Fred: Well, hello everybody, and welcome to another episode of Future Engineering Bets. I'm really excited today to be joined by Richard Hopkins, who is a professor at the University of New South Wales in Sydney, and he has an extensive Formula One history and motorsport racing history that we're going to talk about,
Richard Hopkins: I don't want to speak too far out of school, I think, McLaren, when I was at McLaren fell foul of that. and their support performance sort of diminished as a result. Red Bull, when I arrived, had no notion of that to begin with. So that needed to be implemented within the team.
Fred: but when you look at this academic valley of death as it's called, you know, and universities generating world class IP standard technology transfer is really slow. They're very, very coy with it and I would probably say overprotective of their IP into to the point where most of it's stuck behind locked bars.
Richard Hopkins: When autonomous driving comes in, goodness knows what, that will clearly open up for everybody.
Fred: I know most people want a lift home from the pub, but
Richard Hopkins: I'm sure there's other advantages, I'm sure there are, I think we're like-minded in thinking, God, wouldn't that be great if I can just be in the pub and I can text my car and it comes and collects me. there's ARENA 2036, in Germany, which is a huge organisation, aiming to address that problem. and trying to pull all the minds of all the German car manufacturers together to basically say, hey, look, if we don't do something quite drastic, we're all going to be out of business in a couple of years' time.
Fred: Well, hello everybody, and welcome to another episode of Future Engineering Bets. I'm Fred Warner where we talk about advanced engineering in the future and where people are going to be putting their capital and where they're going to be investing, particularly around clean energy, electrification and future mobility. I'm really excited today to be joined by Richard Hopkins, who is a professor at the University of New South Wales in Sydney, and he has an extensive Formula One history and motorsport racing history that we're going to talk about, and has currently founded the company P-ONE that we're going to be going into more detail on today. So, Richard, hello and welcome.
Richard Hopkins: Hi Fred, thanks for having me on. Fantastic.
Fred: Lovely to meet you. So for those that don't know who Richard Hopkins is and those people are probably outside of motorsport, I'm sure, take us through your twenty eight years sort of history in motorsport and leading you up to where you are now.
Richard Hopkins: Gosh, yeah, it's a long story. I'll try and shorten it as much as I can. 15 year old kid growing up in England in Woking in Surrey, which obviously Woking has some significance in the world of Formula One, but that was merely coincidental. I had to do a week's work experience when I was at school. Didn't know what I was going to do, but decided to phone a Formula One team. So I phoned McLaren. They said no. And then I phoned Brabham's. They said yes. Did my week's work experience. Whilst I was on some study leave taking my O levels, I phoned Brabham up again and asked if I could come along and just meet the guys and girls. Went along, they offered me a job. So that changed everything. Didn't end up going to college and university, but joined a Formula One team at the age of 16 in two weeks. Five years at Brabham's, serving all but an apprenticeship. And then when they folded and wrapped up at the end of 1991, moved across to McLaren. 15 years at McLaren, mechanic in the beginning, traveling the world. Then went into the operational side. Wasn't able to get the traction that I'd hoped to try and transform the way that Formula One teams pretty much operated. Kind of to match the sort of new wave of aggressive innovation. And of course, Adrian knew he was pretty much behind that. in his move from McLaren to Red Bull, I followed not long after and joined what was still pretty much the newly formed Red Bull team and led that team operationally into some fairly significant transitional change in how Formula One teams operated. And I guess what I attempted to do, was match Adrian's vision of this, you know, really reinventing race by race at a rate that no other team was certainly doing at the time. So it was very much about creating ultimate efficiency within a team and getting the entire organisation to be on the same page and understand what that mission was. That took me to the end of 2015, beginning of 2016, where myself and my Australian wife decided it was time for a change and moved to Sydney. Tried to move as far away from motorsport as I could, but that didn't quite, quite work out how I planned.
Fred: you've seen four world championships when you're at Red Bull. I suppose you saw a couple at McLaren with the Mika Hakkinen years. Indeed.
Richard Hopkins: Yeah, yeah, 98, 99, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Fred: So, some some fantastic feelings of the winning, which is what you do it for. And you've also got all the years where you you don't win. And one of the things that we're gonna be talking about today or predominantly is, you know, taking technology out of academia, spinning that up into the commercial realities of companies that can take it and and scale it. What's been your biggest learning in your journey over the last few years, would you say, comparing Formula One to some of the people you're trying to help in the commercial world?
Richard Hopkins: I think the biggest thing to be honest with you, Fred, is look, I was in Formula One lucky enough to have been in Formula One for almost 30 years, 28 years. And world championships, I did the calculations as you do. I was part of 509 Grands Prix and was part of 100 wins within those 509. So a pretty decent success rate in a career in Formula
Fred: Yeah. Very much.
Richard Hopkins: One. I always understood that Formula One was special. You've only got to go out for dinner with people you don't know or at a barbecue or standing by a bar and somebody asks you what you do for a living and when you say Formula One. And this is pre-Drive to Survive, right? So it was version 1.0 where obviously Formula One today has gone off gangbusters. But everyone was amazed. And so I knew it was a special industry to work in. And I knew that we did incredible things. I knew we innovated at an incredible rate. But it's not since I've left Formula One that now I look back retrospectively and realise it is an incredible industry. I struggle to create the narrative to explain to people just how amazing it is and what Formula One teams are capable of and what they deliver upon. on a daily basis. And I suppose now I find myself in the world of academia within a university in Australia, in Sydney. And it's about as polar opposite as you can get in as far as delivery time, focus, you know, realisation of urgency just doesn't exist. But then when I say that, I don't think there's any other industry that comes close anyway. Maybe medical when there's pandemics or maybe military when there's war or maybe space when there's a race to get to the moon between the Americans and the Russians. But other than that, there's really nothing and anybody who thinks they're close, they're kind of dreaming because Formula One is just incredible. I wish I could, actually have some actual facts, but you know it's almost what Formula One can do in a day, a university does in a year. It's almost that stark the difference.
Fred: before we get into the main, I'm still interested in some of the lessons that you can bring to people listening that talk around, you know, you had hundreds of people at Red Bull, you had to turn it into an extremely efficient machine, like you say, to be able to turn around the iterations of design change, of build, of ship, you know, the logistics involved and everything.
Richard Hopkins: Mm.
Fred: It's like it's on emergency mode constantly. what were some of the biggest learnings you still take and talk to people about in terms of building that efficiency across a large team?
Richard Hopkins: I think it's always believing in consistent and continual change. To never stand still, to never feel complacent that we've arrived, we've got this well-oiled machine and we don't need to do anything. And I think to a point, and I don't want to speak too far out of school, I think, you know, McLaren, when I was at McLaren fell foul of that. and their support performance sort of diminished as a result. Red Bull, when I arrived, had no notion of that to begin with. So that needed to be implemented within the team. I think it's the never stand still attitude. It's the ultimate can do attitude, but it's the never stand still. I guess taking what people perceive as being the traditional performance attributes of a Formula One team and the car and the, you know, you've only got to look at the pit stop and whether it's 1.8 seconds or 1.79 seconds, the difference that makes on the track and translating that into a business of over a thousand people and multiple functions that everybody adopts that importance that really everything we do needs to be analysed and can be improved. And it's that constant focus on change. I go into some organisations now as a consultant, and they announce that they're going through a phase of transition. transition needs to happen all the time. if we want to be those high performers, and we want to be successful, and we want to beat the competition. and it is competition. Formula One is obviously reasonably unique in as far as it's high performance engineering, it's technology and it's sport and it's business all wrapped into one. There's not many others out there that can profess to be in that area.
