Episode 153: Val Miftakhov, Co-Founder & CEO of ZeroAvia
This week's guest is Val Miftakhov, Co-Founder & CEO of ZeroAvia.
ZeroAvia is building the world's first practical zero-emission aviation powertrain. ZeroAvia utilizes hydrogen power to accelerate the transition to sustainable aviation.
Before focusing on climate solutions, Val held several senior business and product positions at Google and McKinsey & Company and was a nuclear researcher at Stanford Linear Accelerator. Val is a serial entrepreneur in the EV space dedicating the last decade to electrifying transportation. He founded eMotorWerks, a company working on smart grid EV charging solutions. Val founded ZeroAvia in 2017 and assumed the role of CEO in May 2019. With two degrees in Physics, Val holds a Ph.D. from Princeton University and Masters from Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology. He is a two-time winner of Russian Nationwide Physics competitions. In his spare time, Val makes good use of his airplane and helicopter pilot licenses.
In this episode, Val takes me through ZeroAvia's inception, what the company is working on, and why he decided to tackle zero-emission aviation. We discuss why batteries or bio/synthetic fuel aren't the best solutions, where hydrogen power fits in, and how zero-emission aviation impacts the airline industry. We also dive into key milestones for the company, the public-private partnerships it has secured, and the future of ZeroAvia. It was great to be joined by Val and learn more about his experience in zero-emission aviation.
You can find me on Twitter @jjacobs22 or @mcjpod and email at info@myclimatejourney.co, where I encourage you to share your feedback on episodes and suggestions for future topics or guests.
Episode recorded April 1st, 2021.
In Today's episode we cover:
Overview of ZeroAvia and the company’s origin story
ZeroAvia’s approach to decarbonizing commercial aviation and the challenges to the hydrogen-powered fuel supply
The role of regulatory bodies in bringing ZeroAvia’s solution to market
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Hello, everyone. This is Jason Jacobs and welcome to My Climate Journey. This show follows my journey to interview a wide range of guests to better understand and make sense of the formidable problem of climate change and try to figure out how people like you and I can help. Today's guest is Val Miftahkov, founder and CEO of ZeroAvia. ZeroAvia enables zero emissions air travel at scale, starting with 500 miles short haul trips at half of today's cost. They have a novel zero emission powertrain that has 75% lower fuel and maintenance costs resulting in up to 50% total trip cost reduction. They also just raised a 24.3 million round in funding led by Hong Kong based venture capital firm, Horizons Ventures, who's an existing investor and joined by new investor, British Airways. Other investors include Breakthrough Energy Ventures, Ecosystem Integrity Fund, Summa Equity, Shell Ventures, and SystemIQ. And the company's raised a total of 53 million in private investment and 74 million in total funding since its formation.
Now, we have a great discussion in this episode about decarbonizing aviation, why it matters, why it's so hard, where we are in trying to get there, what the different solutions are, why hydrogen is such a compelling one, ZeroAvia's angle, their approach from day zero, some of their progress to date, what's coming next they're long vision, and also we have a fascinating discussion about what some of the other key things are that need to be solved that are outside of ZeroAvia's control to make this happen.
We talk about some competing offerings as well, and some of the trade-offs and pros and cons of the different approaches. At any rate, I learned a ton in this one and I hope you do as well. Val, welcome to the show.
Val Miftakhov: Great to be here. Thanks, Jason.
Jason: Well, thanks for coming. And especially, uh, the big funding news happened yesterday and yesterday being March 31st, since we don't publish these exactly on the date of recording, but I would imagine that your inbox is pretty full and you're probably a pretty busy guy right now.
Val Miftakhov: Yeah. A little bit. And we tried to time the press release so it's not hitting, you know, April Fool's day because otherwise you'd have to do another press release why it's not an April fool's joke. Seriously, this was great work by the team and by our CFO as well to get all this together. And it came on the heels off the previous round that we did just in November. And I think it's reflective off the amount of energy that's I guess, upon attendance. Um, [laughs], uh, in the-
Jason: I was gonna make that joke, but I thought it was a dad joke. So I restrained, but you- you went right after it.
Val Miftakhov: Yeah. In the- the space, people are very excited about what we do. People are excited about the clean aviation movements. We of course think that we have a big part of the story.
Jason: Well, maybe that's a good segue. What do you do?
