Startup Series: ONE

Jul 21

Today's guest is Mujeeb Ijaz, Founder and CEO of ONE.

Widespread adoption of electric vehicles (EVs) not only face technical challenges, but also psychological barriers that consumers need to overcome. ONE has the audacious goal to design a battery that can double the range of EVs while using sustainable and safe materials, avoiding nickel and cobalt in particular. The company is also working to develop and localize raw material supply chains to bring down costs associated with this clean energy solution.

In this episode, we dig into battery range anxiety, its impact on widespread EV adoption, and how charging networks can create additional barriers for EV drivers. We also talk about ONE’s solution to these EV battery challenges, the company’s breakthrough technology, and its focus on finding the right talent to successfully realize its go-to-market plan.

Enjoy the show!

You can find me on Twitter @codysimms (me), @mcjpod (podcast) or @mcjcollective (company). You can reach us via email at info@mcjcollective.com, where we encourage you to share your feedback on episodes and suggestions for future topics or guests.

Episode recorded July 5, 2022.

In today's episode, we cover:

Mujeeb's background in EVs and battery innovation at Ford, A123 Systems, and Apple
Battery range anxiety and its impact on widespread adoption
ONE's solution to double the range of EV batteries to 600 miles
Density of charger networks and the implications for EV drivers
Predictions for the used market for EVs
Impact of local driving conditions on EV range and comparisons to ICE vehicles
Impacts of location and climate on battery range
ONE's latest accomplishments, including their partnership with BMW
The company's two types of batteries: Gemini and Aries
Differences between battery chemistries like lithium ion, manganese, and nickel cobalt
How ONE avoids nickel and cobalt in their batteries
The predictability of commercial fleets like package delivery trucks and buses
Cost structures associated with different battery chemistries
ONE's go-to-market roadmap and funding to date
Gaps in talent and training for battery manufacturing
ONE's focus on sourcing the right talent and workforce development efforts

Cody Simms:
Today's guest is Mujeeb Ijaz, founder and CEO at ONE, which is an acronym that stands for Our Next Energy. ONE is a battery company with audacious goals to design a battery that can double the range of an electric car, use sustainable and safe materials, avoiding nickel and cobalt in particular, and develop and localize raw material supply chains. Also, you might notice that I'm not Jason, this is Cody Simms, Jason's partner at MCJ. I did today's interview with Mujeeb at ONE, and you'll hear me take on episodes here and there going forward. I was looking forward to this conversation with Mujeeb in order to understand not just the technical breakthroughs that he is pursuing, but also to hear what psychological barriers he thinks most consumers need to overcome in order for EVs to hit mass adoption. Mujeeb has spent over two decades in the EV battery space and has been thinking about these problems just about as long as anyone out there. We have a great discussion about range anxiety, and using EVs for road trips, one's technological approach, their commercial and operational progress and the future of manufacturing and supply chains in an electric vehicle future. Mujeeb, welcome to the show.
Mujeeb Ijaz:
Good to be with you, Cody. Thanks for inviting me.
Cody Simms:
Well, I'm really excited to learn more about what you're building at Our Next Energy or ONE, I guess you call it a little bit of both. I don't know if you have a preference of which way to go with it.
Mujeeb Ijaz:
We're starting to go by ONE more and more.
Cody Simms:
More and more, that's great. Well, I want to learn all that you can share about EVs and battery and range and just what it's going to take to drive greater and greater amounts of EV adoption in the coming years ahead. But maybe before we do that, I mean, I was looking at your background and you have clearly been in this space for a long time and some pretty high leverage roles. So, maybe talk through your background. I mean, you were at Ford for 15 or 16 years working on alternative technologies. You started your own company or worked in a company focused on driving EV battery innovation. And then you were at Apple for many years, also working on special projects around energy storage. So, I can't wait to learn from you about that path and what you learned from it.
