The Future of Marine Electrification: How Batteries Are Powering the Maritime Industry

In this episode of the Climate Confident podcast, I had the pleasure of chatting with Chris Kruger, founder of AYK Energy, a leader in marine battery innovation. Together, we delved into the exciting yet challenging world of maritime electrification and the technologies driving its growth.

Chris shared insights into the evolution of marine batteries, from their humble beginnings powering communications systems to today's sophisticated propulsion applications. We discussed why lithium-iron-phosphate (LFP) batteries are emerging as the preferred choice for safety and cost-effectiveness, even as legacy technologies like NMC continue to dominate in some corners of the sector.

A key takeaway was the potential of containerised battery solutions, which could revolutionise short-sea shipping by offering flexibility and scalability. Chris drew parallels between these modular systems and the old stagecoach model—simply swap in fresh batteries, and you’re ready to go. It’s a clever way to overcome range limitations while easing infrastructure challenges.

We also explored the comparative merits of green fuels such as hydrogen and ammonia versus batteries. While hydrogen holds promise for long-distance voyages, Chris highlighted batteries’ superior efficiency and practicality for short-sea routes. He also shed light on the role of hybrid systems as a stepping stone toward full electrification.

Looking to the future, Chris explained how advances like solid-state batteries could transform marine electrification entirely, potentially enabling transoceanic voyages. It’s a bit further off, but the trajectory is promising.

Finally, we touched on the broader decarbonisation landscape and how companies like AYK Energy are making sustainable solutions affordable and accessible by leveraging economies of scale in manufacturing.

Whether you’re an industry insider or just curious about maritime innovation, this episode offers a grounded and thoughtful look at the technologies shaping a greener future for shipping.

Transcript

Chris Kruger: 0:03

This is a very easy way of extending your range on a vessel. You have the battery swap option in that you can quickly swap and in a short period of time, like the old stagecoach, you know, you, you, you have the horses waiting for you and you look new horses to go, that kind of thing. I think that's going to be the way we will overcome the distance problem with short sea shipping.

Tom Raftery: 0:26

Good morning, good afternoon, or good evening, wherever you are in the world. This is the Climate Confident podcast, the number one podcast showcasing best practices in climate emission reductions and removals. And I'm your host, Tom Raftery. Don't forget to click follow on this podcast in your podcast app of choice to be sure you don't miss any episodes. Hi, everyone. Welcome to episode 198 of the climate confident podcast. My name is Tom Raftery. And before we kick off today's show, I want to take a moment to express my gratitude to all of this podcasts. Amazing supporters. Your support has been instrumental in keeping this podcast going. And I'm really grateful for each and every one of you. If you're not already supporter, I'd like to encourage you to consider joining our community of like-minded individuals who are passionate about climate. Supporting the podcast is easy and affordable with options starting as low as just three euros or dollars, which is less than the cost of a cup of coffee and your support will make a huge difference in keeping the show going strong. To become a supporter you simply click on the support link in the show notes of this, or any episode or visit tiny url.com slash climate pod. Now in today's episode, I'll be talking to Chris Kruger's CEO of AYK Energy. And in the coming weeks, I'll be talking to Katie Anderson, senior director of EDF, Stefan Mueller from SAP, Charlie Angelakos who's the Chief Sustainability Officer of McCain's the chip people. And Anders Lindberg President at Wartsilia Energy. So some suburb episodes coming up, don't touch that dial as they say in radio land. And in the meantime, back to today's episode, as I mentioned, I'm talking to Chris Kruger, Chris, welcome to the podcast. Would you like to introduce yourself?

Chris Kruger: 2:16

Hi, Tom. Yes. My name is Chris Kruger, and I am the founder of AYK Energy, a marine battery company.

Tom Raftery: 2:24

Okay. And what are you making marine batteries for, Chris?

Chris Kruger: 2:33

Well, marine batteries are really used for propulsion today. In the past, marine batteries was used for communication and so on. But since 2010 the, the industry started growing and we have now batteries that's powerful enough to be used for propulsion. And as such, we can use it on really any kind of vessel. It makes the most sense for, for short sea tripping. That's where it makes the most sense, but it can be used anywhere for tail loads, for propulsion, for anything like that.

Tom Raftery: 3:03

And how did you get into this space?

