at this little nozzle light machine. And I thought, you know, this is a lot of fun shooting this. Maybe I should, instead of having this thing hooked to the bathroom sink, what if I could make a toy gun that could hold a lot of water at high pressure and a little powerful stream coming out of it. So that was the genesis of the idea for the Super Soaker. Matt Ferrell: Because I do know that there was, there was that invention. Get the licensing of that with Hasbro is what led to you getting a lot of money from the licensing. And you took that money and used it in research and development into the things that like really get you motivated. Which is why the Super Soaker directly connects to what you're doing today, which is what I. A toy funded this. Yeah.

Dr Lonnie: Instead of water, just the hydrogen part of it. So, yeah, what happened was someone asked me if I would be interested in batteries. And so they were talking to me from an investment perspective. But. And I started looking into electrochemistry and sort of, you know, my, my professional formal training is as a mechanical engineer and nuclear engineer. So getting into electrochemistry, I started thinking about those kinds of processes. And so the JTEC that we're going to talk about is really a merge of thermodynamics and electrochemistry into this new type of engine. Matt Ferrell: So let's get into the JTEC because it's. Could you kind of explain kind of in layman terms what it is, how. How it works? Because I know there was also an analogy that you've given, and I think it was in a Ted Talk about like there's kind of an airport analogy that might help people kind of wrap their head around it.

Dr Lonnie: The way I like to explain engines, all engines work this way. You compress a working fluid at low temperature and you heat it up and expand it at high temperature. So if you think about a car engine, for example, you pull air in at low temperature, the piston comes up and compresses it, you inject the fuel, burn it, and you get the high temperature expansion, which gives you enough work to move the car forward as well as compress the next cycle. Even jet airplanes, you know, you pull air into the front, the turbines, compress it, you inject the fuel, burn it, heat it up, expand out the back enough with enough energy to turn the turbine to compress air and propel the airplane forward. Power plants, the same way, you know, you pump water to high pressure, heat it up through a boiler, expanded at high temperature to a turbine. So instead of pistons and turbines, I use electrochemistry to do the compression expansion process. And instead of steam, I'm using hydrogen as the working fluid. Matt Ferrell: And so you're basically turning heat directly into electricity without the needs of mechanical movement pistons. Why hydrogen? Dr Lonnie: Well, it's hydrogen and oxygen because we have ionic membranes that will conduct ions of hydrogen. It can use oxygen, but oxygen ion conductors are generally higher temperature material. Ceramics, our goal, immediate goal is focusing on waste heat, low temperature heat sources. Not just waste heat, but just low temperature heat sources in general. I'm really excited about geothermal, in fact, because if you can turn low temperature geothermal into power, then you can almost access it just about anywhere.

Matt Ferrell: Yeah, I've done several videos on that and talked to several companies. Uh, there's a company called Quaise that's got a technology that should let us get to more of the super hot rock. But what you're talking about with your technology, you wouldn't necessarily have to get to the super hot rock. You could use the lower temperature that is easier to get to. Dr Lonnie: One of our, in fact, our major investor is an oil and gas company that came to us looking for technology because they could convert the low temperature heat and abandoned oil wells into power. And this low temperature meaning is in the range of 150 degrees centigrade. Then just about 20% of the abandoned oil wells in the country could supply all the US power needs. And so that's a pretty exciting motivator. Matt Ferrell: That's wild. Dr Lonnie: Yeah, that is wild. So we're pretty hunkered down here to try and make it turn it into reality, we've proven the technology works. What we're focused on primarily is bringing the cost down. The challenge with the power density, for example. You know, I talked about how much volume water vapor takes at ambient temperature. Well, in general, the lower the temperature, the larger the conversion unit needs to be, the lower the energy density. That seems to be a pattern I'm noticing in technology in general. So making the power density higher, which of course relates directly to cost, which relates directly to commercial viability. So all of those things are where we're focused. Matt Ferrell: When I was reading about the technology, it seems like the membrane is like a very key component of how this is going to work. Has that been a challenging thing to dial in?

