#213 Innovation in Motion: Gleb Yushin on Battery Technology and Electric Vehicles

0:00:02 - Mehmet
Hello and welcome back to a new episode of the CTO Show with Mehmet. Today I'm very pleased to have with me Gleb Yushin joining me from the US. Gleb, the way I like to do it usually is I give the guests the time and the space to introduce themselves, because I believe no one can introduce another one other than themselves. So the floor is yours and thank you again for being a guest on the CTO Show. 

0:00:29 - Gleb
Thank you, mehmet, for the invitation. It's very special for me because it's my first podcast ever, so I'm. 

Gleb Yushin, Chief Technology Officer and Co-founder of Sila. So our company develops and manufactures next-generation materials for lithium and batteries to power and provide high performance to electric vehicles, to electronic devices, allow them to be both charged faster and run longer on a single charge. So when our technology is implemented, there are numerous benefits, not only to consumers but also to car makers, battery cell producers and the environment. So, for example, the car makers can not only differentiate their vehicles from competitors but also make them much more desirable and therefore accelerate the transition to renewable energy in transportation. At the same time, the battery makers, without any additional investment in equipment or personnel, can increase output of their factories in gigawatt hours, can increase revenues and also reduce CO2 emission while producing these batteries. So, in short, our industrialized and scaled scientific innovations enable breakthrough products today that will benefit our environmental impact tomorrow. 

0:01:46 - Mehmet
That's great, gleb. Thank you for sharing this Now. Maybe it's a little bit traditional question, but I'm always curious to ask my guests what brought you to technology and what was the journey that led you to be now at Sila. 

0:02:06 - Gleb
Well, I started my journey as assistant professor of material science at Georgia Tech, and this is the largest engineering school in the United States. So I joined Georgia Tech in 2007, and I was particularly interested in studying different type of battery chemistry so-called conversion chemistry that theoretically might unlock full potential of lithium-ion batteries but was known to the great very rapidly. So I first focused on understanding fundamental mechanisms responsible for such degradations, and when I started to deeply understand these mechanisms, I also concluded that regular, simple materials might not be able to prevent battery failures in this case. But I thought that we can come up with creative approaches in composite material synthesis to minimize or maybe even completely avoid such degradations. And unfortunately, at that time the battery industry in battery science was very conservative, and I was repeatedly told that the industry is very mature and there is almost nothing to innovate on. And so the idea of using composites, and certainly nanocomposites, as battery materials was almost unthinkable, and similarly the idea of using synthesis methods from other industries, such as chemical vapor deposition or chemical vapor infiltration, to produce such nanocomposites was basically out of question. So I was told in numerous very confident voices that this would be too expensive or impractical, or that nobody needs it now, and likely for a good reason, and I was told that maybe nobody needs a better battery because it's already quite good. But I questioned the statements and eventually found them to be erroneous. 

At the same time, myself I had no industrial experience, so my initial thought was maybe to find a large chemical company that may be interested to further develop and scale up our scientific ideas. 

But after talking to many people, I learned that it's not that simple, and there may be three main challenges. The first, maybe the biggest one, is that after decades of moving heavy industries out of the United States, many companies almost forgot how to bring technologies from the lab to factories. Some, for example, still do research, but when the inventions then sit on the table, because of the large cultural and communication barriers formed between different departments, which need to be all collaborate and involve to drive innovations, so like strategy, research, development, finance, manufacturing and so forth, and overcoming such barriers becomes even more challenging when the production is overseas. The second is that the development and scale-up may require more time and resources than initially budgeted, and so on its own may kill the initiative and finally, the interest of the large company or the interest of your champion within the large company may change over time and eventually your project may no longer be a priority, so the probability of success may become small, and which was very frustrating to hear and realize at that time. 

0:05:22 - Mehmet
That's great to hear from you, but now let's go one step back, gleb, for the people who might be new to these terms. 

0:05:36 - Gleb
So if you can explain to us this new lithium-ion chemistry, as they say in Lehmann's term, and why it represents such a significant breakthrough, Well, conventional lithium ion batteries rely on so-called intercalation phenomena, and so where you insert lithium ions into the crystal structures, and so the more lithium these crystal structures can hold, the higher will be the capacity of the batteries and higher will be energy stored in the battery. But there is a limit. So you need to have quite a few atoms to store a single lithium ion. So for the anode, for example, you need six carbon atoms to store a single lithium ion. And for example, for new chemistry, for silicon, let's say one silicon atom can store four or even more lithium ions. 