Fred: It's interesting, isn't it? I'm a little off piece, but I'm gonna run with it anyway. And this this sort of changes constant mindset. And I work as an operating partner, so I'm changing businesses every day, you know, taking them through transformations. I started in motorsport and I've worked my way through large corporates, all kinds of different size companies. And the one thing that strikes is when people become resistant to change and They don't realise that change is the thing that is the most important piece of the business, and that everything else just needs to be the BAU, the business as usual. That
Richard Hopkins: Mmm.
Fred: you need to be spending most of your efforts should be working on making your BAU more efficient. And I've got this theory that I've not really explored too far yet. But as AI really transforms how business operates, it's the BAU that's going to be always continually being made more efficient and being shrunk. And most people's jobs in the future. are gonna end up being change related because that's where the work's gonna be, because there won't be any work in the BAU.
Richard Hopkins: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But BAU is the corner we've just driven and we're focusing on the future. We're focusing
Fred: Yes. Yeah.
Richard Hopkins: two corners ahead.
Fred: When you're an agent of change, as as you are, clearly, yeah, that's the mindset. Absolutely. Okay, so it's really interesting area, and I could talk on that one all day with you, Richard thank you. But
Richard Hopkins: Hahaha
Fred: so I want to get into the main nub of this, which is looking at technology, IP, getting it out and into commercial reality. I've been fortunate enough where I've also worked in companies, hydrogen fuel cell, as it happens, that was university spin-out had grown, grown
Richard Hopkins: Mm-hmm.
Fred: rapidly, took investment floated, IPO crashed out the market, the whole journey that they went through. with a
Richard Hopkins: Wow.
Fred: quite a few stories in there and some of them not for going on camera. but when you look at this academic valley of death as it's called, and universities generating world class IP standard technology transfer is really slow. They're very, very coy with it and I would probably say overprotective of their IP into to the point where most of it's stuck behind locked bars. You're on the other side saying, well we need to rapidly bring this out and get things going. Where do you see the whole valley of death thing and then the where the academics get stuck?
Richard Hopkins: Yeah, look, I don't even know if Australia's arrived in that valley of death yet. And maybe because it hasn't, maybe it's got the opportunity of almost bypassing it and avoiding it. Commercialisation of universities IP in Australia is kind of lagging. It has a strong focus, obviously on education, a strong focus on research, but it's only really been in the last couple of years that it's really truly started exploring the opportunity beyond writing a paper and publishing it in a journal and realising there's greater value to the IP that it generates. So it's somewhat behind and it's really seeking to create that commercialisation pillar. I think when you're outside of Australia, Europe and the States see that already exists and maybe yes it exists and because it exists that valley of death is more obvious. And I think I'm probably right in saying, I don't often say I think I'm right, but on this occasion I don't think we've entered it. I don't think we've realised it as such. I think we're still early on in the journey. We may dip into it or we might step straight over it because of a strategy that we can deploy. spin outs exist, but spin outs exist in a very traditional way. And there's a lot of naivety, and I'm sure this is the same for anywhere in the world and I'm sure Australia is not unique. in as far as research academics who come up with the hammer before the nails invented. And we've come up with great research, with great IP to try and translate that research into something commercial is a challenge here, it exists because of a number of reasons, I guess, in as far as the universities aren't the greatest encouragers of translating that in the first place. Two, there's a lot of naivety within the university around the commercialisation. There's a lot of research, yes, but there isn't necessarily the commercial acumen to support that research. And maybe because it's Australia and maybe there's a bit of a geographic disadvantage of in the fact that we're tucked in the corner of the world and we struggle to get that message out there. And we only necessarily look in a local way rather than in an international way. So I think there's a number of factors which either have been recognised or are being recognised and we're possibly just about to turn the corner. Certainly with what I proposed to UNSW, UNSW now being Australia's number one university and we've been number one in engineering for a number of years, was actually to create a spin-out company that didn't have anything to spin out. And that had never been done in Australia. There's always been a bit of deep tech research or something or other that was being spun out. There was always something to spin out. What I spun out was a model, was a platform to essentially be that venture layer within the university maybe sprinkled with bit of Formula One DNA within it to propose that P-ONE becomes an agent. a consultancy of types that can pick up the research academics, support them, not only help accelerate them along the TRL scale, but also the CRL scale and sort of step block it all the way through and do some validation along the way. I might be naive not realising that that already exists outside of Australia and maybe that then enters that valley of death. But this is something that's new in Australia. tell me if we're being pathfinders here or we're still 10 years behind the rest of the world. I don't know.
Fred: Yeah. Well I think and just for the viewers' benefit, TRL is technology readiness level, CRL is commercial readiness level. And and so
Richard Hopkins: yeah. We actually create a VRL, which is a venture readiness level, which is the bit
Fred: Interesting.
Richard Hopkins: that sits in between. So we track it. So
Fred: Yeah. Additionally to that.
Richard Hopkins: we track equally.
Fred: Brilliant. Okay. And obviously there's the MRL, which is the manufacturing readiness level. So that, you know, when people are looking at this on paper, they can understand the new technology where it's at. So that's for the viewers' benefit there. And then when you're looking at that CRL level, that commercial readiness, that is one of the things that is often not looked at very well when university spin outs take place. There's this tech, maybe, maybe it's green, maybe it's sustainable, but there's no commercial reality attached to what it could do at that stage. And that's often where they really struggle because it becomes a cash, printing hungry machine that says, I need more food to keep doing my research, but it doesn't really have a commercial reality attached to it at any point. And that's where they often fail, isn't it? In terms of they don't fly, they might get to 50 people.
Richard Hopkins: It's
Fred: Five years of money.
Richard Hopkins: obvious misalignment. And going back to my hammer and nail example, universities are great at coming up with solutions, but they don't necessarily have a problem that fits the solution they've got, which sounds a bit weird. But when you've got very smart, very clever people coming up with deep tech solutions, it is sometimes a challenge to find out what problem they're actually trying to fix. And maybe when that comes to investment and everything else, then maybe that's the valley you're talking about.
Fred: Yeah. I think it's one of those areas where if you could help universities make very visible the technologies that they potentially have available and other people can come up with the nail, as you say, the
Richard Hopkins: Yes.
Fred: how you could use that technology because it's often not the clever person that invents the X-ray machine or the microwave or whatever it is that it comes up with the final solution of let's heat food up with it. it's the application that becomes the interesting part.
Richard Hopkins: Yeah, one of the missions that P-ONE has is to take that portfolio of capability within the university, let everybody know what we do and what we're capable of doing, and then it's a bit of tinder of technology and try and match other people's problems with the solutions we already have. And that's that misalignment piece that we've been struggling with and not necessarily having. It's too siloed. We've got organisations, industries, the world with many problems and we've possibly got the solutions, but nobody's talking to anybody about it. So we're trying to be that matchmaker.
Fred: What are the problems? So you're taking the technology, you're looking at the venture opportunities, commercial readiness, but then you're looking at the market. What are the problems that you're finding look most aligned with what you're bringing to them?
Richard Hopkins: it's very broad, Fred, to be honest with you. AI still is a bit of a buzz at the moment and everybody's looking into that area. it's broad and maybe a little bit vague as well, all at the same time, to be honest. if I'm speaking about UNSW specifically, we're doing a lot in sort of clean tech is our area. But again, are we looking at just Australia or are we trying to look at the rest of the world and what problems exist there? I think that's one of the biggest challenges.