Dr Lonnie: We've done tests and built units using several different membranes. The one we started with was a phosphoric acid based polybenzimidazole membrane that we were excited about because it didn't require hydration or moisture water content that typical nathion and other membrane materials require. That material turned out to be a little bit too pliable for practicality. We're starting to look at it again. But you know, the membrane is a key component and we're now seeing some, you know, from the beginning my, my vision for the technology. Well, you know, the fuel cell industry got this huge, huge initiative to make fuel cells practical and I felt that I could piggyback on that industry. So when they had came up with really low cost, highly conductive membranes and I could just, you know, put that into the JTEC and we'll be up and going and even looking at it in some ways thinking, geez, considering the losses and issues with fuel cells, for example the activation energy for the oxygen, there's a, you know, 0.4 vote penalty right off the bat that you gotta pay. And then you've got the internal impedances, you've got heat dissipation and things like that, I'm thinking, geez, I could probably burn the hydrogen or burn a fuel directly and external and supply the heat, avoid catalyst poisoning and a lot of the other issues that fuel cells face and actually provide better efficiency. So all those things are on the table. Matt Ferrell: So it sounds like that you're still kind of experimenting with what the membrane is going to be in the final product.

Dr Lonnie: Yes, we found, we, we found that we have some that are working. What we are looking at now are actually lower cost membranes. So you know, we've got a baseline but no improvement. Costs are always, you know, organic. Even with the super soaking was, you know, get the price. Right. So everybody can afford to buy one. So. Matt Ferrell: Yeah, but there's, there's, there's another aspect to the JTEC that is I think key, which is the reversibility of it. Like it's a heat engine, so it can take heat and turn it to electricity, but you can actually take electricity and then use it to cool things, Right? Dr Lonnie: Correct. Matt Ferrell: How does that, is that key to the efficiency of the entire system? Dr Lonnie: Yes. You know, reversibility clearly is a direct relationship with efficiency. The, the primary loss component or issue with the, with it is the conductivity membranes because that's the internal impedance. So think of the JTEC as a battery. You know, it's pretty straightforward way to look at it. So if you short circuit the battery, you're going to be limited in the amount of current you get because the battery itself inside has internal resistance to how much current it can supply. Same thing with the JTEC. The membranes themselves will have resistance connectivity levels that, so when you try to pull current, that internal resistance will limit the amount of current you can pull. So having good conductivity membranes, having thin membranes is a way to also improve that. So getting membranes thin, identifying ones that have high conductivity, and of course keeping them hydrated, you've got, you know, for the pinion and methionine class membranes, water content is, is critical.

Matt Ferrell: And for the power that you can generate out of this, I know there's the theoretical where you're going to get, but I, I had read that lab in one of your tests, you had used 200 degree Fahrenheit water, which is just below the boiling point, so it's not that hot. Dr Lonnie: We generated power below 100 degrees. Matt Ferrell: Wow. How many watts were you able to get out of something like that? Like 100 watts. Dr Lonnie: A few hundred watts. You know, these are, you know, proof of concept demonstrations that we're doing. So yeah, we're able to generate power. The technology works. Like I said, our focus is on. Matt Ferrell: Yeah, because you're going to be getting into the kilowatts scale. I know you're working on developing a commercial unit that will be. What is it? What's the goal for the commercial unit? Dr Lonnie: Well, we want a 250 kilowatt is our baseline goal. Right. You know that that allows us to compete with generators and things like that. But you know, the waste heat sources that are available are just totally abundant. You know, if you compare it to the cost, the amount of waste heat, you're looking at the economical potential and all of that and compensating for that. And our performance goal has been about 60, 70% econo at that level. You know, there's $190 billion a year worth of electricity one could get just from waste heat. Matt Ferrell: It's, that's the thing is like, I'm a huge fan of this whole idea of capturing waste heat because there's so much energy we're just not taking advantage of. What are the markets that you think you'd be targeting first? You said geothermal with data centers. Dr Lonnie: Be a potential is my primary, my personal interest is geothermal because of the impact that it could have. But our initial markets will be waste heat from existing engines. Matt Ferrell: Okay.