So there is significant difference in this capability to store lithium ions. And so you know, atomically it's a very large difference. By weight it's about three times difference. By weight, sorry, it's about ten times difference. And by volume it's about three times difference. But the challenge is that when you insert lithium in this chemistry, in this conversion chemistry, the particles expand and the microagmins go all sorts of degradations, and so you know, there is a possibility of this insertion, extraction of lithium becomes much harder, and so that's why we had to come up with new ways to produce the materials, produce components to overcome this degradation phenomenon. 

0:07:15 - Mehmet
That's good to hear from you, gleb. Now, one thing you know while preparing, so I get to know that you know you had led the partnership with Mercedes, so how this collaboration is going to shape the future of automotive batteries. 

0:07:33 - Gleb
Well, that's right. So the Mercedes announced last year that it's going to use our material, our technology, for its legendary G-Wagon, which is very special vehicles right, it's a flagship car and their service always uses the latest and the best technology available which is proven, to power it. And so you know, with this, with our technology, we can enable in a longer range, faster, faster, better performance and faster charging, and so this will be our entrance to the market. And so once you have it there, typically Mercedes and other companies, they transition the new technology from luxury vehicles to premium vehicles and eventually to mass market vehicles. So over time, our technology is going to power all types of vehicles on the road. 

0:08:26 - Mehmet
That's great and I think you have decided to open a very large facility right for you know, performing the growth of the company right. 

0:08:39 - Gleb
It's a pretty large facility. It's going to operate in less than two years and, you know, by 2028, phase three. It's going to produce enough materials for up to 150 gigawatt hour worth of batteries annually, so for over one million electric vehicles per year. And even at that time, you know, it's going to be a small fraction of the overall market. So it's kind of the large facility. It's a huge facility but it's still the first step. 

0:09:06 - Mehmet
And you know, I'm curious also like because, like it's more chemistry, but you know, like what other technologies? I would say, because you know, like I'm sure, like you need to leverage other technologies as well in manufacturing and, you know, in design. So what are, like, some of the other technologies you know as as you rely on to to bring this to the market? 

0:09:36 - Gleb
I mean, we have to work with our partners, and so, you know, we design our own equipment, but we work with engineering firms to manufacture this equipment. You know, initially we actually, at early stages, we design and produce our equipment ourselves and because we thought that we have the smartest engineers, they have amazing scientists, so we can come up with the best way to produce, to produce reactors and you know, which could potentially be true. But also, when we work with experienced manufacturers, they, you know, through 20 decades of, you know, decades of improvements, they, you know, they learn how to predict timelines and how to produce, to produce really reliable equipment. So this was very important for us to have this transition. So our partnership with engineering firms is very critical. We also have partners in cell makers. 

So in order to implement our technologies and power electric vehicles, we need to work with cell makers, and so they have to adopt our technology and, you know, be designed in such a way that it will be dropped in replacement, so they wouldn't need to change the way they're producing batteries. They don't need to change equipment, that they need to implement our technology, but it is still a change, and so, you know, we have to kind of rely on their good will and their desire to innovate to get with us. So we rely on them. And then, you know, the car makers are also conservative and so there is a kind of barrier for observation. So we need we need them to be excited about this technology, and so it honestly takes like five years to develop materials and implement this new technology in electric vehicles because of so many numerous testing that you have to go through, you know, from quality control to reliability, to safety testing, on both cells and packs and cars. 

So you know lots of moving parts there and it's not kind of overnight success. 

0:11:37 - Mehmet
Yeah, yeah, definitely it is. It's like long, long effort, I would say. Now, you know like I like this topic, because when I was doing solo episodes like I didn't have guests at that time when I started couple of months back, I think I covered, you know, sustainability and environment in one of the episodes, so how you see your company and technology align with the global sustainability goals, especially, you know, in reducing carbon emissions and promoting cleaner energy solutions. 

0:12:11 - Gleb
I mean, it's our mission. You know, our mission is to power the world's transition to clean energy. Unfortunately, there is a significant change in the world view that triggered technological change. So you know the world view change was a global realization that transition to electric vehicles is happening no matter what, and it's happening quite fast. And when we started Sila in 2011, we believed in this transition. But the world did not, and so some of our investors you know not our investors some of the investors predicted that no more than 5% of cars would be electric. You know so 95% of cars would remain powered by combustion engine in 2050. 

And now this feels like a joke, but at that time this was a reality and was very painful, and we were fortunate to get remarkable investors with long view who spent time to focus on business fundamentals, but they were the manures here. 

And so once the world realizes this transition is happening, and happening fast, people also realize that the scale of battery manufacturing needs to increase by 100 times or more, and so many raw materials that people use in the past might not be available in much quantities in the future, especially in relatively short timelines of maybe a few decades. 