Fred: Yeah, okay. Yeah, I mean you could pick clean tech in mobility. So maybe energy storage of batteries
Richard Hopkins: Yep, certainly, A lot of work in battery technology, a lot of work in motor technology. We're doing a lot in quantum computing at the moment, which is obviously a very much an emerging level of interest. And UNSW is pretty much leading the way in quantum at the moment. PV solar research has always been a big strength of UNSW. for many many years Martin Green who was prolific in research in the late 70s, early 80s. Pretty much any solar panel on the planet today has some Professor Martin Green DNA within it. He really introduced technology that made solar commercial as we see it today and we're still doing a lot of research in that area. certainly what P-ONE's looking at and sort of trying to amalgamate within the university is our right to play within transport and energy and merge those two together. That's becoming, if not already, the big super industry that's out there at the moment.
Fred: Amazing. and if you take that as a specific example, those examples you've given, what do you see as being the commercial reality for those when you're trying to spin them out and people are interested and you've got the commercial reality of well we've got to go through the operational commercial marketing, sales, machine building to turn this into a flying bird, if you like, and there's gonna have to be a lot of cash goes in and get burnt to come out the other side
Richard Hopkins: Yeah.
Fred: and everyone wants the unicorn. Where do you see the biggest challenges on your side at the moment in that space around that clean tech in mobility?
Richard Hopkins: Again, I think, even with a unicorn, I'm talking about Australia here Australia is surprising and this might be surprising for a lot of people outside Australia is quite conservative in its approach. It's very risk averse. So finding investment. into even unique tech is a challenge over here. I think lots of people are born to look externally for investment overseas. whether it be budgets, whether it be the world today and how investors are looking globally, but certainly just finding that initial investment to get things off the ground is a bit of a challenge. So lots of great IP, lots of great ideas remain as great ideas for far too long. Certainly over here anyway.
Fred: Maybe what you need is a California office for New South Wales where you're actually just marketing your IP. In the middle of Silicon Valley, probably be a good spot.
Richard Hopkins: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, that's good idea.
Fred: Brilliant. And then so talk about the solar the PV piece. Do you see solar PV being in mobility in the future? Maybe trucking, where there's a lot of room for solar panels. Is there a place that you ever see that or not really?
Richard Hopkins: Yeah, yeah, 100%. I mean, I'm somewhat amazed, maybe because I've been conditioned in such a way. I've been working with the Sunswift programme for a number of years now. And obviously we've been using PV on our cars and see the benefits. I don't really have a really good answer, because I get asked it all the time. Why isn't there solar on cars? And there's not really a good answer to say why not. The cost of solar is coming down, but still there would be a, I think there is probably a cost and performance thing to consider. Trucks and buses and things like that, I think it could be a little bit more obvious and the solution could be a lot more advantageous just because of the area on those vehicles. But even in cars, I think maybe today, If there was a car on the market and it was £50,000 and it had a range of 400 miles, but you could buy the same car but with added solar, now this car, instead of being £50,000, is £55,000. And instead of the range being 400 miles, it's 420 miles. Is it worth paying £5,000 for an extra 20 miles? There's probably a little bit of this to consider at the moment. Lots of people are working on it. The Toyotas of this world have been working on it for a number of years, Hyundai as well. It's going to happen, but I think what it might become is part of the sort of range extender wave that we're not too far off. In as far as, you know, it's an addition to hybrid technology, the journey to getting that vehicle, whether we actually need an electric vehicle that does a thousand miles on a single charge, I don't know. But certainly the infrastructure range anxiety issue that we have in an electric vehicle today isn't the same as owning an internal combustion engine. Fast charging still isn't fast enough. The range still isn't far enough. We can debate that. I don't necessarily believe what I've just said, but let's go with it. So, hybrids will probably see a shift. There's a lot of talk in the market of rather than having an internal combustion engine this big and a battery this big, we flip that around and have a bigger battery and just a little internal combustion engine. Let's say a generator, which becomes a range extender. And we can, we can use that to advantage. And solar again is a range extender. The vehicles that we build at Sunswift are essentially battery electric vehicles with solar in addition. So, we use the solar in a range extending capacity. The cars aren't purely powered by solar, even though you can drive them solar and solar only. But let's face it, you're not going to go, a million miles on the sun at the moment. At the moment. No.
Fred: And they're not driving all day long either. So if even if you had an automotive application, the car sits around most of the day, it may as well be charging something during that time and capturing that energy.
Richard Hopkins: Absolutely, absolutely. So, I think a lot of car parks around the world now, I think it's Spain or maybe it's France, I'm not sure, that are mandated if you build a new car park, they must have solar roofs to them to aid with charging. so we're realising that solar will be the superpower in the years to come. It's looking like we're going down that road. regardless of whether you live in Australia with a lot of sun or you live in the UK with a little bit less.
Fred: Yeah, quite a lot less, I'm gonna say that, Richard.
Richard Hopkins: Quite a lot though, yeah There is that one day of the year apparently. Yeah, yeah.
Fred: Yeah. We've had a good summer this year, but yeah, we'll I won't go on any further, but yeah. And and you must be trying to convince people that this kind of technology is worth investing in at times when there's quite a long R&D cycle to take it from, an idea, a concept, a prototype to a commercial reality, plus all of the sales readiness, the marketing readiness for that, and the manufacturing readiness, you sort of add it together. There's
Richard Hopkins: Yeah.
Fred: quite an investment cycle and you say Australia's risk averse. So what do you plan around that at the moment? What do you advise other people to plan around that when they're facing that challenge of long R&D investment cycle?
Richard Hopkins: I think look further afield. Look, it's always been a challenge and it'll always be a challenge finding investment into technology. Certainly our number one project at the moment is a vehicle to grid solution, a bi-directional charging solution, which for us is a low cost, quick to market solution. we have huge solar penetration here in Australia. 40 % of homes in Australia have solar and a growing EV market. so to use your car as a battery is huge. Solar is growing, as we just mentioned, and that's growing globally. But it's storage of that solar which is going to become the bigger and bigger problem. batteries are the big thing. But of course, you know, the market that produced the most batteries in the world is the automotive industry. So why not utilise the batteries that we're driving around in to help power our homes, lower our energy bill and pay back to the grid for grids that aren't performing as well as they should be. So Vehicle to Grid in Australia is a huge emerging initiative. and P-ONE is trying to lead the way in as far as a low cost solution that utilises inverters and charges you already have. And look, I'm going to be slightly biased by saying it's a great solution. We have our first prototype. We're testing up at the CSIRO this week and it promises to deliver millions and millions and millions of dollars of return to investors. But even then, it's still struggle to get over the line, through all the different rounds. We've been fortunate in as far as we've been funded early on by an initiative over here in Australia called the Trailblazer Program, which for UNSW is called TRACE, which is a clean energy fund. So we've been lucky to have been embedded within a university. where we've got that early pre-seed funding that has got us to the point that we've got to. But if we were just a couple of likely lads who were down the pub who came up with this idea, I don't know how we would have got to the stage we've got to. We would have been living on park benches struggling and eating noodles every day.
Fred: it's a quite a large reality that without the incubation of the technology that the universities can provide, and then the spin-out pieces, as much as it doesn't work very well in a lot of cases, it's how would it work otherwise? You know, it's
Richard Hopkins: Yeah.
Fred: it's a fairly good point. One of the things I'm going to pick up that then just quickly is the use of the application spin out. So there's the wider technologies that often people have available to them. But finding something that you see as having a commercial application that is valid and that you believe in is a really key thing. and you see it with all the major companies that do it, they often invent a piece of technology. They don't know quite where to use it. And somebody
Richard Hopkins: Mm-hmm.