Chris Kruger: 3:05

That's an interesting one. I'm an electrical engineer and I was in the semiconductor industry. And being in Vancouver which is really a hotspot for lithium ion batteries. The first lithium ion battery was was was built there by Ewan Molley. And it's still in Maple Ridge. When I was looking around, the semiconductor industry is very it's very much a rat race. And I got tired of it. I said, I want to do something for the environment. As you grow older, this happens. I discovered, the lithium ion battery. There were guys very close to my to my location and I started chatting with them and eventually they had a need and I, I made the move. That was with automotive first. And then in, in 2010, I joined Corvus and as the first engineer in, and I built the team. So that's how I got into the, into the marine space.

Tom Raftery: 3:52

Okay. And how or why did you go about setting up AYK Energy?

Chris Kruger: 4:00

Yeah, EYK is really in response to the need from the industry for a more cost effective battery. The marine battery is really a lot more expensive than what the batteries for stationery is. And the reason for that is mostly because we don't have the volumes. And we also manufacture this not in a country where manufacturing is what they do. I have now set up a factory in China, in Zhuhai. And we are very close to the supply chain. And by doing that, we can bring quality from, from our experiences since 2010 to the table to make sure we use best known methods and we have the safety we require, and we can use the benefit of the Chinese manufacturing know how to bring the cost down. And that was really the main reason for that.

Tom Raftery: 4:49

Okay. And in the ten years or so, you've been in the space. What's been the most surprising thing you've come across or learned?

Chris Kruger: 4:58

Yeah, that's a, that's an interesting one. The surprising thing is that, people will talk about we, we have to go green. We have to do something until it hits the bottom line. And then they're not so interested anymore. So if it's not subsidized, then it's very difficult. Now that's changing. I see more and more people are getting excited about this. And of course the prices of batteries come down. When we started in 2010 it was more than a thousand dollars a kilowatt hour, and I just released a version of a battery at, a high energy, low power battery at 300 dollars a kilowatt hour for the marine space. So you can see it's dropped quite a bit. So I think the $300 is, this is the area psychologically where people start saying, well, this starts making sense. And your ROI, your return on investment can be a lot quicker.

Tom Raftery: 5:48

And marine electrification does kind of seem to be picking up steam a bit. But how far are we really from seeing widespread adoption across different types of vessels. And what do you think, apart from cost, what do you think is the most significant barrier to entry right now?

Chris Kruger: 6:07

I think complexity that's a big one. It's very difficult to be a crystal ball gazer. You know, in 2012 we said, Oh, the big tsunami is coming. And it didn't really pan out. It took quite a while for batteries to take off. But what I've seen in the last six months, even, or it started picking up in 22 already, is that the batteries we quoted were kind of test batteries, smaller batteries, a few hundred kilowatt hour with a few bigger one megawatt hour battery sizes. And nowadays, one megawatt is the norm. Five megawatt is common. We do 25 megawatt hour. We're actually about to get orders for 25 megawatt hour and we quote up to 100 megawatt hour. So by 2030, we will for sure have 100 megawatt hour installed somewhere. So it looks like there's a lot more uptake. I can say also that by talking to people, I think we can with confidence say that any new boat has some form of battery on it. Any new boat vessel, not retrofits, new boat vessel will have some form. If it's not propulsion, it's a tail load or something to help smooth it out.

Tom Raftery: 7:17

Okay. well, when we talk about, decarbonization of shipping, batteries often come up alongside hydrogen fuel cells, or some people talk about the potential for maybe ammonia or things like that. Could you walk us through how these technologies compare both in terms of emissions reduction and more importantly, I guess, practicality.

Chris Kruger: 7:43

Yeah. I'm a battery guy, so I'm a bit biased, but in any case, you need battery for all of these green fuels. There's always a time when the green fuel cannot supply the power as quickly or wind down as quickly. And that's where the battery comes in. So fuel cells use batteries. The battery, the advantage, if you, let's just compare it to hydrogen. You do not have to store this energy and move it. It's not like hydrogen that you have to have special supply chains. You can use the current supply that you have. Of course, it costs money to upgrade it, but there's other ways you can, deal with that as well. You can have green energy being generated by solar or wind and you can, get a very high efficiency from that electrical power generated to it being used. So the, the well to wake the, the old term that we use the well to wake ratio is very high. It can be above 90%. If you look at hydrogen and you use the electricity to create the hydrogen generated, you move it and you store it and you use it again with all the efficiency losses. That's way below 30%, maybe 40, but I've, I've heard numbers down to 20% in some cases. If you can get to the place where you can use batteries, then I think a battery is way more efficient. The drawback of course, is distance. Batteries will be ideal for short seashipping, so anything close to the coastal waters, across ocean is not there yet. There's where your hydrogens and things like that comes in. It's, it's really a much cleaner and easier way to deal with your energy than having a fuel tank on your vessel that you, that you have to deal with and, and charge and so on and so on. So I think batteries in the long run batteries will become the dominant means of storing, storing energy for, for short seashipping.