And furthermore, you know when, initially COVID hit and later, you know, russian invasion of Ukraine greatly disrupted the supply chain, and so the EV and battery industries faced all the supply chain challenges, and now there is a global agreement of the need to rely on onshore rather than offshore manufacturing of both batteries and critical battery components. 

So you know, and therefore there is alignment, I think, overall, that we need to rely on raw materials that are inexpensive, that are globally available in much quantities, and where we should ideally use battery materials that can be recycled economically, so we should use battery chemistry that can be recycled economically, and so the part of this realization in the United States was that seal received a hundred million dollar award from the Department of Energy, so we were recipient of the first set of projects funded by the President Biden's infrastructure law to expand domestic manufacturing of batteries for electric vehicles and grid, with the focus on domestic processing of materials and components that are currently imported from other countries. So we definitely have very high alignment with where the world is now, but we didn't have this alignment when we started 12 years ago. 

0:14:48 - Mehmet
Now one question that might arise here you know especially like, and you know I like to to. It's not like, about challenging, but you know some voices comes and say you know like, but this is also chemical and you know it's not safe. So tell me more about how you ensure the safety and reliability with, with the technology like this lithium ion chemistry that you explained about. 

0:15:13 - Gleb
Just moving back, I mean overall, as I mentioned, that it's like takes five years to qualify batteries. There are so many tests, there are so many quality controls that you have to implement. So we utilize digital manufacturing for quality control and statistical process monitoring. We get audited by, by car makers. There are so many, you know, behind some of the best people in quality control right to ensure safety, and it's also kind of embedded a little bit in our DNA because, you know, it's one of our commitment is to focus on environmental safety and security, because we need to protect our colleagues, we need to protect our customers, but we also need to protect our partners and our communities, and so this is what we do, this is our commitment. 

0:15:59 - Mehmet
That's good to hear. Now I'm interested. You know, I'm sure, like you, have a dynamic market and you know competition. So with other companies that might you know be here and there, how do you maintain, you know, your competitive edge? 

0:16:23 - Gleb
We innovate with scale, and so you know I think the key was that maybe took us longer to get where we are, but we focused on developing technologies that is easier to scale still hard and hard by technologies in heavy industries. Scale up is longer. It's not software, but nonetheless, compared to other technologies, the barriers are much smaller. So our materials are dropping replacement so again, there is no changes in the processing of them, that you can just replace conventional materials for the two main batteries with our materials and you get this boost in performance, you know. Second is that we utilize globally available precursors that are inexpensive, and you know we use, you know, volumetric manufacturing methods that become very inexpensive at large scale. And so you know, when you go to large scale, you know you have to keep innovating, but you also have to provide value to end customers. You have to provide value to vehicle makers, you have to provide value to battery makers, and so everybody have to make money, make profits, and so you materials have to become cheaper and cheaper over time, and this is what we have. 

We have several phases. In phase one of this, in battery production facilities, in most like, the materials are going to be slightly more expensive. At phase two, and so we serve initially like luxury markets, then they're going to serve premium markets and finally mass market. But if you don't design your processes or materials that can go to this very low cost for mass market it is, then your impact is going to be small. And so some companies focused on kind of high performance to metawatt, and they have to overcome lots of barriers for adoption and also I don't see the any pathway for them to become cost competitive for mass markets. So we had these thoughts, you know, from the very beginning, and so again it is, took us longer time, we had more restrictions in our technology, but once we developed it, I think it's, the path will be faster and so we'll see who is going to innovate better and who is going to win in the market. 

0:18:26 - Mehmet
Yeah, that's good. We will see all together Now. You just mentioned something few seconds ago about what people were expecting ten years back or more. When do you see a more massive adoption for electric vehicles? I mean in a reasonable way and without talking about what some governments are doing from forcing people, but I mean as a market. You've been maybe following for a long time. You know reasonably when we can see more adoption. 

0:19:01 - Gleb
I would say the predictions for adoption improve every single time. So when we started the company, we had this world dream that by 2050, all cars the majority of cars are going to be electric. So we had this conviction at that time, because electric vehicles are just better for society and they're also better vehicles. They're much more enjoyable to drive, they're quiet, they don't see these vibrations, they don't see any noises, and you can charge it at home. It's very comfortable, very comfortable drive, and so this is something that all people should use in the future. And so to me, and especially again with all these challenges with supply chain and reliance on fossil fuels, now the transition is happening much faster, and so I would say that a quarter of all four vehicles or more will be electric by 2030. And my predictions as by 2040, over 75% of vehicles will be fully electric. 