Fred: comes up with an application. And it's that application is the little genius moment. Even an example as dumb as, you know, Alexa was not invented to be a home use thing. It was invented to go in the Amazon mobile phone they were creating and the mobile phone wasn't doing very well and then somebody had the great idea of using the voice tech in in homes and a whole new application came. So I think that's a really great point for people to think it's always searching for the commercial application for the technology. It may not be what you had in mind.
Richard Hopkins: yeah, yeah. Look, our vehicle to grid solution came from, we attended a smart energy conference in Australia, in Sydney, and there was a keynote talk going on at the time. And we realised that actually that some of it was just permissibility. And it was a bit of a, these aren't the droids you're looking for moment, where we realised that, the problem wasn't necessarily the problem, was just finding the solution that fitted that problem. So it's quite a strange way of going around it. And we've realised actually our solution has another solution in as far as it actually enables vehicle-to-vehicle charging as well, which is a whole new area of interest to look at. So yes, sometimes got to be looking a bit left and a little bit right sometimes, for sure.
Fred: Absolutely. It makes me wonder if when I sometimes observe electric vehicles at the side of the road and I assume that mostly they're out of charge as opposed to actually being faulty. And you do wonder what the recovery strategy is because
Richard Hopkins: Yes.
Fred: I mostly I imagine it has to be towed away, whereas in reality if a truck could just pull up and transfer a bit of juice to it, which is it's
Richard Hopkins: Yeah.
Fred: like having a petrol can in the equivalent of the electric world, so going on to things like looking at the OEMs, who you're all looking at very fast development cycles when you think of your Formula One mindset. I know you're in the academic world as well, where things are a lot slower. the OEMs face a challenge at the moment that they typically have five to six year development cycles on their products, the cars. Chinese companies are now doing them at sometimes even half the rate and maybe cutting some corners, but are going very aggressively. Which is really impacting the EV space predominantly, the move away from internal combustion engine. What do you take and what do you see when you know how to build that efficient group of people working on a scale of around a few hundred people? What do you think needs to happen in the automotive OEMs to really help them meet the challenge of today?
Richard Hopkins: Well, think there's lot of legacy, isn't there? lot of the Chinese companies, it's incredible how many emerge almost on a weekly basis. And they're starting from scratch. They're from the ground up using all new methods and clearly heavily funded and supported by the government. And they're throwing everything at it. And then you look at existing OEMs, and you've just got to look at the methods that they're still using. Their rate of change is, very slow compared to the rate of change that the Chinese companies are having, but there's not necessarily a rate of change because they're just coming up fresh with a whole new approach to how we design and develop vehicles. But the BMWs and the Mercedes are just struggling to catch up. There's just so many legacy systems and it's going to take something quite special for them to make that change. I know there's ARENA 2036, in Germany, which is a huge organisation, aiming to address that problem. and trying to pull all the minds of all the German car manufacturers together to basically say, hey, look, if we don't do something quite drastic, we're all going to be out of business in a couple of years' time. I know there's awareness of it. What the fix is, going to be an interesting one to observe because It's almost like the example of the McLaren versus the Red Bull. I know the Red Bull Formula One team was born out of Jaguar, which was born out of the Stewart team, but there was almost a wipe the slate clean approach at Red Bull, certainly when I arrived, which is almost forget everything we've done in the past. Let's think about how we can do this from scratch. The good thing is there weren't many processes at Red Bull that needed changing because not many processes existed. So it was this fresh, clean, clear approach to how we're going to do something. Whereas a McLaren was very much trying to move this big heavy ship that was difficult to steer. It's amazing what they're doing now, by the way. What Zak and the team are doing is just incredible. Their change mentality is second to none. I don't think there's another Formula One team in existence that can innovate and change at the rate that McLaren do these days. But maybe that's because they realised what they were doing in the past. And I think a lot of OEMs, the Toyotas and even the Hyundais, some of the relatively new companies are really going to struggle to keep up. in the efficiencies that have just been created from zero, they probably watched and, you know, learned from all the other OEMs of how they do it and what's the better way of doing it. We can do it from day one. So it's going to be really interesting to watch.
Fred: Yeah, it is. it's an interesting place, isn't it? Because you've got the emergence of the clean technology breaking through and the various types of powertrains, should we say, and the variety of ways you can power a vehicle. Then you've got the software-led vehicle that's now becoming the key in the future, and that's now moving into motorsport as well. You know, things are going to be built around the software. And you do wonder if one day are the OEMs really going to be owned by the software companies that are pushing their software through a mechanical build, which if ultimately an OEM becomes well with the final assembly plant of said software
Richard Hopkins: Yeah. Yeah.
Fred: vehicle, it's changed the dynamics in the ways other industries have been totally disrupted, you know, music, Spotify versus downloads versus CDs. people just come at it, don't they, from a very different angle and massively disrupt, and it does appear that that. is happening. We don't all know where it's going, but
Richard Hopkins: Hey look, we just used to drive cars once upon a time. Like we just used to use these things to make phone calls and now look at what these do for us. The car is on the similar journey, isn't it? In as far
Fred: Mm.
Richard Hopkins: as its other abilities and capabilities. When autonomous driving comes in, goodness knows what, that will clearly open up for everybody.
Fred: I know most people want a lift home from the pub, but
Richard Hopkins: I'm sure there's other advantages, I'm sure there are, but that's... I think we're like-minded in thinking, God, wouldn't that be great if I can just be in the pub and I can text my car and it comes and collects me. Hopefully I'm still in a fit
Fred: fantastic. No, there's not
Richard Hopkins: state to actually get in it.
Fred: Yeah. there's something very special about the use of technology for the most basic of needs. something that humans are very good at. So always always fun.
Richard Hopkins: Yes, yeah, indeed.
Fred: So Richard, thank you for joining us. Tell me, is there anything more you want to say on TRaCE?
Richard Hopkins: Look, TRACE is a fantastic initiative within UNSW and broader across a couple of universities in their support and function. And in as far as what we were talking about earlier, the struggles and some of the challenges, certainly for P-ONE we've been very fortunate to have been supported by TRaCE. an amazing initiative. Unfortunately, it's not going to go on forever, which is a bit of a shame. It's a government fund that at some point will be exhausted. But for now, for those that have been supported by it, it's been amazing. So big shout out for the guys at TRaCE.
Fred: And tell people where they can find more about you and P-ONE and what you're up to.
Richard Hopkins: Well, just Google P-ONE technology, we're involved in lots of initiatives at the moment. Most of them sort of align to UNSW acting as sort of special agents for UNSW to pick up research projects, but maybe some other projects within the university as well, some of which I can't talk about at the moment, but hopefully in the next couple of weeks. that will be announced, but really some exciting things that we're doing. We are an advisory, we are an agency and consultancy around technology. really aiming to sort of be the bridge between industry and university research. Universities are mighty beasts of knowledge. Yes, they might not move at the pace. of Formula One, but one thing that P-ONE is trying to do is measure that performance and move things along at a bit of a faster rate and put that sprinkle of Formula One within those university walls and try and accelerate and match those problems with those solutions.
Fred: Fantastic. Well, Richard, thank you so much for joining us here at Future Engineering Bets. I'm gonna ask the viewers and the listeners to please make sure you share this episode with people that you know. Do follow and subscribe for another episode. And thank you so much for listening. You've been listening to Future Engineering Bets where we talk about advanced engineering and the future applications and capital investment and where things are going in the future. I look forward to seeing you on another episode. Thank you, Richard.