Val Miftakhov: ZeroAvia is about three and a half years old. We built zero emission, hydrogen electric power plants, or engines for commercial aviation. We are targeting large vehicle, relatively large vehicles starting with 10 to 20-seat aircraft, fixed wing, commercial service, cargo and passenger. And then what this round is about that we just announced is also answering the next size off the power plants and next size of, uh, aircraft of standard full-size regional turboprops or regional aircraft, 50 to 70-seat, generally in size
So for those larger vehicles or long distances or relatively long distances, hundreds of miles that they fly on their trips, we believe that the only credible alternative to fossil fuel or to turbine engines is really hydrogen electric approach, which is hydrogen as primary storage, hydrogen fuel cell to convert hydrogen through electricity, and then electric motors to drive the propeller or a fan or pick your favorite propulsor. So that's what we do.
Jason: How did you come to do this work? Did you grow up hoping and wishing that you would decarbonize aviation as a grownup?
Val Miftakhov: Yeah. Not quite like that I grew up in Siberia. So back in the day, that was not a big issue, as you can imagine, especially in the Soviet Union. But as I came over to us about 25 years ago and then started going in the energy world and just all the management consulting that I did across the various topics, the sustainability became quite a bit of my personal passion and my previous company actually before ZeroAvia was already in the, uh, zero emission transportation space, electric motor works. We built the world's most sophisticated and largest network off the smart charging systems that would allow us to manage charging of electric vehicles, electric cars, to the grid conditions, and allow us to integrate more and more renewable power into the grid by utilizing the batteries in the cars.
So I started that company around 10 years ago, and then, uh, about four years ago it was acquired and that's, that's when I started ZeroAvia. I'm a pilot myself, so that's other side of the personal passion flying since 2006, give or take. First, I got my helicopter license and then the, uh, fixed-wing license. So this is a personal passion as well. So I want to see an aviation do good.
Jason: And when you exited your last company and then you started thinking about what's next, I know you mentioned that you're personally passionate about this area, but this is a new area as it relates to decarbonization and putting it front and center for your professional focus. So what's the origin story of the company. Where did you start and what was the first step that you took that started the dominoes in motion?
Val Miftakhov: As I mentioned, right? So a pilot for the last 15 years, and then, uh, you know, started the zero emissions transportation company 10 years ago. I moved all my ground transport to electric pretty much. And our energy supplied home is all solar. So we have solar city, two systems on our roof. We drive two electric cars and I'm now on my, I think, fourth electric car. At the same time, when I go to the airport and get into the helicopter or airplane, we burn fossil fuel and it just felt out of balance.
And then when you look at the broader picture in the industry, you see that now aviation is becoming ... really quickly becoming a major source of human driven climate impact. Now it's maybe 5% to 10% off the total. If you count, you know, CO2 sources and non CO2 sources, a lot of times people just don't count the non CO2 parts, but they're at least as impactful as the carbon emissions. So with those 5% to 10%, not huge, but already sizeable. But if you look at all the other industries, right? Including electric vehicles on the grounds where I was part of over the last years, that whole thing is moving electric, right? Electric cars, electric trucks, all that. Then you look at the power sector. Everything's moving renewable, is great, even heavy industry already moving to more and more sustainable. But for aviation, we just don't have solutions. And nobody knows what to do in fact, so we realize the only, the only thing people know how to do is sustainable aviation fuels liquid fuels, substitution of fossil fuels, biofuels or synthetics. But those have their own issues and they cover care only off of that carbon part of the equation, but not the other side of it. So they're at the best can address only 50% of the problem.
So we really thought that we as an need radical propulsion solutions and out of those, it was clear to us that hydrogen electric is the best option.
Jason: And as someone that has electrified so many other aspects of their life, and- and knowing that there are companies that are trying to electrify aviation, what is your view on the viability of that path, and maybe some of the trade-offs to consider?
Val Miftakhov: Early on, we, we looked at a number of things and of course, batteries were in scope as well. And if anything, being where I'm coming from, from electric car side and spending time on the figuring out how to charge discharge those batteries, working with automakers, we had a number of automakers who works with and understood their trajectory for the battery technology and battery developments. If anything, I had a bias towards batteries coming into this, but it was relatively clear relatively quickly that for commercial markets, for commercial aviation, which is larger vehicles, longer distances, it's just too much of a gap between what we have today, and what is credible today in terms of weights of the batteries or specific energy watt hours per kilogram main metric and what's needed.
What I usually find instructive to talk to people about is, you have jet fuel, for example, this is 12 kilowatt hours per kilogram, chemical energy density. And then you take the best battery systems off today that are in production. And those are at the best two hundreds, 250 watt hours per kilo, which is, you know, 50X difference compared to jet fuel. Now, of course you can talk about the efficiency of conversion of jet fuel to electricity and all that. But you, you know, you have 50X difference to start with.