Mujeeb Ijaz:
Well, Cody, I'm really fortunate in that, when I started working my way through my degree at Virginia Tech, General Motors founded the GM Sunrayce in 1990, which invited college students to participate in a solar car project. And that really became the catalyst for me to start focusing my efforts and attention around alternative energy and transportation and building the bridge. I joined Ford and in the early days got into battery development. I led the battery effort at Ford for the first production ranger electric vehicle. And at the time it had a range of 50 miles. It was a very large battery pack, it weighed 2000 pounds, used lead acid batteries. And if I look back on that, it makes me smile because we've come a long way since those days, but really at the center of the story around working on electric vehicle, whether it was at Ford, A123 Systems, or my work at Apple briefly, the adoption curve has always been linked to range. And as I look at the topic of range and electric vehicles, it's the first and foremost question that people have on their mind, which is that, will this product serve my needs or will it get in my way? And if so, how will it affect my daily use of the product? And that's decision process, because you're reprogramming someone on what to expect, they have to be convinced that the electric vehicle can serve their needs without creating additional barriers to decide to buy the product. And so I've worked on reducing the friction or reducing the barriers to entry on electric vehicles my entire career, and right now what one is focused on is helping to further accelerate the adoption by helping to double the range of EVs, which we believe will get to the full market.
Cody Simms:
Yeah. Let's dive into range a little bit. I think I've heard figures that the current typical need of a person in the United States at least is around 150 miles or so just to feel like they're relatively safe, but even that number tends to give people anxiety when thinking about buying and also considering what that number might do over time as the car ages. And then in comparison, I know part of what you're doing at ONE is looking to extend the range dramatically beyond that. And I start to think about like ... I've actually been on a few road trips this summer where I've driven 10 hour days or whatever. And in a long trip like that, I'm going to fill up with gas, in a gas car, I'm going to fill up with gas two or three times, I may refill when I'm at half a tank, because I actually either stop for food or stop to use the restroom or whatever, more frequently than I actually even need gas. From a psychology perspective, where does that range anxiety come from and how much of this is solved by battery capability versus how much of this is solved by charger network availability?
Mujeeb Ijaz:
Yeah. Fantastic question, and I'll break it down into three steps. The first is, let's use the math of what people do every day. The EPA publishes reports on the average distance traveled in the United States. It's 42 miles, is the average number. But 99% of the daily trips can be covered under 150 miles. So that's where the 150 miles comes from, is the vast majority is covered within 150 miles. But there is another data point, which is that, when you look at the single trip distance of all the vehicles in the United States, there's one time in a year that you'll cross 285 miles. And that's where people put in their mind's eye, just like you described that trip, whether it's a weekend holiday or some other event, you're going to need the vehicles to approach the 300 mile mark. And that's why 300 miles has been in everyone's mind's eye, a number that starts to look like a real vehicle that can satisfy all of their trips. What we did in analyzing the batteries that are required for the future electric vehicles is we just simply made one adjustment. The adjustment is, let's make that 300 miles sufficiently robust that people can always get that number, whether it's the winter, whether it's driving at highway speeds or climbing mountains, that you don't have an excuse that you can really get to 300 miles as a minimum. Well, it turns out you have to nearly double the EPA rated range, to get 600 miles would mean that you're almost guaranteed 300 miles. And that's where we came up with doubling the range of EVs, is that in order to compensate for real world conditions, you have to go after a much higher energy density, a much longer range battery. And if you rate the vehicle at 600 miles, you can be sure the customer will get at least that 300 mile capability on a single trip.
Cody Simms:
And going back to my question on just like, again, where people are used to being today, if you assume an average car like a gas, an ICE car has a gas tank of maybe 15 to 17 gallons and maybe they're getting 20 miles per gallon, give or take, that's roughly that 300 mile per tank mental calculus that people are doing. But again, as I said, I mean, at least when I road trip, I certainly don't drive the tank down to E before I stop and pull over almost ever. So, how much of this is also concerned about density of charger networks relative to EV range itself?