Richard Hopkins: Cheers, Fred. Cheers, everyone.
Richard Hopkins: I don't want to speak too far out of school, I think, McLaren, when I was at McLaren fell foul of that. and their support performance sort of diminished as a result. Red Bull, when I arrived, had no notion of that to begin with. So that needed to be implemented within the team.
Fred: but when you look at this academic valley of death as it's called, you know, and universities generating world class IP standard technology transfer is really slow. They're very, very coy with it and I would probably say overprotective of their IP into to the point where most of it's stuck behind locked bars.
Richard Hopkins: When autonomous driving comes in, goodness knows what, that will clearly open up for everybody.
Fred: I know most people want a lift home from the pub, but
Richard Hopkins: I'm sure there's other advantages, I'm sure there are, I think we're like-minded in thinking, God, wouldn't that be great if I can just be in the pub and I can text my car and it comes and collects me. there's ARENA 2036, in Germany, which is a huge organisation, aiming to address that problem. and trying to pull all the minds of all the German car manufacturers together to basically say, hey, look, if we don't do something quite drastic, we're all going to be out of business in a couple of years' time.
Fred: Well, hello everybody, and welcome to another episode of Future Engineering Bets. I'm Fred Warner where we talk about advanced engineering in the future and where people are going to be putting their capital and where they're going to be investing, particularly around clean energy, electrification and future mobility. I'm really excited today to be joined by Richard Hopkins, who is a professor at the University of New South Wales in Sydney, and he has an extensive Formula One history and motorsport racing history that we're going to talk about, and has currently founded the company P-ONE that we're going to be going into more detail on today. So, Richard, hello and welcome.
Richard Hopkins: Hi Fred, thanks for having me on. Fantastic.
Fred: Lovely to meet you. So for those that don't know who Richard Hopkins is and those people are probably outside of motorsport, I'm sure, take us through your twenty eight years sort of history in motorsport and leading you up to where you are now.
Richard Hopkins: Gosh, yeah, it's a long story. I'll try and shorten it as much as I can. 15 year old kid growing up in England in Woking in Surrey, which obviously Woking has some significance in the world of Formula One, but that was merely coincidental. I had to do a week's work experience when I was at school. Didn't know what I was going to do, but decided to phone a Formula One team. So I phoned McLaren. They said no. And then I phoned Brabham's. They said yes. Did my week's work experience. Whilst I was on some study leave taking my O levels, I phoned Brabham up again and asked if I could come along and just meet the guys and girls. Went along, they offered me a job. So that changed everything. Didn't end up going to college and university, but joined a Formula One team at the age of 16 in two weeks. Five years at Brabham's, serving all but an apprenticeship. And then when they folded and wrapped up at the end of 1991, moved across to McLaren. 15 years at McLaren, mechanic in the beginning, traveling the world. Then went into the operational side. Wasn't able to get the traction that I'd hoped to try and transform the way that Formula One teams pretty much operated. Kind of to match the sort of new wave of aggressive innovation. And of course, Adrian knew he was pretty much behind that. in his move from McLaren to Red Bull, I followed not long after and joined what was still pretty much the newly formed Red Bull team and led that team operationally into some fairly significant transitional change in how Formula One teams operated. And I guess what I attempted to do, was match Adrian's vision of this, you know, really reinventing race by race at a rate that no other team was certainly doing at the time. So it was very much about creating ultimate efficiency within a team and getting the entire organisation to be on the same page and understand what that mission was. That took me to the end of 2015, beginning of 2016, where myself and my Australian wife decided it was time for a change and moved to Sydney. Tried to move as far away from motorsport as I could, but that didn't quite, quite work out how I planned.
Fred: you've seen four world championships when you're at Red Bull. I suppose you saw a couple at McLaren with the Mika Hakkinen years. Indeed.
Richard Hopkins: Yeah, yeah, 98, 99, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Fred: So, some some fantastic feelings of the winning, which is what you do it for. And you've also got all the years where you you don't win. And one of the things that we're gonna be talking about today or predominantly is, you know, taking technology out of academia, spinning that up into the commercial realities of companies that can take it and and scale it. What's been your biggest learning in your journey over the last few years, would you say, comparing Formula One to some of the people you're trying to help in the commercial world?
Richard Hopkins: I think the biggest thing to be honest with you, Fred, is look, I was in Formula One lucky enough to have been in Formula One for almost 30 years, 28 years. And world championships, I did the calculations as you do. I was part of 509 Grands Prix and was part of 100 wins within those 509. So a pretty decent success rate in a career in Formula
Fred: Yeah. Very much.
Richard Hopkins: One. I always understood that Formula One was special. You've only got to go out for dinner with people you don't know or at a barbecue or standing by a bar and somebody asks you what you do for a living and when you say Formula One. And this is pre-Drive to Survive, right? So it was version 1.0 where obviously Formula One today has gone off gangbusters. But everyone was amazed. And so I knew it was a special industry to work in. And I knew that we did incredible things. I knew we innovated at an incredible rate. But it's not since I've left Formula One that now I look back retrospectively and realise it is an incredible industry. I struggle to create the narrative to explain to people just how amazing it is and what Formula One teams are capable of and what they deliver upon. on a daily basis. And I suppose now I find myself in the world of academia within a university in Australia, in Sydney. And it's about as polar opposite as you can get in as far as delivery time, focus, you know, realisation of urgency just doesn't exist. But then when I say that, I don't think there's any other industry that comes close anyway. Maybe medical when there's pandemics or maybe military when there's war or maybe space when there's a race to get to the moon between the Americans and the Russians. But other than that, there's really nothing and anybody who thinks they're close, they're kind of dreaming because Formula One is just incredible. I wish I could, actually have some actual facts, but you know it's almost what Formula One can do in a day, a university does in a year. It's almost that stark the difference.
Fred: before we get into the main, I'm still interested in some of the lessons that you can bring to people listening that talk around, you know, you had hundreds of people at Red Bull, you had to turn it into an extremely efficient machine, like you say, to be able to turn around the iterations of design change, of build, of ship, you know, the logistics involved and everything.
Richard Hopkins: Mm.
Fred: It's like it's on emergency mode constantly. what were some of the biggest learnings you still take and talk to people about in terms of building that efficiency across a large team?
Richard Hopkins: I think it's always believing in consistent and continual change. To never stand still, to never feel complacent that we've arrived, we've got this well-oiled machine and we don't need to do anything. And I think to a point, and I don't want to speak too far out of school, I think, you know, McLaren, when I was at McLaren fell foul of that. and their support performance sort of diminished as a result. Red Bull, when I arrived, had no notion of that to begin with. So that needed to be implemented within the team. I think it's the never stand still attitude. It's the ultimate can do attitude, but it's the never stand still. I guess taking what people perceive as being the traditional performance attributes of a Formula One team and the car and the, you know, you've only got to look at the pit stop and whether it's 1.8 seconds or 1.79 seconds, the difference that makes on the track and translating that into a business of over a thousand people and multiple functions that everybody adopts that importance that really everything we do needs to be analysed and can be improved. And it's that constant focus on change. I go into some organisations now as a consultant, and they announce that they're going through a phase of transition. transition needs to happen all the time. if we want to be those high performers, and we want to be successful, and we want to beat the competition. and it is competition. Formula One is obviously reasonably unique in as far as it's high performance engineering, it's technology and it's sport and it's business all wrapped into one. There's not many others out there that can profess to be in that area.