Dr Lonnie: Yeah, just looking, you know, large engines that give off a lot of heat, particularly turbines and things like that, gas turbines. So. Yeah, and that's because we're focused initially on low temperature membranes. Eventually the idea would be to replace those degenerators themselves because by using higher temperature ceramic proton conductor membranes, we'll be able to operate in the 5, 600 degrees centigrade range, which means we can operate on primary heat sources and provide better efficiency. Matt Ferrell: The LCOE like what you're going to get for like how much it's going to cost per kilowatt hour or megawatt hour out of a system like this. Where do you think you're going to be initially and where do you think you're going to be, like in five years, 10 years from now for a system like this? Dr Lonnie: Ten years? Well, I'd say 10 years from now, our projection is that we'll be the lowest cost energy system in the world and technology in the world. In about five years we'll be competitive with other systems, but eventually we'll, you know, particularly when we bring on some of the more advanced approaches that we've been developing. That's a. Yeah, there's a lot to be excited about here. Yeah, yeah. Matt Ferrell: I've always, whenever I talk to innovators like yourself that are building a new technology, I know scaling up is like the hardest part of what is done because you can, you've done all the lab tests you've gotten, you're getting to where you want to be. But now you have to take it and scale it up to that 250 kilowatt unit.

Dr Lonnie: Go beyond that. And I think right now, I think it's fair to say that investors and funding is, particularly when you're talking about large scale systems, it's a little bit harder than the technology actually getting investors. For example, Super Soaker was not my first patent I invented a number of things, and a lot of them were in the hard part of science, a technically challenging area. And I was having trouble getting investors. And I thought to myself, geez, the heat pump I was working on, I put it aside because I realized the need to raise money and have, you know, in order to really. Because most people who have the resources are not technically savvy, and they make. They have to make financial decisions about things they don't understand. And so being an engineer, it's a little bit easier for me to take those risks. But when you start talking about scaling and scaling up manufacturing, you got to have people. And having my own resources and being able to prove the basic technology allows us to now, you know, show. Show something, put something on the table that people can look at. Matt Ferrell: I was curious, are there any specific numbers you could share around, like, the actual efficiency? Cause I know from the lab bench, I think it was, what, 17.1% efficient net efficiency. Like, what is the goal? Where are you now? Like, where do you expect to be Dr Lonnie: by the time we're expecting? At least 60% efficiency. Okay, yeah, 60. When I say 60%. 60% of Carnot. Matt Ferrell: Of Carnot. Dr Lonnie: Ultimately, the Carnot limit in the UK. So the Carnot is ideal, the maximum you can get. So 60% of the maximum is what we've demonstrated we can achieve. Matt Ferrell: And how does that compare to what we're doing today? Dr Lonnie: I think today we're around 30%. All right. It's a game changer.

Matt Ferrell: Yeah. There is something I've been reading. I mean, you've been working on this for. Was it the early 2000s? Is that when? Dr Lonnie: Yes, and a lot of, you know, we built some demos back then, just in small demonstration units. But again, the challenge has been the membrane materials. When we did the first ones with nathion, the challenge with it was hydrogen. Molecular hydrogen would diffuse through the membrane. So when you try to build the pressure on one side, having the hydrogen diffuse back through, it's a challenge. Back then, our goal was 70% of carnot. We compromised on that because of the diffusion issue, being able to scale the technology, build larger units, bring investors in, and so forth. Just like I said, the real challenge with the technology has been getting the program financed and being able to get it out of the lab and into production. So we were really, really happy when this oil and gas company came on board and said, hey, look, we're looking for a solution. We've got a real problem. Matt Ferrell: Yeah, I've read interviews from you from, what was it, 2018? 2017, where you've been like, oh, it feels like it's a few years out. But it's of course, way more than a few years now. But that to me is completely understandable because you were pushing the envelope on needing certain things. Dr Lonnie: When I think about how long it's taken me to do this, when I got the idea for super soaker, it was 1982. It wasn't until 1989 timeframe when, literally 89, when I met the people that liked it. A lot of false starts. And then by 92, it was number one selling toy in the world. So that took 10 years. So this is a lot harder science. Matt Ferrell: Oh, yeah. Way harder than a super soaker. Dr Lonnie: I often ask myself if would I have started this if I'd known all the obstacles and challenges? Probably because, you know, I would have been bored otherwise.