Mujeeb Ijaz:
Yeah. I think if you have a vehicle that can do 150 miles and that's the common vehicle, then everyone needs chargers everywhere, because you're constantly in the predicament of needing to charge to get to where you're going. If you double that to 300 miles, your density of chargers gets to be a little less. If you can go to 600 miles of rated range, where in every condition you can drive that regional trip, the density and frequency of chargers becomes less necessary. I'll give you an example, there was a video that circulated during July 4th weekend, where there was a two hour long line waiting for vehicles to recharge in a fast charge network node, and it was in such a situation where people had no choice because they didn't have the range necessary to go to the next charging network, they had to just wait it out. And if you get into that situation charging networks, and even if you have frequent charging networks will become overtaxed, especially on travel days where everyone's leaving at the same time and everyone's returning at the same time, you're going to find that those networks become clogged very quickly. So our goal is to put enough range on board to where you're not taxing a network as your only way to get there, that you also have the capability to go in a relatively long and reasonable trip distance without having to recharge during the trip.
Cody Simms:
Got it. So in an ideal trip, in your mind, the family vacation or whatever, you literally ... In your mind is, the solution is you should be able to just drive all day on your EV and only charge overnight. And you're going to stop during your trip to, again, get some food, use the restroom, stretch your legs, whatever, but it takes the necessity out of needing to repower the vehicle as part of that stop.
Mujeeb Ijaz:
That's right. Exactly.
Cody Simms:
That is definitely a future that's very different than how people think about road tripping today, which is ... Again, back to the idea that everything about EV is going to be a bit of a paradigm shift for people, which is pretty interesting.
Mujeeb Ijaz:
Yeah. I'll add one thing to it is that, we don't think that everyone needs the same level of confidence that the vehicle can travel say 600 miles in a rated range, and we don't think that that's the answer that everyone needs that, what we think is that, the market is full of a distribution of opinion on what does it take for you to decide to make an electric car your only car, and especially in the early market where people are skeptical by pushing the number up, what you've done is you've taken the range obstacle off the table in the purchase decision, and then people can choose which level that they want. But if you offer a number that no one's really quite sure about, then your decision is, do I want an electric car or do I not want an electric car? We want to flip that over to which electric car range level do I want to invest in if I get multiple options? And in that, we think there should be a very large upper limit that will then encompass the entire market, and then people can decide and choose what they want as they buy the vehicle.
Cody Simms:
I think the other thing that's interesting is, most of the conversations about range today with EVs focus on new cars, because that's the bulk of EV purchases today. But as you forecast out five years or more, all of a sudden, just like I would assume the ICE market is, the bulk of sales start to be in used cars over time. And I wonder how the used EV range conversation is going to play out, if you have any perspective on that?
Mujeeb Ijaz:
So far, the used market for EVs is fairly robust and the EVs are holding up better than expected in terms of durability and lifetime. I have seen many examples of half a million miles on EVs and still not receiving performance limitations that would make them unacceptable. I think that's a good news story for battery technology, as well as power trains and longevity maintenance stories where the most frequent thing that people have to worry about on an EV is tires and maybe breaks and a few other minor other components, but really power train and battery have proven to be very reliable and durable. So I think as time goes on, the loan period for an EV could likely increase as well, where instead of a five year, 60 month model, you start extending up the ability to finance EVs longer, which will make them more affordable. That's another aspect of a vehicle having a longer life is that you can make its affordability better through financing terms.
Cody Simms:
And to what extent does the local driving conditions of an EV impact range more so than local driving conditions of an ICE vehicle might impact longevity of that ICE vehicle?
Mujeeb Ijaz:
Yeah, I mean, when you look at a gasoline vehicle driving Metro, driving around town is actually more harsh on the vehicle than an electric vehicle. You're burning fuel when you're sitting still, you're not putting mileage, but you're running your engine. So as you're wearing your power train out even when you're not going very far in an ICE engine vehicle, and in fact, the efficiency of powertrain is the lowest in Metro driving than it is on highway driving for a gasoline vehicle. An EV is quite the opposite. An EV loves to drive the Metro, it's actually the highest efficiency driving around town, you get better, we call it watt hours per mile, the equivalent of miles per gallon. And as you look at highway driving, that's a more difficult situation for EVs because your average power consumption goes up, your drive train efficiency tends to follow that, at Metro highway driving, you get better fuel economy than you do on highway driving. And so, they're a little bit opposite to each other. And so, really an EV prefers the around town every day, which is not bad because most people do that for the majority of the life of the vehicle.