Tom Raftery: 9:41

Okay. And longer term for transatlantic or container shipping, do you see batteries eventually taking that place as well, or will it forever be some kind of hybrid?

Chris Kruger: 9:53

I actually see that. I think that it'll take longer, but as you get the energy density to go up. So just to quote a few numbers for you today at the cell level the LFP that we use. Maybe let's talk about system level. The system level, the best we do is 140Wh per kilogram. The NMC guys can take that up to 166Wh per kilogram. If you go to solid state, and you do two solid state batteries, which is still maybe, it's maybe a decade out, but it's it's, it's getting closer and closer. Those batteries, you're going to see energy densities of 700 and more at the system level, maybe even up to a thousand Watt hour per kilogram? So when it gets to that kind of level, now it becomes more feasible that you will be able to do cross ocean. We're already working on, on, on things like that, on preparing for that kind of solution. It's definitely a possibility.

Tom Raftery: 10:49

And you said 1 megawatt hour, 5 megawatt hours are pretty common and standard nowadays. I mean, just for just for people who are listening who might not know what that means to kind of contextualize it. I drive a Kia Niro EV and the battery and that is 64 kilowatt hours and a megawatt hour is obviously, you know, 20 times that.

Chris Kruger: 11:14

Correct.

Tom Raftery: 11:16

another 5 times again for 5 megawatt hours.

Chris Kruger: 11:18

Exactly. Exactly.

Tom Raftery: 11:19

So, we're talking big batteries here.

Chris Kruger: 11:21

We just installed a 12 megawatt hour battery already on two vessels. I believe this is the biggest one today. It's not the biggest one that's on order, but the biggest one that's actually installed and has been, has been sea trials. It's on sea trial. The vessel is on its way from China to Europe. So it is, it is here. If you think of 12 megawatt hour, then you can think how many automobiles that is.

Tom Raftery: 11:45

Yeah, that's amazing. And when you say it's been used for propulsion, is it being used solely for propulsion or is it some kind of hybrid drive mechanism?

Chris Kruger: 11:56

Well, the vessel I just mentioned, it's a hybrid they, they still use fuel. But typically the ferries that's in Norway, there's, there's a lot of full electric ferries.. Are working on full electric tugboats. Tugboat is ideal for this if you can get your energy density up. And when you get to the 25 megawatt hour battery type, this is full electric ferries when you start getting to that. Definitely when you get to the 100 megawatt hour range then you can, you can do a sailing, like a 20 hour sailing with a very big vessel on that kind of battery.

Tom Raftery: 12:28

You mentioned, you know, the likes of NMC batteries versus LFP batteries. For people who are unfamiliar, what's the difference between these two?

Chris Kruger: 12:39

Well at the most simplest level LFP is lithium iron phosphate and NMC has got nickel, manganese and cobalt in the cathode. The iron phosphate the reason we are going that direction, it's a much safer shell. So if you ever get into thermal runaway it's, it's a very slow reaction, whereas with NMC, it generates its own oxygen when it goes into thermal runaway. And it becomes quite a violent reaction. So we did design with that. It's, it's a, it's a dominant chemistry NMC today in marine, although I think the shift is coming to LFP because of the safety. And we designed for the safety. So of course the batteries are safe, but just the fact that when the batteries get so very large, a hundred megawatt hour, you really do not want to have a thermal runaway that's going to propagate. So for that reason, the LFP is the more desired chemistry. And, the argument people always make between the two is look with with NMC you can get much higher energy density. Well today we can see that we we are not at the same level with LFP, but we're not that far away. We within 20% or less. At the system level, not at the cell level, at the system level.

Tom Raftery: 15:02

Okay. And What is the difference in terms of price between the two?