Matt Ferrell: So would it be fair that now it feels different, that it feels like we're very close now because. Dr Lonnie: Oh, absolutely. Matt Ferrell: You have the funding, you've got more about the, you've figured out more about the membrane. Dr Lonnie: You're, you're. Matt Ferrell: It feels like there's a difference. Dr Lonnie: We've even advanced how we do it. You know, the. One of the challenges, for example, membrane cost. So there are two stacks. We have now ways of using heat to do the hydrogen compression process and just have the high temperature stack produce electricity directly. So we use metal hydrides, we've got steam systems. So we've opened up the options that are available to us in terms of how we generate the pressure ratios to produce the electricity. So it's not just so. So we've got different configuration options. And what I'm seeing is that, you know, the. Depending on the application, you know, one configuration would be more suitable than the other. So there are multiple paths. Geothermal, for example, there's. There's one scenario where the metal hydride approach looks very attractive, where we have two metal hydride beds, one being cool while the other one's being heated. And you cycle a hydrogen back and forth across the membrane electrode assembly. That one because of some work that a company called Sage is doing where they're actually pumping water down one wellbore, expanding that and picking up heat, and then you bring that up while you're sending water down another well bore. So they're oscillating the water between two wellbores and picking up heat, which is directly compatible with the metal hydride approach. So there are different configurations that we're looking at, at that, you know, makes it attractive. Matt Ferrell: Oh, that's fantastic.

Dr Lonnie: It just depends on the application. So. Yeah. And steam, steam is a way to get to high temperature heat sources without having to have the membrane hot, for example. So we can use low temperature membranes in that configuration. So we're learning a lot. Matt Ferrell: And to make it clear to people who are listening, the hydrogen, it's, it's a closed loop. It's not like you're using the hydrogen. It's a closed loop. But I do have a question around the hydrogen because I know hydrogen is kind of tricky to work with because it's such a molecule. It likes to get away. Do you, are you having challenges with that or do you have, or is that not a big deal? Dr Lonnie: We've actually managed to manage to do pretty well, actually. So, yeah, we've done okay with that. Matt Ferrell: Now, if you could like snap your fingers and solve one JTEC problem, what would it be? Dr Lonnie: Investors? Matt Ferrell: Very fair. What's, what's been your favorite part of the journey? Because you've, we've talked about, you've basically been doing this for 20 years for JTEC. Like, what's been your favorite part of the journey of developing this?

Dr Lonnie: Well, you know, Matt, as you can imagine, you know, as a, you know, as an inventor, especially something, a project like this, you know, keeping it going, moving it forward, has its challenges, constantly ups and downs. But, you know, it's been a great ride. I mean, it's lots of things to get excited about, lots of things to get stressed out about, lots of things that get, get the adrenaline pumping and moving forward. You know, it's, you know, when I think about what I do, the challenge is what gets me going, what keeps me going. So this has been a fun project to work on. The impact, I'm excited about it. And so that's what, you know, caused me to remain focused on it. You know, I think that we'll have a huge, huge impact. We'll do the world some good. Will have, you know, if I can reduce the level of conflict that we have over fossil fuels, I'll be, I'll feel very, very satisfied that I've done something meaningful. Matt Ferrell: Wrapping back to Super Soaker just for a second. Are there any parallels in the invention arc between something like the toy versus what you're doing with JTEC. Are there any kind of parallels? Dr Lonnie: Well, of course, it's beating the pavement. A lot of false charts on the Super Soaker people. Everybody liked it. But, you know, execution was a challenge. You know, I had one company that really liked it, but they couldn't execute, another one in the middle of, you know, moving forward went bankrupt. Just one thing. Nothing to do with the water gun, but a lot of things that are outside of control. I mean, even working this project, you know, we, we've had to weather Covid and a number of other things and survived through all of those kinds of sets of effects. You know, so it comes with the territory. When you're trying to have a huge impact there, there are huge challenges.