Cody Simms:
Does it matter? If you mostly are driving your vehicle in Southern California versus in Northern Wisconsin, is that going to impact the long term range of that EV?
Mujeeb Ijaz:
Yeah, quite a bit. It turns out that climate can take one third of your range away from you. If you're driving around a Metro setting and you turn your heat on, you're using quite a bit more energy than you would otherwise use in a gasoline vehicle because a gasoline vehicle has waste heat as a byproduct of the engine just running, an electric vehicle you have to produce heat with electricity. So that then will further deteriorate your range. Also, batteries impedance gets worse at cold temperature. And so you'll find the battery degradation and the overall performance of the battery is negatively affected by cold temperature, quite a bit more than it is in say a California environment where it's moderate pretty much around the year.
Cody Simms:
Great. I mean, so interesting to see how these markets are going to evolve both for new and used EVs in the coming years, based on all these factors that maybe people haven't had to consider as much, people have to consider different factors, I guess, when buying an internal combustion engine vehicle. Let's go into what you've actually been building. You've had a couple of really exciting announcements in the last few weeks with BMW. Maybe share a bit about some of what you've actually been accomplishing with one.
Mujeeb Ijaz:
So, when we set out to double the range of an electric vehicle, we didn't actually have a clear idea how we would do that. Specifically when we started the company, we wanted to avoid the use of nickel, cobalt and other materials that would be hard to mine and would not be as sustainable in the long term. We came up with a battery architecture that divided a battery into two segments, one that dealt with that 150 miles every day that could do it very durably and routinely, you could use this battery as your everyday driver.
Mujeeb Ijaz:
The second battery was installed as a range extender. And that battery would have a unique chemistry. That chemistry would be there for extending the range occasionally, but we would not need to use that in an everyday setting. As we put the architecture together, we started to work with OEMS, and BMW specifically having experience with range extended EVs with like for example, the BMW i3, as an example platform that extended the range of the battery power with a gasoline engine, like the idea of a range extended battery as a secondary source of energy. And so we partnered with BMW to demonstrate an electric vehicle, a BMW iX platform by the end of this year with a 600 mile range capability. And that would be the first of its kind SUV platform, no compromise on the platform, its capabilities to be a good people mover and a product that the US market specifically has gravitated towards trucks and SUVs without then having to sacrifice on range and the capability to take it on trips.
Cody Simms:
And when you say a demonstration vehicle, does that mean it's going to be something in production or it means you'll have some pilots on the road that they can use to test the market with?
Mujeeb Ijaz:
Yeah. The first step is pilot, and then decisions after that will be made as to whether the technology meets requirements and the company would like to get behind taking the product to production.
Cody Simms:
Looking at your website, you have two different battery products that you're building today. One you call Gemini and one you call Aries, maybe break each of those down a little bit in terms of what's where in the development process and the differences between the two platforms.
Mujeeb Ijaz:
Yeah. So the one that we just talked about with BMW and the iX platform is called Gemini. Gemini referring to these two different batteries working together to extend the range. As we develop that product, the primary battery that you use every day is made out of a chemistry known as lithium iron phosphate, where that chemistry has an advantage, it does not use nickel or cobalt. It has a much better safety. In case of a failure, it doesn't propagate into a fire that could lead to a full vehicle fire. That type of chemistry being valuable, we decided to create a second product called Aries, which is only using lithium iron phosphate. And we are launching that battery at the end of this year at the end of 2022 for the commercial delivery market. So the Aries battery is 100% LFP, and that battery is for commercial truck and bus market. The Gemini battery is for the mainstream automotive market to help double the range of EVs, and that battery would launch in 2025 timeframe.
Cody Simms:
And on the Gemini battery, the lithium ion phosphate is the standard daily use battery, if I'm not mistaken.
Mujeeb Ijaz:
That's right.
Cody Simms:
And then, the range extender component is a different battery chemistry that you're using. Is that correct?