Fred: It's interesting, isn't it? I'm a little off piece, but I'm gonna run with it anyway. And this this sort of changes constant mindset. And I work as an operating partner, so I'm changing businesses every day, you know, taking them through transformations. I started in motorsport and I've worked my way through large corporates, all kinds of different size companies. And the one thing that strikes is when people become resistant to change and They don't realise that change is the thing that is the most important piece of the business, and that everything else just needs to be the BAU, the business as usual. That
Richard Hopkins: Mmm.
Fred: you need to be spending most of your efforts should be working on making your BAU more efficient. And I've got this theory that I've not really explored too far yet. But as AI really transforms how business operates, it's the BAU that's going to be always continually being made more efficient and being shrunk. And most people's jobs in the future. are gonna end up being change related because that's where the work's gonna be, because there won't be any work in the BAU.
Richard Hopkins: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But BAU is the corner we've just driven and we're focusing on the future. We're focusing
Fred: Yes. Yeah.
Richard Hopkins: two corners ahead.
Fred: When you're an agent of change, as as you are, clearly, yeah, that's the mindset. Absolutely. Okay, so it's really interesting area, and I could talk on that one all day with you, Richard thank you. But
Richard Hopkins: Hahaha
Fred: so I want to get into the main nub of this, which is looking at technology, IP, getting it out and into commercial reality. I've been fortunate enough where I've also worked in companies, hydrogen fuel cell, as it happens, that was university spin-out had grown, grown
Richard Hopkins: Mm-hmm.
Fred: rapidly, took investment floated, IPO crashed out the market, the whole journey that they went through. with a
Richard Hopkins: Wow.
Fred: quite a few stories in there and some of them not for going on camera. but when you look at this academic valley of death as it's called, and universities generating world class IP standard technology transfer is really slow. They're very, very coy with it and I would probably say overprotective of their IP into to the point where most of it's stuck behind locked bars. You're on the other side saying, well we need to rapidly bring this out and get things going. Where do you see the whole valley of death thing and then the where the academics get stuck?
Richard Hopkins: Yeah, look, I don't even know if Australia's arrived in that valley of death yet. And maybe because it hasn't, maybe it's got the opportunity of almost bypassing it and avoiding it. Commercialisation of universities IP in Australia is kind of lagging. It has a strong focus, obviously on education, a strong focus on research, but it's only really been in the last couple of years that it's really truly started exploring the opportunity beyond writing a paper and publishing it in a journal and realising there's greater value to the IP that it generates. So it's somewhat behind and it's really seeking to create that commercialisation pillar. I think when you're outside of Australia, Europe and the States see that already exists and maybe yes it exists and because it exists that valley of death is more obvious. And I think I'm probably right in saying, I don't often say I think I'm right, but on this occasion I don't think we've entered it. I don't think we've realised it as such. I think we're still early on in the journey. We may dip into it or we might step straight over it because of a strategy that we can deploy. spin outs exist, but spin outs exist in a very traditional way. And there's a lot of naivety, and I'm sure this is the same for anywhere in the world and I'm sure Australia is not unique. in as far as research academics who come up with the hammer before the nails invented. And we've come up with great research, with great IP to try and translate that research into something commercial is a challenge here, it exists because of a number of reasons, I guess, in as far as the universities aren't the greatest encouragers of translating that in the first place. Two, there's a lot of naivety within the university around the commercialisation. There's a lot of research, yes, but there isn't necessarily the commercial acumen to support that research. And maybe because it's Australia and maybe there's a bit of a geographic disadvantage of in the fact that we're tucked in the corner of the world and we struggle to get that message out there. And we only necessarily look in a local way rather than in an international way. So I think there's a number of factors which either have been recognised or are being recognised and we're possibly just about to turn the corner. Certainly with what I proposed to UNSW, UNSW now being Australia's number one university and we've been number one in engineering for a number of years, was actually to create a spin-out company that didn't have anything to spin out. And that had never been done in Australia. There's always been a bit of deep tech research or something or other that was being spun out. There was always something to spin out. What I spun out was a model, was a platform to essentially be that venture layer within the university maybe sprinkled with bit of Formula One DNA within it to propose that P-ONE becomes an agent. a consultancy of types that can pick up the research academics, support them, not only help accelerate them along the TRL scale, but also the CRL scale and sort of step block it all the way through and do some validation along the way. I might be naive not realising that that already exists outside of Australia and maybe that then enters that valley of death. But this is something that's new in Australia. tell me if we're being pathfinders here or we're still 10 years behind the rest of the world. I don't know.
Fred: Yeah. Well I think and just for the viewers' benefit, TRL is technology readiness level, CRL is commercial readiness level. And and so
Richard Hopkins: yeah. We actually create a VRL, which is a venture readiness level, which is the bit
Fred: Interesting.
Richard Hopkins: that sits in between. So we track it. So
Fred: Yeah. Additionally to that.
Richard Hopkins: we track equally.
Fred: Brilliant. Okay. And obviously there's the MRL, which is the manufacturing readiness level. So that, you know, when people are looking at this on paper, they can understand the new technology where it's at. So that's for the viewers' benefit there. And then when you're looking at that CRL level, that commercial readiness, that is one of the things that is often not looked at very well when university spin outs take place. There's this tech, maybe, maybe it's green, maybe it's sustainable, but there's no commercial reality attached to what it could do at that stage. And that's often where they really struggle because it becomes a cash, printing hungry machine that says, I need more food to keep doing my research, but it doesn't really have a commercial reality attached to it at any point. And that's where they often fail, isn't it? In terms of they don't fly, they might get to 50 people.
Richard Hopkins: It's
Fred: Five years of money.
Richard Hopkins: obvious misalignment. And going back to my hammer and nail example, universities are great at coming up with solutions, but they don't necessarily have a problem that fits the solution they've got, which sounds a bit weird. But when you've got very smart, very clever people coming up with deep tech solutions, it is sometimes a challenge to find out what problem they're actually trying to fix. And maybe when that comes to investment and everything else, then maybe that's the valley you're talking about.
Fred: Yeah. I think it's one of those areas where if you could help universities make very visible the technologies that they potentially have available and other people can come up with the nail, as you say, the
Richard Hopkins: Yes.
Fred: how you could use that technology because it's often not the clever person that invents the X-ray machine or the microwave or whatever it is that it comes up with the final solution of let's heat food up with it. it's the application that becomes the interesting part.
Richard Hopkins: Yeah, one of the missions that P-ONE has is to take that portfolio of capability within the university, let everybody know what we do and what we're capable of doing, and then it's a bit of tinder of technology and try and match other people's problems with the solutions we already have. And that's that misalignment piece that we've been struggling with and not necessarily having. It's too siloed. We've got organisations, industries, the world with many problems and we've possibly got the solutions, but nobody's talking to anybody about it. So we're trying to be that matchmaker.
Fred: What are the problems? So you're taking the technology, you're looking at the venture opportunities, commercial readiness, but then you're looking at the market. What are the problems that you're finding look most aligned with what you're bringing to them?
Richard Hopkins: it's very broad, Fred, to be honest with you. AI still is a bit of a buzz at the moment and everybody's looking into that area. it's broad and maybe a little bit vague as well, all at the same time, to be honest. if I'm speaking about UNSW specifically, we're doing a lot in sort of clean tech is our area. But again, are we looking at just Australia or are we trying to look at the rest of the world and what problems exist there? I think that's one of the biggest challenges.