Matt Ferrell: The, the main reason, like when I brought up in the beginning I was very nervous to talk to you is you're. You're 76 now. Dr Lonnie: Yeah. Yeah. So there's a reason why I've had a long history and I've. Matt Ferrell: Yeah, but it's, it's not even just that, but it's. What you've done in those 76 years is kind of like mind boggling. You've got like 140 patents. You're building this JTEC engine that could revolutionize how we generate our electricity. What does done look like for you? Because you are. It just feels like there's nothing that's gonna. It feels like you have so much more of you. But what is, what does done look like for you? Dr Lonnie: I don't know if done, you know, if retirement, if that's what you're asking about was a thing, I probably should have done that back when I had the funds from Super Soaker. So I don't. I'll tell you about when super. When JTEC is finished and you know, I have things that I want to work on that I don't have. The bandwidth is an ambient energy energy converter which seems we are taught in thermodynamics that you got to have a heat source and a heat sink and changes in the ambient temperature and environment humidity are things that we take for granted. So I've actually come up with and actually demonstrated myself. You have a heat source and heat sink. They just don't happen at the same time. So if you can actually transition and have an engine that does one part of the cycle when the temperature is high and another part of the cycle when the temperature is low, you can actually generate power from ambient temperature changes. The energy density there is very low. It's more suited for micropower type applications. I've got another approach as well. So pulling energy from the ambient environment is a nice challenge. So you know, doing. Taking on tough problems. I don't know. I don't know.

Matt Ferrell: I was going to say there is no done. For Dr. Lonnie Johnson, there is no done. You're going to be doing this forever. This is fantastic. Is there anything we haven't touched on with the JTEC tech that you think would be important to know? Dr Lonnie: We have a large team of engineers at this point working on the technology, so it's not just me. I think it's important to realize that this is not a one man shop. We've got a bunch of talented people helping to make this happen. Matt Ferrell: I get super inspired by people like yourself and all the engineers that are working for you, people that are actually like leaving a dent in the universe. They're building solutions to really tough problems. So I really appreciate what you guys are doing. I'm really excited to see how this shapes up. Dr Lonnie: Thank you. Thank you so much. Appreciate the opportunity to talk with you. Yeah, like I said, you're someone that I have a great deal of respect for and really appreciate the value that you bring to the world in terms of really exposing technology and challenging things that people are working on. So kudos to you as well. Matt Ferrell: Appreciate that.

Sean Ferrell: So viewers, listeners, was there anything in that conversation that you think you'd like to follow up on? Drop a note in the comments. If we have the opportunity to reach out to Dr. Johnson about follow ups, we will do so and we'll share those in a future episode. But for right now, before we log off, I'd like to visit the mailbag and see what some of you have had to say about some of our most recent episodes, which is Matt's conversation with Jorge Diaz Schneider in which they talked about do we finally, finally, finally, finally have a solid state battery? And Sean is hoping the answer is yes because we can't keep waiting for the answer to be yes because everybody keeps saying it's never going to happen. So some of the comments included those like this from Tick that who wrote targeting EVs for your first primary market represents millions of potential sales early on, at least thousands phones and other consumer products, billions and millions in rapid early development. With the higher profit margin available for such use cases, there are several major, very substantial benefits. I think this is the model that makes the most sense for a lot of these new techs, which is instead of trying to blanket the market in the public sector, you pick one niche product, lean heavily into that, prove that the technology works, and then grow on from there. Is that the thinking from Jorge and his team as far as like, how do we get this out there instead of relying on we've already had that product hits the market, it's on the shelves, you can go buy it now. But if you look under the hood, not everybody's happy with the claims that the marketing team put on the label.