Mujeeb Ijaz:
That's right. And we have targeted manganese as the cathode raw material, manganese being very abundant, very low cost, and having appropriate all other attributes, better safety, better longevity, manganese as a chemistry has not been used in electric vehicles batteries to date in wide scale form. What we did to improve its energy density is we were able to delete the graphite on the other side of the cell, the anode side, making more room for cathode, and therefore doubling the energy density of that cell. And that cell as a range extender, does not need to operate every day, so it's lifetime, we could accept some limitations on lifetime as we use that chemistry.
Cody Simms:
I think I saw a different interview with you somewhere that said that elements of this were used in some of the early Nissan LEAFs. Is that correct?
Mujeeb Ijaz:
Yeah, that's right. Nissan was the first company to introduce manganese as a mainstream chemistry, and eventually nickel cobalt won out favor in the auto industry because of range and trying to get above 300 miles of range. What we're doing is we're breaking the problem down into two different chemistries, one for daily use, one for range extension. We're reintroducing manganese, but this time we don't pair it with graphite, we're deleting the graphite and we're letting the battery chemistry work with cathode only and no graphite on the anode side.
Cody Simms:
Help me understand because the knock on the LEAF originally was great little car, but terrible range, less than a 100 miles of range. So how does using a similar chemistry to what they had actually provide the range extending boost for you? Is it because it's mostly highway miles that isn't doing stop start type of engagement or some other reason for that?
Mujeeb Ijaz:
Yeah. So if I look inside the building up of a lithium ion cell or the chemistry of the cell, I have two parts, I have a cathode and an anode. Let's say they have equal amounts of material that are needed. So it's about half the space in the cell is graphite for the anode and half the space is this manganese for the cathode. What we've done is we've deleted the graphite and then doubled the amount of cathode that you can have, which doubles the energy density. It makes for a much higher energy density chemistry. And then we plate lithium directly onto a copper foil. As we've constructed that the reason that most car companies would not do that is that battery would not last the full lifetime of the product. So what we're doing is we're saying, "Okay, we accept that limitation will relegate that to range extension mode only, and daily driving will be done with this lithium iron phosphate. So in that, we've broken the problem down into two separate sections and the range extender is only used when you take long trips.
Cody Simms:
Got it. So in that case, just to make sure I understand, then it may not be an appropriate technology if you were using the car for heavy driving all the time. Like if you were constantly in raging extender mode, you would actually wear out the range of the car fairly quickly. Is that correct?
Mujeeb Ijaz:
Yeah. If you did every single trip on the range extender mode, well, first of all, because you're getting 600 miles of range on a single charge, if you imagine doing 200 consecutive cycles, you'd get 120,000 miles of driving. You could say you'd be pretty tired as well because you'd do that 120,000 miles in less than a year, but then you could start wearing it out. What we're doing is we're saying you intermix daily driving events where they're much less than that, and then we're calculating that you're going to get over 250,000 miles of use out of the product before you ever see any kind of wear up.
Cody Simms:
Got it. So it's a trade off you're making where you gain extra range, there is a potential long term resiliency issue to that extra range if you overuse it. But most people won't overuse it, because of how people typically drive
Mujeeb Ijaz:
That's right.
Cody Simms:
So then with the Aries model, so that's taking the lithium iron phosphate base that you're using in your Gemini product and turning that into an everyday battery primarily for commercial fleets. Is the focus of that also range extension or is the focus of that more sustainability of the battery chemistry mix? Maybe talk a bit about what you're trying to accomplish with this product.
Mujeeb Ijaz:
Yeah. So the commercial delivery sector has a very predictable duty cycle and they are typically focused on delivering the range that they promise, but doing it every day, so they want durability, they want low cost, but they most importantly want safety to make sure that if there was ever an accident, it would not lead to a catastrophic thermal runaway that could affect the safety of the entire product. And so, as we look at the durability of lithium iron phosphate, being able to provide the full depth of discharge every single cycle, and extending that forward to better pack system design, we've been able to offer customers around 200 miles of range in a delivery truck where their counterpart batteries that they previously were using could only do around 130 miles equivalent. So we've been able to improve their range and also give them more durability, better safety at a lower cost.
Cody Simms:
And are these mostly displacing diesel vehicles today?
Mujeeb Ijaz:
Mostly diesel, that's right. Although there are some that are gasoline as well.