0:20:02 - Mehmet
So that's. I mean I'm keen to see this happening, but beyond the electric vehicles, and especially because this technology it's amazing because, when I think about it, without mentioning any brand, you can go on a single charge. I'm not sure, but quite good distance. So, but what other use cases we can see these batteries be implemented in? I mean beyond just cars? 

0:20:38 - Gleb
I mean certainly definitely not just cars. I think with new material technologies, the batteries become lighter over time, so this will enable electric aviation or flying taxis or flying self-driving drones you know that can carry passengers. So this is very special and it is a distant future, but it's not that distance. Maybe is within a few decades. So I think the rise of the market share of electric aerial vehicles is going to start in about two decades, so by in the mid 2040s, and so this is my expectations and it's going to be driven by the improvements in the car markets. So once you have more adoption of EVs, one the technology matures, becomes more reliable, better, safer, then the electric aviation is going to take off. 

And similarly, I think most ships are going to become hybrid and eventually maybe fully electric by within three decades, maybe by 2050, 2030, or 2050, 2060s. And it's maybe takes longer time in ships because they kind of last longer and you know you require much larger batteries and it's also cost sensitive. Transportation of goods is very cost sensitive area and then you know, and batteries also help to expand the share of renewable energy in power generation. So you know, I think it might be a few decades. It's going to exceed 75%, and this is my personal predictions. Most experts believe that it's going to be half of that. So they believe that 40% maybe will be renewable energy in world power generation, but I think it will be more than that. I think it's going to be like 75% in less than 30 decades. So lots of changes are coming. 

0:22:25 - Mehmet
I'm keen to see and you know, maybe it's come to surprise like I'm living in the Gulf, I'm living in Dubai and you know, here there's a huge push towards, you know, you know acquiring this technology and yeah, like I can say from my own observation at least about Dubai, like you know, the number of electric cars increased. You know, and you know even electric buses, and you know, I think, that the railway that they are developing also, it will be powered by electricity. So it's good to see this and you know, to have less emissions, I would say Now, shifting a little bit gives that. You know, like you have a very rich background, honestly, like between you know, being a professor and being a co-founder and a CTO and the certain chief. So how do you navigate all these responsibilities? 

0:23:22 - Gleb
Like, if you allow me to ask you, it's challenging and so, you know, I was, you know, on part-time professor, part-time CTO of Sila for some time, and now I'm in the leap of absence. I'm taking more responsibilities because now is the critical time for the company to expand, build factors, go to market, and it is a challenge. And so no doubt about this. And so you have to be, you know, thoughtful. You have to delegate a lot, you have to have amazing team that you build trust with. 

You know I have amazing, you know, team members at Sila, but also have quite amazing students at Georgia Tech, and you know it's very nice to have understanding within the colleagues, you know, and our department, you know, school and our college and our university in general, is very supportive of entrepreneurship. And so in the past, when I joined Georgia Tech, you know the comments I received about my involvement with the startup was very, very negative. Many of them were like well, you should focus on teaching, you should not focus on innovations. And now everything is changing and now, you know administration is super supportive and super understanding, and so they gave me this opportunity to break in teaching so I can focus on the company and increase the chances for the companies to succeed or accelerate the development, so this is very special for me. 

0:24:50 - Mehmet
That's really nice. 

0:24:53 - Gleb
Yeah, I won't be able to do it without kind of support of colleagues, of support of people around me and support of the family and so forth, because it is a lot. 

0:25:03 - Mehmet
Yeah, it is really, really, you know, like amazing, fantastic. I would say. You mentioned something and you know I'm a big fan of, but I also want to share your insight. You mentioned, like you know, the team and how you push them for innovation. So how do you foster the innovation within the team? I want you because, by the way, you are maybe in one of the industries that all that you have to do is innovate all the time. But you know, I'm asking you this question for inspiring fellow entrepreneurs about how important is innovation within whatever you are doing and spreading it to the team as well. 

0:25:49 - Gleb
I can maybe comment on how to foster you know my view on how to foster innovations within the company but also I can share my own tips. How I can you know what helped me to innovate? I think for the company you need to. You need to hire great talent. It's very important. You need to find people who can innovate and be very effective and be very collaborative, because, you know, maybe in the past we had like single inventors, single innovators. Now you have teams and everybody have to collaborate, work together to foster these innovations. And then you know, as a manager, you have to provide them space, you have to provide them priorities and you also have to create a culture when you build on each other ideas that you support a good idea, no matter if it's yours or somebody else's. The important part is to identify these good ideas and build on it. 