Chris Kruger: 15:09

Oh, the LFP is much cheaper because the raw materials let's start with the raw materials is much, much cheaper. And then on top of that China, where we get most of the cells today is manufactured in China. They concentrate on LFP. So if you look at pure volume, LFP has the highest volume. That's being manufactured in the world today. And that's how we could get to this number of 300 per kilowatt hour. It's that manufacturing volume that allow that together with the LFP. So with the LFP, you don't have exotics. If you look at NMC, you look at nickel, manganese, cobalt, these are all exotic metals and that drives the price up.

Tom Raftery: 15:50

And so, given that, why are other marine battery manufacturers slower to adopt LFP versus NMC?

Chris Kruger: 16:01

Well, it's this, I can only speculate.

Tom Raftery: 16:05

Okay,

Chris Kruger: 16:06

think, I think one of the things is that if you have a battery that's working on NMC and it is successful and it it's safe and it's kind of the industry standard, then why change? It's a lot of work to change the, the LFP. The drawback of the LFP is that it's more difficult to determine the state of charge of the battery. It's got a very flat discharge curve, not that it means a lot for a lot of the listeners, but your accuracy of your BMS has to be of measuring the voltages and currents has to be way, way, way, way more accurate than it's required with with NMC. And therefore NMC is easier to work with. So there's a barrier that you have to cross over. But we see today that we get more and more RFQs requests for quotations, where the, where the owner says, I want LFP. I don't want NMC. So it is moving in that direction, but it, it'll take a few more years before LFP will be the dominant battery. There's always space, you know, there's, there's even if you'd look at the battery space today in Marina's LFP NMC, and I left out LTO, which is a titanium battery. The energy density is really bad there, but it can cycle forever. And very expensive. It has its place. There are certain applications where you, where you need that. So you need to look a little bit of that at the application before you select your chemistry.

Tom Raftery: 17:31

Interesting. And looking at the likes of the form factors, I mean, you mentioned cell versus system level, but what, what kind of form factor do they take in a boat? I can imagine there's a lot of container ships out there, for example, is it possible to put these batteries in those typical kind of containers that ships are

Chris Kruger: 17:55

Yeah.

Tom Raftery: 17:57

architected to transport

Chris Kruger: 18:00

Correct. We, we are actually looking at that today. This is kind of a common thing in the industry. People are just starting to play with it. Of course, one container is very expensive. So it's not something you, you do with, without having somebody who want to buy it. It becomes an expensive exercise. But the typical levels you see in a 20 foot container today is about one megawatt hour. It's quite common. We can push that up. We have designs up to two and a half megawatt hour in a, in a 20 foot container. And we are now working at, in a 20 foot container standard ISO 20 foot container space to, to have five megawatt hour, and this is with LFP. It, it is moving in that direction. The advantage there is that your handling equipment is quite standard. If you are in any port where they handle this and maybe they have a reefers they need to plug in electrically, then you, you have access to those kinds of infrastructure. So that's something to consider. And on top of that this is a very easy way of extending your range on a vessel. You have the battery swap option in that you can quickly swap and in a short period of time, like the old stagecoach, you know, you, you, you have the horses waiting for you and you look new horses to go, that kind of thing. I think that's going to be the way we will overcome the distance problem with short sea shipping.

Tom Raftery: 19:25

One of the big, topics in the EV space is of course the infrastructure. So how does that work with shipping with maritime? I mean, there's an advantage that maritime has in that you only have certain number of ports. So people go from port to port or Harbor to Harbor. So there's obviously infrastructure in place, but is there charging infrastructure in place?

Chris Kruger: 19:54

So one of the biggest problems that people have it's very expensive to upgrade your electrical supply to a boat. Just to get the energy there is, is, is, so it's a benefit. You don't have that many. The drawback is if you make all the ships electric, you have no chance of charging. The solution is again this containerized solution. It is, it is quite easy to truck the containers in and to swap them out with charge stations with, with green energy. So that would be, that would be the obvious drive for the industry is to go to places where you can charge it with wind or solar or whatever. And, and you can have a constant stream of batteries coming through. And as your energy density go up, it becomes much more feasible to do this kind of thing.

Tom Raftery: 20:38

It's funny thinking of shipping, moving back to wind energy, which is where it kind of really started out.

Chris Kruger: 20:45

It is, isn't it? It is, isn't it? It is really the most efficient is the wind, you know, it doesn't cost anything.