Cody Simms:
And these would be short haul, like local delivery vans and delivery trucks for the most part?
Mujeeb Ijaz:
Yeah. You can think of it as package delivery, mail delivery, even school bus platforms, those types of products using this battery.
Cody Simms:
And talk about the sustainability side of each of these different battery chemistries you're using, I guess maybe starting with the manganese side of things, what does manganese availability look like today? Where is it sourced in the world and how does it compare to a traditional lithium ion chemistry?
Mujeeb Ijaz:
Yeah. So if you look at nickel cobalt, if I do the average cost of any nickel cobalt chemistry in the cathode, all of the cathode materials, it's around $22 per kilogram that we pay for a nickel cobalt based battery. The same reference point in time for manganese, it's around $1 per kilogram. So there's a very significant cost reduction. There are two reasons for that. One is that manganese is much greater in supply. So it's a much easier material to find and to mine globally. One of the primary spots for manganese globally is Australia, but there are many, many locations that you can mind manganese. The second reason for it is, it does not require the same investment of energy to process the material into battery grade material, which means it has approximately one third the carbon footprint in terms of turning it into a battery material. So, what we see as path for sustainability is, we need to focus on not just accelerating the adoption of electric vehicles, but let's try to drive down the cost of creating battery materials out of raw materials so that the carbon footprint is not so high on manufacturing the product. And that is something that we are paying attention to on all fronts, whether it's the lithium iron phosphate battery and how the lithium iron phosphate cathode is produced. Eliminating graphite from our anode, we have 60% less graphite in our total battery than say a conventional nickel cobalt battery today has. So we're trying to get rid of materials, we're using more sustainable cathodes, and we're trying to drive the carbon dioxide footprint down for production of those materials.
Cody Simms:
That's fantastic. What about cost, both obviously cost to produce as well as just for a comparable battery that you'd be swapping out of a car, what's going to be the end cost to the car buyer?
Mujeeb Ijaz:
Yeah. I'm going to speak about cost not price because price is a relative term that people have to figure out what they want for margins. But just to give you three comparative cost points. The first is that, for a nickel cobalt cell, a $100 per kilowatt hour has been long used as the target for nickel cobalt cell products for automotive. Lithium iron phosphate, $75 per kilowatt hour has been used as a target that most companies are going after right now. And some have achieved that target. And then the third is that, for our anode free, where we're not using graphite and we've substituted a manganese based chemistry for the cathode, we're at around $45 per kilowatt hour. So, you can go 100, 75, 45 as a way to think about the cost and how we see long term that this will become an effective technology because we're driving away from materials that are more scarce, like cobalt, materials that require a lot of energy investment, nickel. We're driving towards materials that are improving carbon dioxide footprint, like manganese and lithium iron phosphate, and also eliminating the 60% of the graphite being used in the anode. All of that is improving the overall cost structure of the battery.
Cody Simms:
Super helpful. And maybe I just have a very 101 question for you, which is, when you hear about electric vehicles, people refer to them as lithium ion vehicles and you're referring to most battery chemistry being nickel cobalt, what is the difference there? Just to make sure people understand at the base level?
Mujeeb Ijaz:
Yeah. So lithium ion is a family like lead acid as a family, and nickel metal hydride as a family, lithium ion as a family. That family means that the lithium ion is the working material. The ion is going back and forth. It's a lithium ion. It goes back and forth between the anode and cathode and physically is moving back and forth. So every one of the lithium ion category chemistries I'm about to describe, can be in the family of lithium ion, but now there are specific flavors.
Mujeeb Ijaz:
So one flavor is lithium iron phosphate, it's an iron cathode, it's a graphite anode. And lithium iron phosphate is known as a lithium ion chemistry, it's in the family, but lithium iron phosphate is a specific type of lithium ion. It has, let's say an energy density that's X. Then you can get into nickel cobalt, which is a different type of cathode. There's nickel cobalt manganese, nickel cobalt aluminum, these are all similar to each other, and it might be energy density of almost 2X. So you can get twice the amount of energy density out of the same chemistry. Sorry, out of the lithium ion in that family. So, lithium iron phosphate, one type nickel cobalt is a different type, both of which fit in the house of lithium ion.