So, so it sounds simple but it makes a huge impact. And then, you know, for myself, I used to approaches. You know, first, I'm very visual thinker and have vivid imagination, and I like to draw things on a piece of paper, on a PowerPoint or Google slides. And in fact, when I was a teenager I was, you know, considered and become a professional artist. And so even when I was drawing, I often would do it from imagination. I would invent my own landscape or structures or objects or faces, rather than copying what they see. And so drawing helps me to come up with new ideas or materials or processes or reactor designs, or keep on design. So when, before I start drawing, I might have some big ideas, but when I start drawing, you know, in a few minutes or in half an hour I would typically come up with something new. So, you know, visualizing your thinking is typically helping to encourage innovations, at least for me. 

And the second, I am also a very curious person, so I rely on my curiosity, so I like to learn about different industries or processes, trying to understand how they work and why. So, even if there is no clear connections with what I do, and then very often I find that there is some remote analogies, and so I can bring these ideas from very different fields and can be as diverse as pharmaceutical or agricultural or food or construction or aerospace. I can bring them to what I have, and so maybe these analogies are initially over simplifications, so you need to adopt and modify them for your application. But sometimes you expect some trends and you do experiments and you see the opposite. But you know, when you see these trends, it's important to understand the fundamentals behind them, because once you understand the fundamentals, you can come up with new ways in a simpler design, in cheaper ways, more elegant ways to produce and innovate in a space. So curiosity in combination with eagerness to understand fundamentals helped me quite a bit, yeah. 

0:28:45 - Mehmet
That's great insight, you know. It's a common thing you know after interviewing great minds like yourself lab is, you know visualization and you know being visual thinker. I think this is something very important. And also, you know something I always mentioned and I practice as well, which is you know learning about different things. I think the more you try to understand, like other things and you come back to the you know, to the main domain that you are in, you can excel better. I would say so, really good insights from your side. Now, as we came almost to the end, gleb like, is there anything that you wished I have asked you? This is my famous last question and how you have answered it. 

0:29:40 - Gleb
Oh well, I think maybe I wish you would ask about overall performance improvements in batteries. So maybe if recycling would be a significant part of it, and I would say that 99% of lead-acid batteries are recycled, and so I expect the same fraction of lithium-ion batteries will be recycled in the future, so the supply chain challenges we face now may eventually go away in a few decades. I also expect that these new materials will enable much longer cycle life and calendar life in batteries so moving from maybe 1,000 cycles for electric vehicles to 5,000 or 20,000 cycles, and from 10 years to 20, 30, 40 years, and this will enable vehicle-to-grid integration. It will enable semi-trucks as well as autonomous vehicles capable of driving millions of miles during their life, and I think these innovations may happen in less than a decade, and so, in this case, the cost of transportation will be reduced. So not only we will have, let's say, better technology that is more environmentally friendly, but also it's going to be cheaper for everybody. 

0:30:56 - Mehmet
If I understood right, Gleb, is this, this battery that it might I'm not saying lost forever, but is it something that we can see Like maybe 10 years battery? 

0:31:09 - Gleb
I mean, you see these batteries now, so many batteries that operate in satellites. They have to function for tens of thousands of cycles and operate for decades. The difference is that these batteries are not necessarily cheap and don't necessarily provide the best performance in terms of the energy density, and so, but we can bring this, improvements, we can mitigate the gradation mechanisms in conventional batteries and in novel battery chemists. This might be even better, and so that's why you can enable these innovations in the future. 

0:31:43 - Mehmet
That's great to hear, and I'm looking forward to the day that these batteries are available, because it's something which will be very beneficial for everyone in all industries. I would say Well, thank you very much for being my guest today on the CTO show. You've added a lot of insights and I loved that. We covered something I didn't do before, which is mainly about renewable energy and something related to sustainability. So thank you very much for sharing your insights and your also only experience as an entrepreneur and as an innovator. And, as usual, this is how I end my episodes for the audience. Thank you for tuning in, thank you for all the feedback that you are sending, and if you have any feedback and question, don't hesitate to reach out to me. And if you are interested to be also a guest on the show, don't hesitate to reach out to me also as well, and then we can make the arrangement for that. Thank you very much, and we will meet again in a new episode very soon. Thank you, bye-bye. 

0:32:53 - Gleb
Thank you so much. It was very special for me. I really appreciate your wonderful host. Thank you. 

0:32:58 - Mehmet
Thank you. 

0:33:00 - Gleb
Thank you. 

Transcribed by https://podium.page