And then hydrogen on the other end is three times higher energy density than jet fuel on a per kilogram basis. So you have 50X lower, three times higher, 150X total difference between the batteries and hydrogen. So that's what you start with. And these two orders of magnitude of difference, basically drive the selection, right? So our thesis is that for small vehicles, maybe low utilization use short distance batteries will have its place. Yeah. And everything else will be based on hydrogen.
And in the hydrogen domain, there are two ways that we'll see people do things. One is hydrogen electric, which is what we do where effectively we generate the electricity, and then electric motors rotate the prop. And combustion, which could be hydrogen combustion or synthetic fuel combustion. And over time, I think that combustion parts will also move to hydrogen there as well. So we think hydrogen is really the future of commercial aviation and people like Airbus already agree. Last year, you might have seen a lot of announcements about Airbus doing new types of vehicles in the next 10, 15 years that are all focusing on hydrogen. So it's ... the last year was actually great for us and for hydrogen in aviation.
Jason: If you look at ... there's, there's short haul, there's, there's long haul, there's small planes, there's big planes, there's passenger planes, there's cargo planes. And I'm, I'm sure I'm missing some categorizations here, but out of the things that I just laid out, where are you focused with ZeroAvia.
Val Miftakhov: All commercial traffic, the larger, the better. So our first commercial launch is in about three years, and that will be a small turbine replacements, nominally, a 600 kilowatt, uh, shaft Bauer engines. Those engines typically go into 10 to 20-seat aircraft fixed wings or airplanes, and there are about 10,000 of those commercial use worldwide. That's our initial segments. And typically those go for maybe a couple of 100 miles on a trip, less than an hour in length, in a typical regional sub regional travel. A lot of those are used in the Island nations and so forth.
And then there is also a cargo element of that. So like for example, FedEx is running the largest fleets of small planes out there for a single operator. I believe it's over 300 small planes that they use for sort of last say 100 miles of service in a lot of places, uh, Cessna caravans and upcoming system, the sky courier seat, the 19-seat format. And then we just announced in fact where the kickoff off the next size power plants, which will go into larger aircraft, 50 to 70-seat targeting probably 500, uh, plus miles of range.
So that's what, that's what we're going after. We're going after the bread and butter off commercial aviation. And within 10 years, we're hoping to get to a point when we can start replacing some of the single aisle, the most prevalent type of aircraft out there with some zero emission options.
Jason: And can you talk a bit about the timelines here in terms of when you got started, where you are today, and then you mentioned that- that three-year milestone, for example, but just as you look into the future, maybe some of the key stages and phases that are in store.
Val Miftakhov: So start at give or take about three years ago, we had some grounds tests. So first week formative months of the company are looking at how we want to do things, doing some designs, all that. Then we started working on hardware. We had some ground tests, uh, initial ground test in 2018. Then we had our first flights in a six-seat prototype in 2019, first in the US. Then we got a lot of attention and interest from the UK government, won some grants there. Set up operation in the UK. And last year we built the second prototype, uh, 60 prototype in the UK with a new version of our power plants. We have floated a number of stages of our flight testing program in the UK last year, getting, uh, ready for last stage of that program now with some long distance flying that we were going to demonstrate pretty soon here.
And also last quarter around December, we have kicked off the next program, which is now a commercial intense power plants, 600 kilowatt power plants that would go into- to the standard 20-seat aircraft. That's what was funded through private, public, uh, arrangements with $22 million coming in from the private sources and Amazon and Breakthrough Energy Ventures and Shell and Horizons, and- and a few others came in. That's-
Jason: United Airlines, right?
Val Miftakhov: Uh, not the United, British Airways this time. Yeah, British Airways, we did the, uh, initial partnership back in the last quarter of last year. And now they've joined as officially as an, as an investor into the company. So, uh, a really good partnership there, but we had a 22 million private, 17 million government money coming in to fund the 600 kilowatt program. And that's what we kicked off in December. So the next milestone for the company is a first flights off that vehicle, of that power plants, first version, and a 19-seats vehicle later this year, hopefully.
And then of course go from there to qualification off the design for the certifiability. And we then go for certification and hope to get the product, eh, to the markets and flying commercial aircraft in about three years. With the larger engine systems that we are just kicking off, and that's what this, uh, this rounds that was announced just yesterday is about. We're looking at 1.6, megawatt, nominally per shaft. That's a type of power that powers these 50 to 70-seat aircraft. And we're looking to, uh, market entry in about five years on those.
Jason: And when you think about building these kinds of businesses that are bread and butter for what powers our global economy, but also so risky, and so capital intensive, do you have a bias in the earliest days in terms of the right sources of capital as an entrepreneur?