Cody Simms:
And so, what's interesting when I hear you say that is, I think technologists ... I've grown up in the software world, like exposed to things like Moore's law, where you just assume technology is going to get cheaper over time. I think a lot of people just assume lithium ion is going to get cheaper over time. And the way that happens isn't because the cost of producing one type of the battery chemistry gets cheaper over time, it's because you innovate within the available battery chemistries, which is exactly what I'm hearing you say that, "Hey, we found a better way to do similar types of things, it's still in the family of lithium ion, but using our chemistry, we've now essentially doubled the range and reduced the cost at the same time at scale."
Mujeeb Ijaz:
Yeah, I think that's one of my lessons learned going back to the 30 years in vehicles and batteries, is that if you try to solve the problem of battery range with a chemistry only solution, you're limited by what you can do. But if you open that up to a system level view where in our case, we divided the battery into two segments and we're having one deal with the daily problem and one deal with range extension. We opened up the opportunity for different chemistries and different approaches. And that to me is where we can solve this topic of getting the right sustainability for materials, for safety, for cost is we have to lift up and think of it more at a system level and not try to only solve it at a component level.
Cody Simms:
Fantastic. I think given that, maybe just give us a bit of a roadmap of the go to market that you expect to have for the company. Based on that realization and based on the roadmap, you've got, obviously the BMW pilots you're trying to get out by the end of this year. I think I saw in a press release, you all issued that you have a total of four customer contract signed for basically the equivalent of somewhere around 300,000 EV battery packs. But I'm sure you have more to add than that.
Mujeeb Ijaz:
Yeah. We actually have signed seven customers now. So we're happy that that number's getting a little larger as time goes on. We are going to market with the Aries battery at the end of this year by reaching our first production product. We then anticipate upgrading that product with more US manufacturing content by 2024. And then we're going to move towards the Gemini product launching by the end of '25, early '26.
Cody Simms:
And so you say more US manufacturing capacity. Does that mean you all will be building your own essentially battery factories over the next few years?
Mujeeb Ijaz:
That's right. So we're starting with today's factory in Southeast Michigan building the pack, and we're purchasing cells from an Asian source. As time goes on, we're looking to build US cell factory, and we'll be manufacturing the cell from raw materials all the way through to finish cell products and then into our pack products here in the US. And then we're moving towards Gemini being a fully US sourced, including raw material's product.
Cody Simms:
And to date, I mean, you're about what? Two and a half, almost three years old as a company, is that right?
Mujeeb Ijaz:
We're two years old-
Cody Simms:
Two years almost.
Mujeeb Ijaz:
[inaudible 00:34:55] to the day.
Cody Simms:
Incredible progress in two years. So you've raised about 90 million in venture capital financing. I think a most recent round led by BMW i Ventures, and then around before that led by Breakthrough Energy Ventures, if I'm not mistaken, with folks like Cotu and others that are also participating, how are you using the venture capital from a scale perspective? And then I'm assuming as you look at building battery factory and sourcing local raw materials, etcetera, you'll also need to find other forms of debt financing and project financing to help you build out some of that more industrialized capacity over time.
Mujeeb Ijaz:
Yeah. I appreciate the question very much. As we grow the most important asset to the company is the talent pool. And so we've been working to cultivate the right culture and onboarding the right talent for the company to make measured steps as we grow, as we have an ambitious agenda in terms of cell manufacturing as well as pack manufacturing, our team needs to have the right skill set, the right level of experience, and we needed to be able to recruit that talent. So, that's one of the primary uses of our venture funding to date is growing the team. We're around 150 employees to date and we are continuing to grow. We have two locations, we have a California based team and a Michigan based team. So we're also balancing investments in spending and research and development, as well as in manufacturing and product testing and so forth. As we scale the factories, we're going to need a different type of source of capital. And we are looking right now at partnerships with both government, as well as other capital sources that care about growth and scale as the investment pool from venture capital to growth equity, to then people that do debt financing. We're looking now into the later stages, whereas we think about raising factories that we're going to need those sources of capital as well.