Matt Ferrell: That is basically the tact. It's like finding a niche player, leaning into it, perfecting it with that niche player that's willing to take the risk on a new technology. Because that's the biggest thing is, like, if you're talking about, like, Apple's not going to be like, yeah, we'll do this in the next iPhone. It's like it needs to prove itself before it would ever hit that kind of level. Finding a niche player that you can kind of lean into, perfect the product, show that it's reliable, and then you'll can spin out from that. It's been interesting to see how, like, the company I spoke to, they are going the consumer electronics angle first, instead of EVs, where some companies are targeting EV makers first and then eventually it may roll down to consumer electronics. They're kind of coming at it from two different tacks, which is interesting. I've also talked to battery companies that lean into the military angle because the military has deep pockets. They have these very expensive but very robust batteries. The military can afford it. So it allows them to kind of perfect the technology, improve the manufacturing, to drive down the cost of manufacturing while they're doing it for the military. And then eventually they hope they'll be able to roll it out to consumer electronics and EVs after that. It's just interesting to see how all these different companies take different paths to try to achieve the same goal, which is, who's the first customer that makes the most sense? Sean Ferrell: Yeah. Yeah. And we don't have to like it. But that reminds me of Boston Dynamics and they've been for years now. We've watched the videos of like, look at this robot walk down these stairs. Look at this robot carry heavy packs. Look at this robot as we try Matt Ferrell: to push it over.

Sean Ferrell: Look at this robot do parkour. Look at all these robots. And now they have government contracts and are effectively in the process of building police and military drones as a first major product. And there was a bit of like, huh? In some circles. My response was, that makes perfect sense. Who did people anticipate would show up and say, we want to buy a thousand of these, if not the military police, so we don't have to like it. But it does happen and it might be happening in cases like this. There was also this from junkers who wrote in to say, this is just in time for the Donut to RIH, rest in hell. Turns out apparently anyway, that that was a boutique NMC lithium chemistry, and it's really doubtful that it could be made cheaply. Hopefully this one will turn out better. Otherwise we're going to be stuck with CATL for the next few decades. So this comment for me raised two different paths of conversation. One is, is the donut question mark answered? Because when it first came out, it was the can every claim that's being claimed actually claim a claim? And are we done get to those claims? And the other side is CATL for the next few decades. Is that legit or is that again, just leaning into the pessimism just because that's a safer place to be? So your response to both of the either order.

Matt Ferrell: The first thing is the Donut thing I think has been answered. A good friend of mine has. His name's Ryan. He's from the channel Ziroth. I've had him on the podcast a few times. He's helped me with some of my videos. He and I are good friends. He put out a video just this last week. He spent weeks doing a deep investigative reporting on the Donut stuff. And his video he put out last week is like 50 minutes long. And it is so worth watching because it is. He breaks down the crazy corporate architecture that the Donut team put out to try to obfuscate things and got interviews with basically like whistleblowers from different companies that are associated to Donut. It is a fantastic bit of reporting he did. And it's definitely not what's been reported by Donut. There's a whole bunch of stuff that just points at it doesn't look like what they claim it is. And so there's something going on behind the scenes that's still gonna come to light. But Ryan's reporting basically proves that what they claim it is, it's not. And they probably will not be able to deliver what they were promising. And they were taking money from individual investors. And so there's probably gonna be legal ramifications over in the EU as they're. They're already being investigated right now. So it' like there's going to be some stuff that's going to shake out over time, but the donut stuff, basically, yeah, it, it was too good to be true. And it's. It's a shame people who do that Sean Ferrell: are not helping the cause. Matt Ferrell: Yes, yes. People I know that's who are my

Sean Ferrell: second agonistic people who are antagonistic to sustainability efforts. Climate change as a winnable fight, like all the people on the other side of the aisle who are just like, this is all garbage, are going to run with that. This is all snake oil. It's a scam. There's nothing to see here. Now go to the gas station and fill up your tank. It's like, that's what will come out of this. It's so. It's infuriating from a certain degree.