Fred: Yeah, okay. Yeah, I mean you could pick clean tech in mobility. So maybe energy storage of batteries
Richard Hopkins: Yep, certainly, A lot of work in battery technology, a lot of work in motor technology. We're doing a lot in quantum computing at the moment, which is obviously a very much an emerging level of interest. And UNSW is pretty much leading the way in quantum at the moment. PV solar research has always been a big strength of UNSW. for many many years Martin Green who was prolific in research in the late 70s, early 80s. Pretty much any solar panel on the planet today has some Professor Martin Green DNA within it. He really introduced technology that made solar commercial as we see it today and we're still doing a lot of research in that area. certainly what P-ONE's looking at and sort of trying to amalgamate within the university is our right to play within transport and energy and merge those two together. That's becoming, if not already, the big super industry that's out there at the moment.
Fred: Amazing. and if you take that as a specific example, those examples you've given, what do you see as being the commercial reality for those when you're trying to spin them out and people are interested and you've got the commercial reality of well we've got to go through the operational commercial marketing, sales, machine building to turn this into a flying bird, if you like, and there's gonna have to be a lot of cash goes in and get burnt to come out the other side
Richard Hopkins: Yeah.
Fred: and everyone wants the unicorn. Where do you see the biggest challenges on your side at the moment in that space around that clean tech in mobility?
Richard Hopkins: Again, I think, even with a unicorn, I'm talking about Australia here Australia is surprising and this might be surprising for a lot of people outside Australia is quite conservative in its approach. It's very risk averse. So finding investment. into even unique tech is a challenge over here. I think lots of people are born to look externally for investment overseas. whether it be budgets, whether it be the world today and how investors are looking globally, but certainly just finding that initial investment to get things off the ground is a bit of a challenge. So lots of great IP, lots of great ideas remain as great ideas for far too long. Certainly over here anyway.
Fred: Maybe what you need is a California office for New South Wales where you're actually just marketing your IP. In the middle of Silicon Valley, probably be a good spot.
Richard Hopkins: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, that's good idea.
Fred: Brilliant. And then so talk about the solar the PV piece. Do you see solar PV being in mobility in the future? Maybe trucking, where there's a lot of room for solar panels. Is there a place that you ever see that or not really?
Richard Hopkins: Yeah, yeah, 100%. I mean, I'm somewhat amazed, maybe because I've been conditioned in such a way. I've been working with the Sunswift programme for a number of years now. And obviously we've been using PV on our cars and see the benefits. I don't really have a really good answer, because I get asked it all the time. Why isn't there solar on cars? And there's not really a good answer to say why not. The cost of solar is coming down, but still there would be a, I think there is probably a cost and performance thing to consider. Trucks and buses and things like that, I think it could be a little bit more obvious and the solution could be a lot more advantageous just because of the area on those vehicles. But even in cars, I think maybe today, If there was a car on the market and it was £50,000 and it had a range of 400 miles, but you could buy the same car but with added solar, now this car, instead of being £50,000, is £55,000. And instead of the range being 400 miles, it's 420 miles. Is it worth paying £5,000 for an extra 20 miles? There's probably a little bit of this to consider at the moment. Lots of people are working on it. The Toyotas of this world have been working on it for a number of years, Hyundai as well. It's going to happen, but I think what it might become is part of the sort of range extender wave that we're not too far off. In as far as, you know, it's an addition to hybrid technology, the journey to getting that vehicle, whether we actually need an electric vehicle that does a thousand miles on a single charge, I don't know. But certainly the infrastructure range anxiety issue that we have in an electric vehicle today isn't the same as owning an internal combustion engine. Fast charging still isn't fast enough. The range still isn't far enough. We can debate that. I don't necessarily believe what I've just said, but let's go with it. So, hybrids will probably see a shift. There's a lot of talk in the market of rather than having an internal combustion engine this big and a battery this big, we flip that around and have a bigger battery and just a little internal combustion engine. Let's say a generator, which becomes a range extender. And we can, we can use that to advantage. And solar again is a range extender. The vehicles that we build at Sunswift are essentially battery electric vehicles with solar in addition. So, we use the solar in a range extending capacity. The cars aren't purely powered by solar, even though you can drive them solar and solar only. But let's face it, you're not going to go, a million miles on the sun at the moment. At the moment. No.
Fred: And they're not driving all day long either. So if even if you had an automotive application, the car sits around most of the day, it may as well be charging something during that time and capturing that energy.
Richard Hopkins: Absolutely, absolutely. So, I think a lot of car parks around the world now, I think it's Spain or maybe it's France, I'm not sure, that are mandated if you build a new car park, they must have solar roofs to them to aid with charging. so we're realising that solar will be the superpower in the years to come. It's looking like we're going down that road. regardless of whether you live in Australia with a lot of sun or you live in the UK with a little bit less.
Fred: Yeah, quite a lot less, I'm gonna say that, Richard.
Richard Hopkins: Quite a lot though, yeah There is that one day of the year apparently. Yeah, yeah.
Fred: Yeah. We've had a good summer this year, but yeah, we'll I won't go on any further, but yeah. And and you must be trying to convince people that this kind of technology is worth investing in at times when there's quite a long R&D cycle to take it from, an idea, a concept, a prototype to a commercial reality, plus all of the sales readiness, the marketing readiness for that, and the manufacturing readiness, you sort of add it together. There's
Richard Hopkins: Yeah.
Fred: quite an investment cycle and you say Australia's risk averse. So what do you plan around that at the moment? What do you advise other people to plan around that when they're facing that challenge of long R&D investment cycle?
Richard Hopkins: I think look further afield. Look, it's always been a challenge and it'll always be a challenge finding investment into technology. Certainly our number one project at the moment is a vehicle to grid solution, a bi-directional charging solution, which for us is a low cost, quick to market solution. we have huge solar penetration here in Australia. 40 % of homes in Australia have solar and a growing EV market. so to use your car as a battery is huge. Solar is growing, as we just mentioned, and that's growing globally. But it's storage of that solar which is going to become the bigger and bigger problem. batteries are the big thing. But of course, you know, the market that produced the most batteries in the world is the automotive industry. So why not utilise the batteries that we're driving around in to help power our homes, lower our energy bill and pay back to the grid for grids that aren't performing as well as they should be. So Vehicle to Grid in Australia is a huge emerging initiative. and P-ONE is trying to lead the way in as far as a low cost solution that utilises inverters and charges you already have. And look, I'm going to be slightly biased by saying it's a great solution. We have our first prototype. We're testing up at the CSIRO this week and it promises to deliver millions and millions and millions of dollars of return to investors. But even then, it's still struggle to get over the line, through all the different rounds. We've been fortunate in as far as we've been funded early on by an initiative over here in Australia called the Trailblazer Program, which for UNSW is called TRACE, which is a clean energy fund. So we've been lucky to have been embedded within a university. where we've got that early pre-seed funding that has got us to the point that we've got to. But if we were just a couple of likely lads who were down the pub who came up with this idea, I don't know how we would have got to the stage we've got to. We would have been living on park benches struggling and eating noodles every day.
Fred: it's a quite a large reality that without the incubation of the technology that the universities can provide, and then the spin-out pieces, as much as it doesn't work very well in a lot of cases, it's how would it work otherwise? You know, it's
Richard Hopkins: Yeah.
Fred: it's a fairly good point. One of the things I'm going to pick up that then just quickly is the use of the application spin out. So there's the wider technologies that often people have available to them. But finding something that you see as having a commercial application that is valid and that you believe in is a really key thing. and you see it with all the major companies that do it, they often invent a piece of technology. They don't know quite where to use it. And somebody
Richard Hopkins: Mm-hmm.