Cody Simms:
And on the manufacturing side, I mean, to me, that's one of the more exciting things about the transition to a decarbonized economy, is how the manufacturing footprint of the world will by necessity shift. You're needing to onshore a lot of manufacturing in the US and build up capability there. How are you finding training for that type of talent at scale to be in the US today, and where do you think there are gaps that need to be filled?
Mujeeb Ijaz:
Yeah, I think there are gaps to be filled. I think that for around 30 years, there have been an ever increasing number of manufacturing types of disciplines that have been off shored from the US market into other markets. And as time has gone on, we've lost a bit of the memory and the flexing of our own capabilities here in the US and in north America to manufacture products at scale with the right cost efficiency, and to become competitive and to reengage in manufacturing, is a big topic right now. I think that new energy technologies represent an opportunity. I think the battery industry itself is emerging as a staple that's necessary. Much like if you're in the auto industry, you need engine transmission, you need basic functional capabilities in manufacturing, these kinds of components, the same thing's happening with battery technology globally. So every market that's looking to electrify Europe, Asia, US, North America, et cetera, South America, are now looking at how do they bring about the supplier development from raw materials all the way up, create workforce, workforce training. So we're engaged with our local government, state government, as well as the federal government, and initiatives with workforce development being part of what we try to contribute back to. Think of it as like a battery academy, we have to create the education necessary to train and deploy the right skillset to enter into these new manufacturing jobs.
Cody Simms:
Yeah. I would think it's not only an economic imperative, but at least at the federal level, I would think they would start to think of it as a national security imperative, to some extent, as well as this becomes the future of transportation. Right?
Mujeeb Ijaz:
Yeah. I think the pandemic has been a good wake up to supply chain, diversity and development. When the global supply chain works really well, you'd never notice where anything comes from because you'd never have a reason to, but then when it stops, then you start realizing that while all of my goods are in a different part of the world and the ships can't run because the ports aren't working or there are not labor force because of a pandemic, there's so many different ways that the supply chain did break down that have taught us to take a hard look at the diversification of supply chain. It doesn't mean that you have to go and pendulum should not swing wholly in one direction or the other, it should be that you have a diverse supply chain. You have multiple sources, you have more ways to get the same products that are necessary, that you can function if you have any kind of breakdown in the future.
Cody Simms:
Well, Mujeeb, I super appreciate you taking the time to walk us through everything you're building, and obviously you have an incredibly ambitious set of goals. I don't even know that we spent time articulating them up front, but according to your website, you have three main goals, I guess, for the company, maybe you could articulate them for everybody here before we close up.
Mujeeb Ijaz:
In summary, what ONE is going after is we want to double the range of electric vehicles, do it without using nickel and cobalt and develop a North American supply chain. As we work on those three goals, we don't think solving one by itself is enough, we want to simultaneously work to solve all three together.
Cody Simms:
Anything anyone listening here can do to help or engage if they've found themselves interested in your mission, what are ways for them to learn more or lean in?
Mujeeb Ijaz:
Go test drive an electric car. I think the first barrier for us is to convince consumers that electric cars have something to offer. And most people that are convinced that electric cars are the way the future, have driven or own an electric car. And most that are convinced that doesn't, have much to do with them have never driven or owned an electric car. I'd suggest that, learning opportunity if you've never experienced it firsthand, take a test drive. And what you'll see is, it's different. It'll offer advantages. It offers more complexity in some things, but you might find that being able to walk out and find a fully recharged, fully fueled electric car in your driveway every morning and eliminating the need to go to a gas station is the first and foremost benefit that you'll start to appreciate. And then the rest of it will take care of itself. As we start making that purchase decision, more renewable energy will come onto the grid, more functional capability in the grid to supply energy in diverse ways and less reliance on fossil fuel and decarbonizing the grid will take off when people start making that purchase decision.
Cody Simms:
Mujeeb, thanks. Anything else I should have asked that I didn't ask you?
Mujeeb Ijaz:
Nope. You did great, Cody. It was really good to meet you today and appreciate your time.
Cody Simms:
I appreciate your time very much. Thanks so much.
Mujeeb Ijaz:
All right. Take care.