Tom Raftery: 20:54

It's nice.

Chris Kruger: 20:55

It's just there. Yeah, yeah.

Tom Raftery: 20:57

Looking at global decarbonisation goals. I mean, we've seen a lot of big maritime companies talking about the fact that they're going to go green in their transportation. Maersk is an obvious one that comes to mind. How significant is the sector's shift to electrification in achieving those targets? And are we moving fast enough?

Chris Kruger: 21:19

Well, we can never move fast enough. I think we're, about a decade behind. We should have started a decade earlier. No, I think, I think the move is absolutely there. You see more and more big companies. They put their money where their mouth is. So they are starting to, investigate this break very closely and trying to see what they can do to achieve it. You know, in the end, it could be a lot more cost effective. If you have the infrastructure set up to have electric propulsion, full electric propulsion, rather than having to have diesel or something like that. We've seen a change on the diesel electric ferry I did in 2012 And that was still a fairly expensive battery, it was a 3.2 megawatt hour battery, no, 2.7 megawatt hour battery to be exact. The ROI on that was, was one year. The return on investment was one year, and it didn't all come from fuel savings. It was things like they took a diesel out and they run it on batteries most often as they can, they run the diesels that's remaining at high efficiency, cleaning, service goes down on the diesels, you know, maintenance, things like this. It is definitely if you can go full electric, it becomes a lot more cost effective. And you can see this with automobiles as well. You know, when you start, I'm always waiting to see when, when the, the governments are going to step in and say, now we, now we charge you for using electric vehicle on the road. they need to get that back there from somewhere. If fuel is not there anymore, what are we going to do?

Tom Raftery: 22:55

Yeah. I can see that happening as well. Because as you say, if people are no longer buying fuel, fuel tax is a big source of revenue for government. So they will have to start charging by number of kilometers driven per year or something similar, I guess. Well, that's.

Chris Kruger: 23:10

Exactly, because if you charge from your own solar on your roof, which is quite capable or quite possible, then how do you, how do you tax for that? So it probably will go to another matrix than the energy. That's a different speculation you can have.

Tom Raftery: 23:26

A lot, Chris, of industries are talking about lowering costs for green tech, but you're actually doing it with AYK batteries. Is that just a unique advantage of manufacturing in China? Or is there a broader lesson here for scaling climate tech in other industries?

Chris Kruger: 23:44

That's a very interesting question. I think we will find that when you can mass produce, then you're, you are going to drop the prices. And there is definitely a a tendency in that direction. So it's that mass adoption. You need to get to a place that you make enough of something that you can get the cost benefit from it. So with batteries and marine space specifically, this is where when we made the decision to manufacture in China, it was to hit of that advantage early on. We can benefit from, from that high volume manufacturing. So I would say any industry, you need to get to a place where you can make it cost effective that people can afford it. Or it gets in the realm where some people will say, yeah, this is something I can do. And you know, the, look at the automotive industry, it's getting there. You know, cars are getting to a point where depends on who you talk to. There's some of the, the gear heads that says, no diesel will, will always, or petrol always be there, but I don't think it's true. People, the, the young people are starting to adopt electric cars. And when you're 20 somethings and 30 somethings start adopting that, then the writing is on the wall, in my opinion. So it's that kind of thing. You need to get the volume. If you can get the volume and the technology, then it'll go. You either have to get subsidies or, and that's not good because then it gets a whole bunch of people in that's not really shouldn't be in the industry, or you need to have a work with some taxes or something and just plain old, drop the price, make it cost effective. The important thing here is it doesn't help to drop the price and not have a business for maybe future gains. You need to be able to manufacture at a decent margin that you can survive. So it's, but that's, it's, it's not rocket science, I guess.

Tom Raftery: 25:38

Okay. And who primarily are your customers? Is it end users? Or is it ship makers or? combination.