Fred: comes up with an application. And it's that application is the little genius moment. Even an example as dumb as, you know, Alexa was not invented to be a home use thing. It was invented to go in the Amazon mobile phone they were creating and the mobile phone wasn't doing very well and then somebody had the great idea of using the voice tech in in homes and a whole new application came. So I think that's a really great point for people to think it's always searching for the commercial application for the technology. It may not be what you had in mind.
Richard Hopkins: yeah, yeah. Look, our vehicle to grid solution came from, we attended a smart energy conference in Australia, in Sydney, and there was a keynote talk going on at the time. And we realised that actually that some of it was just permissibility. And it was a bit of a, these aren't the droids you're looking for moment, where we realised that, the problem wasn't necessarily the problem, was just finding the solution that fitted that problem. So it's quite a strange way of going around it. And we've realised actually our solution has another solution in as far as it actually enables vehicle-to-vehicle charging as well, which is a whole new area of interest to look at. So yes, sometimes got to be looking a bit left and a little bit right sometimes, for sure.
Fred: Absolutely. It makes me wonder if when I sometimes observe electric vehicles at the side of the road and I assume that mostly they're out of charge as opposed to actually being faulty. And you do wonder what the recovery strategy is because
Richard Hopkins: Yes.
Fred: I mostly I imagine it has to be towed away, whereas in reality if a truck could just pull up and transfer a bit of juice to it, which is it's
Richard Hopkins: Yeah.
Fred: like having a petrol can in the equivalent of the electric world, so going on to things like looking at the OEMs, who you're all looking at very fast development cycles when you think of your Formula One mindset. I know you're in the academic world as well, where things are a lot slower. the OEMs face a challenge at the moment that they typically have five to six year development cycles on their products, the cars. Chinese companies are now doing them at sometimes even half the rate and maybe cutting some corners, but are going very aggressively. Which is really impacting the EV space predominantly, the move away from internal combustion engine. What do you take and what do you see when you know how to build that efficient group of people working on a scale of around a few hundred people? What do you think needs to happen in the automotive OEMs to really help them meet the challenge of today?
Richard Hopkins: Well, think there's lot of legacy, isn't there? lot of the Chinese companies, it's incredible how many emerge almost on a weekly basis. And they're starting from scratch. They're from the ground up using all new methods and clearly heavily funded and supported by the government. And they're throwing everything at it. And then you look at existing OEMs, and you've just got to look at the methods that they're still using. Their rate of change is, very slow compared to the rate of change that the Chinese companies are having, but there's not necessarily a rate of change because they're just coming up fresh with a whole new approach to how we design and develop vehicles. But the BMWs and the Mercedes are just struggling to catch up. There's just so many legacy systems and it's going to take something quite special for them to make that change. I know there's ARENA 2036, in Germany, which is a huge organisation, aiming to address that problem. and trying to pull all the minds of all the German car manufacturers together to basically say, hey, look, if we don't do something quite drastic, we're all going to be out of business in a couple of years' time. I know there's awareness of it. What the fix is, going to be an interesting one to observe because It's almost like the example of the McLaren versus the Red Bull. I know the Red Bull Formula One team was born out of Jaguar, which was born out of the Stewart team, but there was almost a wipe the slate clean approach at Red Bull, certainly when I arrived, which is almost forget everything we've done in the past. Let's think about how we can do this from scratch. The good thing is there weren't many processes at Red Bull that needed changing because not many processes existed. So it was this fresh, clean, clear approach to how we're going to do something. Whereas a McLaren was very much trying to move this big heavy ship that was difficult to steer. It's amazing what they're doing now, by the way. What Zak and the team are doing is just incredible. Their change mentality is second to none. I don't think there's another Formula One team in existence that can innovate and change at the rate that McLaren do these days. But maybe that's because they realised what they were doing in the past. And I think a lot of OEMs, the Toyotas and even the Hyundais, some of the relatively new companies are really going to struggle to keep up. in the efficiencies that have just been created from zero, they probably watched and, you know, learned from all the other OEMs of how they do it and what's the better way of doing it. We can do it from day one. So it's going to be really interesting to watch.
Fred: Yeah, it is. it's an interesting place, isn't it? Because you've got the emergence of the clean technology breaking through and the various types of powertrains, should we say, and the variety of ways you can power a vehicle. Then you've got the software-led vehicle that's now becoming the key in the future, and that's now moving into motorsport as well. You know, things are going to be built around the software. And you do wonder if one day are the OEMs really going to be owned by the software companies that are pushing their software through a mechanical build, which if ultimately an OEM becomes well with the final assembly plant of said software
Richard Hopkins: Yeah. Yeah.
Fred: vehicle, it's changed the dynamics in the ways other industries have been totally disrupted, you know, music, Spotify versus downloads versus CDs. people just come at it, don't they, from a very different angle and massively disrupt, and it does appear that that. is happening. We don't all know where it's going, but
Richard Hopkins: Hey look, we just used to drive cars once upon a time. Like we just used to use these things to make phone calls and now look at what these do for us. The car is on the similar journey, isn't it? In as far
Fred: Mm.
Richard Hopkins: as its other abilities and capabilities. When autonomous driving comes in, goodness knows what, that will clearly open up for everybody.
Fred: I know most people want a lift home from the pub, but
Richard Hopkins: I'm sure there's other advantages, I'm sure there are, but that's... I think we're like-minded in thinking, God, wouldn't that be great if I can just be in the pub and I can text my car and it comes and collects me. Hopefully I'm still in a fit
Fred: fantastic. No, there's not
Richard Hopkins: state to actually get in it.
Fred: Yeah. there's something very special about the use of technology for the most basic of needs. something that humans are very good at. So always always fun.
Richard Hopkins: Yes, yeah, indeed.
Fred: So Richard, thank you for joining us. Tell me, is there anything more you want to say on TRaCE?
Richard Hopkins: Look, TRACE is a fantastic initiative within UNSW and broader across a couple of universities in their support and function. And in as far as what we were talking about earlier, the struggles and some of the challenges, certainly for P-ONE we've been very fortunate to have been supported by TRaCE. an amazing initiative. Unfortunately, it's not going to go on forever, which is a bit of a shame. It's a government fund that at some point will be exhausted. But for now, for those that have been supported by it, it's been amazing. So big shout out for the guys at TRaCE.
Fred: And tell people where they can find more about you and P-ONE and what you're up to.
Richard Hopkins: Well, just Google P-ONE technology, we're involved in lots of initiatives at the moment. Most of them sort of align to UNSW acting as sort of special agents for UNSW to pick up research projects, but maybe some other projects within the university as well, some of which I can't talk about at the moment, but hopefully in the next couple of weeks. that will be announced, but really some exciting things that we're doing. We are an advisory, we are an agency and consultancy around technology. really aiming to sort of be the bridge between industry and university research. Universities are mighty beasts of knowledge. Yes, they might not move at the pace. of Formula One, but one thing that P-ONE is trying to do is measure that performance and move things along at a bit of a faster rate and put that sprinkle of Formula One within those university walls and try and accelerate and match those problems with those solutions.
Fred: Fantastic. Well, Richard, thank you so much for joining us here at Future Engineering Bets. I'm gonna ask the viewers and the listeners to please make sure you share this episode with people that you know. Do follow and subscribe for another episode. And thank you so much for listening. You've been listening to Future Engineering Bets where we talk about advanced engineering and the future applications and capital investment and where things are going in the future. I look forward to seeing you on another episode. Thank you, Richard.
Richard Hopkins: Cheers, Fred. Cheers, everyone.