Matt Ferrell: Like, just in the last episode of TBD, I interviewed CEO of a Solid State battery company. I've interviewed people across the spectrum of different battery companies. And over the past couple months, whenever I've talked to these people, I always, off the record, ask them, what's your take on the Donut situation? Is this impacting you in any kind of way? And the answer is the same thing every single time I ask this question. It is. Oh, my God. Yes, it is having such a negative impact on all these other battery companies that are not scamming. They have actual things they're doing. But the problem is, it's because Donut soaked up so much of the attention and basically was like a little mini Theranos of the battery industry. It's created this thing where potential customers are going, the Donut stuff. You guys sound too good to be true too. You know, like, you know, no. Or they're just going to not put the funding in because they're a little gun shy now because of all the stuff that's shaken out from Donut. It's had a ripple effect the entire industry that is horrible. It's. It's just this horrible impact at large. And that's the part that kills me is like, we need this stuff and you have a couple of bad apples, that just spoils the bunch. And it's, and it creates this attitude of, I get why people are skeptical and I get why people fall into this. It's all just a big mass of nothing's ever going to happen. And I'm constantly trying to push against that. And in videos I've done in the past, people bring up Theranos, and now people are going to just keep bringing up Donut. It's just like it, it hurts my soul, Sean. Sean Ferrell: Yeah. Matt Ferrell: To see this happen. Sean Ferrell: Yeah. Very frustrating. So the other side of my question, CATL, for the next few decades, somebody will get there. Matt Ferrell: Oh, for Solid State. Sean Ferrell: Yeah.

Matt Ferrell: People are there. Like, it's, it's, it's happening. The problem is people have an expectation of. When you say Solid State, if it's not all Solid State, it's not Solid State. So it's all crap. And for me that's not my attitude. It's more about what are the claims that it of performance and safety and does it meet those criteria. Who cares if there's a catholite on the cathode side, you know, a gel of some kind, if it still can take a puncture, if it still doesn't burst into flames, if it's still very safe, if it still gives you the energy density, it's like, who cares? Who cares? Let's not get caught up on like semantics of all solid state or semi solid state. It's more about these batteries are making steps towards the ultimate goal, which are batteries that are incredibly safe, incredibly energy dense and super cheap to make. We are, we are making that progress. You can just look at the past decade. It's happening and it's continuing. But to try to make some kind of litmus test around solid state of if there's any kind of liquid in it, it's a scam. That's something I keep trying to push back on and we need to rethink how we're approaching this. So CATL, for the next few decades. No, I don't, I don't agree with that. I think we're going to see some amazing batteries from others, not just CATL in the next few years. There's, there's a lot of hopeful stuff happening, right Is what I would say.

Sean Ferrell: Our final comment is the best, worst comment. But it's not actually a bad worst. It's a really heartwarming worst. This is from Lyle who said, Sean, Sean, why hast thou forsaken us? Hope you had a fantastic vacay. I did. Lyle, thank you so much. Your message and some other messages from other people I was very surprised to see when I went into the comments to to pull things for conversation today, a lot of people weighing in to say, like, why isn't Sean here? It warmed the cockles of my heart, both I and my cockles. Thank you and yes, I appreciate the sentiment. I did have a wonderful vacation. Viewers, listeners, jump into the comments. Let us know what you thought about Matt's conversation with Dr. Super Soaker and our conversation post that conversation. Is there anything you think we missed? Jump into the comments, let us know. We look forward to hearing what you have to say. As always, your comments, liking, subscribing, sharing with your friends are all very easy ways for you to support the podcast. And if you'd like to support us directly, you can click the join button on YouTube or go to stilltbd.fm. Click the join button there. Both ways allow you to throw coins at our heads. We appreciate the bruises. And then we get down to the heavy, heavy business of chasing each other around the front yard with squirt guns. Thank you so much, everybody, for taking the time to watch or listen. We'll talk to you next time.