Chris Kruger: 25:47

It's really. It's really everybody. It starts with the owner. The owner must want it. Sometimes we get integrators convincing the owners to the in integrator for guys like Wartsila, ABB, Siemens. And they integrate electric systems on vessels. I believe very strongly that as the batteries get bigger, the price component is so big compared to the rest of the electrical equipment that the yards, it's like your general contractor for building a house, the yards will start to buying the batteries directly. Today it's not like that, but or mostly not like that. The yards are going to buy it. At that point in time, if you are not established it becomes a lot more difficult. If you want to buy a battery without a name, name brand, and now the yard has to, they want to bring the price down, but they want to have something that's going to work. So the owner still has a big say in this. It's not commodity yet, not in Marine, at least. But it's going in that direction. So when you ask who do we sell to, really, we have to touch everybody. If you don't touch the owner and even the designer, you have to, the, the, the marine engineers that design the vessels, you need to start there or the architects and the integrators and the yard. So it's, it's across the whole board.

Tom Raftery: 27:03

Nice. And you recently worked on the H2 barge 2 in Holland, which integrates your batteries with hydrogen fuel cells. So how much of the maritime industry's future do you think will rely on hybrid systems like this, versus all electric?

Chris Kruger: 27:23

I think we will have a time frame where there will be a need for hybrids or the hybrids will be more, you know, it's like a hybrid car as well. You do get electric cars, but the hybrids is kind of people want to, the range anxiety is always there. Having said that, the electrical, full electric vehicles, vessels, cars, doesn't matter. It's way more simple than a hybrid. A hybrid is a very complicated beast. So if you want to get the cost out of your transportation, then to go full electric is the obvious way to go. But it will take some time. So hydrogen, there's a big hype on hydrogen. People love the idea of hydrogen. I'm not a fan, but I will not go into that. It's a fuel. It's a fuel. So what, whatever fuel people want to use hybrids is definitely today still the dominant and it will take a bit of time. Maybe by 2030, we will see more electric vessels, full electric vessels. Maybe it might even be dominant by then. It's a possibility.

Tom Raftery: 28:27

Good, good, good, And you mentioned earlier in passing solid state batteries as well. Are they like the holy grail that everyone's hoping for? And when do you see them becoming the standard?

Chris Kruger: 28:40

Well, well, we have to get a little bit more technical if we want to explain that, but let, let me try and make it very simple. So solid state batteries, the idea is that you take the electrolyte that is flammable out of the battery and replace it with a medium that's, solid. So now it's not flammable electrolyte anymore. And therefore the battery becomes way, way, way, way safer. That's a big deal. You could also use things like different materials for your anode. So you can use high, high energy materials. You can use actually lithium metal for the anode. And that's when you go to lithium metal where it gets really safe Today we have hybrids, hybrid batteries, so to speak. You have a semi solid, so you still have liquid, but some solids to bond the electrical poles through the electrolyte to to connect, to get the ions to move, you need to have some kind of liquid. So these are not as safe. The energy densities might climb up to 400 Watt hour per kilogram at the cell level, but to really get to that solid state, solid state it'll be above a thousand per kilogram. And that's going to take, in my opinion, before it's cost effective, it is still a decade out. It may be a little bit shorter, but it's a while because you need to get your supply chain under control. The materials are complicated to work with, you know, lithium is reactive to, to moisture. So just to manufacture the lithium and get it into the battery becomes a complicated thing. And then the volume, you know, it's, it's okay to have, we have these batteries today, but very small. Even a few larger ones, but to produce them cost effectively where the LFP is today. This is going to be still a while before we get there.

Tom Raftery: 30:26

Okay. And you mentioned the cycle life as well of LTOs being extremely high. Do solid state batteries have a similar advantage?

Chris Kruger: 30:35

Well, not really, it's different aging mechanisms you have there. If you, if you have the very high, cycle or the very high energy density, then you have a solid lithium anode. So now instead of intercalating the ions in between the lattice structure into the crystalline structure between, it doesn't bond. You plate the lithium onto the anode and you unplate it when you go the opposite way. So it's a it's a plating process. Mechanically that creates a lot of stress on the battery. So the, I would say the aging mechanisms are going to change. Today, solid state cycle life is not as high potentially as, the other cells. Definitely not at the LTO level. And we have to, the industry has to overcome that before the cycle life will be that high. The question is, do you, do you really need that? You know, if you, if you look at something like a, like an LTO low energy, but it's got 20,000 plus cycles where The standard battery today hovers around 4,000 to 6,000 cycles, so it can last that much longer, but it's two, three times less energy dense. You're probably with 10,000 cycles, if you do a single cycle a day, for instance, that's in 3,000 cycles. It's specialized applications where you need that. I don't think that is The aim is to get to the five to 6,000 cycles kind of, kind of cycle life.

Tom Raftery: 32:04

Okay. A left field question, Chris. If you could have any personality, any famous person, alive or dead, fictional or otherwise, to be promoting batteries for marine transportation, who would it be? And why?

Chris Kruger: 32:27

Oh, that's a difficult question. I, I think I would, I would like a guy like, for instance, like Pierce Brosnan. He would be a guy that I would I would like to, you know, with a little bit, I think back is so sophisticated and he was always, He's one of my favorite James Bond. So it's he's got that sophistication or sophisticated feel about him. So a guy like that, you can go to any of the power guys. You can take Arnold Schwarzenegger, you know, Arnold Schwarzenegger as well. You know, we're a powerful battery. So yeah, it needs to be popular. And batteries are becoming sexy. In my opinion, people see it as sexy. The one thing that amazed me is the benefits that people don't know of when you're an electric vehicle. If you're in an electric car, for those that have not been in it, it's quiet. It's completely a different experience. Even the sounds, the smells are different. So once you've been in an electric car and it has the same capabilities as a gasoline car you know, it's only the gear heads that, that loves the smell of diesel. But we'll stay with that.

Tom Raftery: 33:32

Fair enough. Fair enough. And I like that you mentioned that Pierce Brosnan is sophisticated. I got to think that that's in large part due to the fact that he's Irish as well as me. So I'll take that.

Chris Kruger: 33:43

Ah, there you go. There you go. Fantastic.

Tom Raftery: 33:50

Super Chris, we're coming towards the end of the podcast now. Is there any question I didn't ask that you wish I had or any aspect of this we haven't touched on that you think it's important for people to think about?

Chris Kruger: 34:01

Well, I think what's important is that you, you don't always have to look at price. This is one of my biggest problems I have with the industry. They, they compare the stationary batteries with what we do in marine, or they compare different batteries against each other. You need to look at the capability. Of course, price is important, but the first question you should ask is, can the battery do the mission I want it to do? And is it safe enough? Safety is really, really, really important. I think people should more ask those questions and say, here's my mission profile. And is it safe enough rather than saying, I want the battery that's powerful? I want the battery that's got a lot of energy. And we should start putting ourselves out there a little bit. We should not have this range anxiety. We can design around that and give people the comfort. If you look at automobiles today, you can do easily 500 kilometers. And when you start getting to solid state, it'll be a thousand kilometers. No cost of it, but that's, that's the kind of thing.

Tom Raftery: 35:09

Sure, but that that it'll cost a bit keeps reducing as the battery prices keep falling year year. So.

Chris Kruger: 35:17

Absolutely. Absolutely. But can you imagine having a car that can do a thousand kilometers? You know, now this whole range anxiety thing, you drive to your destination. That's how far you can drive roughly in a day. You drive comfortably and you go and charge it overnight. So that, that whole issue is gone when you can do that.

Tom Raftery: 35:37

And it's not that far out. There are some that are close enough to 1,000 already

Chris Kruger: 35:40

very close, very close.

Tom Raftery: 35:43

Cool.

Chris Kruger: 35:44

Very close.

Tom Raftery: 35:44

that's been fascinating. If people would like to know more about yourself or any of the things we discussed in the podcast today, where would you have me direct them?

Chris Kruger: 35:53

I would say the best is to start at our website www dot a y k energy dot com. We are announcing that all the time. And you are welcome to look at, look us up on LinkedIn as well. You can find me on LinkedIn. That's maybe the easiest. I can keep my phone number and so on. But Go to LinkedIn and befriend me there and we can definitely take it from there. But from our website, if you're interested in our products, you can, you can always do a query on the website and emails will get to us.

Tom Raftery: 36:24

Superb. Great. Fantastic. Chris, that's been really interesting. Thanks a million for coming on the podcast today.

Chris Kruger: 36:31

Thanks Tom. It was fun talking to you.

Tom Raftery: 36:33

Okay, we've come to the end of the show. Thanks everyone for listening. If you'd like to know more about the Climate Confident podcast, feel free to drop me an email to tomraftery at outlook. com or message me on LinkedIn or Twitter. If you like the show, please don't forget to click follow on it in your podcast application of choice to get new episodes as soon as they're published. Also, please don't forget to rate and review the podcast. It really does help new people to find the show. Thanks. Catch you all next time.