Val Miftakhov: Uh, it's, uh, it's an interesting question. So the answer is yes, you want to match your backers to, uh, the challenge of hands. And that's why you see the- the people who you see in our, uh, investor list that we wanted to, uh, make sure that from the very early on, right? In the first large institutional around that we, you know, a sizable institutional around that we did, we were already bringing in folks that, uh, can look at them and you- you can see how they can support the company throughout the journey with a capital availability. And, uh, and the appetite for hard problems like Breakthrough Energy Ventures, for example, they- they're working on some of the hardest problems that exist in the world on the sustainability agenda. And aviation is definitely ... you know, it is pretty hard problem, right? It's the hardest problem, arguably in transportation, maybe even across the sectors, just because of the, uh, energy intensity.
And that's exactly the types of problems that these guys are excited about. So we really wanted to, uh, bring them in as an investor and we found a match there. So we're really grateful to Breakthrough Energy Ventures and, uh, Amazon Climate Pledge Fund with the same sort of focus on the hard problems, and- and our other investors are- are also all handpicked specifically, uh, for that. So the answer is yes.
Jason: And if you step outside of ZeroAvia and you just look at hydrogen-powered aviation, and you want it to exist and you to get there as quickly and efficiently as possible. So you've got these power plants that ZeroAvia is working on. What are the other key things that need to be solved to complete the package and make this hydrogen powered aviation viable?
Val Miftakhov: Well, the biggest one is probably, uh, fuel supply, is a new fuel so you need to tell the operators, you know, where that's gonna come from. That's the first question after you deal with the standard sort of, okay, when- when's the certification and how you guys think about safety and all those things. That's partially why we're also playing a role there. So what we want to do in addition to building the technology around the power plants, we want from the business model perspective for project management, if you will, perspective also control the fuel supply to these operators, while our vision is that as hydrogen and aviation gets adopted, there will be a lot of opportunity to, uh, generate fuel, hydrogen fuel on site at the airports.
So that's what we already are doing for our own testing. We have built the world's first hydrogen production and refueling facility over, uh, at our R&D side in the UK. I believe it's world's first, uh, that generates hydrogen on site at the airports and refuels the planes with the fueling truck that's gonna run around to the airport roadside, air sides, it's of course, small size, it's small scale, but, uh, we're making our own fuel. And we think that, that's the blueprint for the future. And that's also why we wanted to bring somebody like Shell to our investor base as well, which of course they are and participate in both rounds, uh, so far where they have a huge presence in aviation. They're one of the largest suppliers of aviation fuels today and have relationships with a lot of airports and we believe that, you know, that fueling side of the story is super important.
And we want to ... when we go to people like British airways, we want to say, not only we- we know how to power your planes, we also help you get the fuel into those planes in partnerships like this with Shell.
Jason: And the way that there are some competing approaches on the power plant side, are there also competing approaches as it relates to the fuel supply? For example, does every approach entail producing the hydrogen on-site or are there alternative approaches that are potentially viable?
Val Miftakhov: Yeah, there are alternative approaches in, uh, some of the startups that ... um, out there, uh, also, uh, working on them. We think that at large scale and you get to large scale pretty quickly with aviation. If you look at the numbers for any reasonably sized commercial airports, uh, what kind of fuel requirements they have, there are some airports out there that have billions of gallons per year in fuel utilization. And even the long before those scales, it starts making a lot of sense to, uh, have production right on site, right? And with hydrogen, if- if you can, you want to avoid transport of that fuel. It's great on the energy density per kilo, but it's not awesome in energy density per unit volume. Which for aircraft itself carrying fuel on board is not as catastrophic as it is for overground transport in a vehicle.
Like for example, you can have a huge truck, right? Semi-truck that normally is rated for 80,000 pounds, but it would carry only 3000 pounds of hydrogen because of the volume constraints. And that makes transportation of that fuel quite expensive. And typically that's what kills a lot of the economics off the centralized hydrogen production, and then distribution into all these small, uh, fueling locations on the grounds. And [inaudible 00:21:32]that's part of the reason why hydrogen is so expensive for cars.
Jason: So you mentioned fuel supply as one of the key things that needs to get figured out. What are some other key things that need to be figured out that are outside of the scope of a ZeroAvia's focus.
Val Miftakhov: To some extent, this is outside, it- it's kind of on the border of this scope, but, uh, we of course will be involved in that quite a bit, which is you get these engines out there and they start flying. And, uh, all this leave, you know, the maintenance needs to occur and the serviceability needs to be there. There are already a huge networks off MROs out there and maintenance, repair organizations that serve today's fleets, and we'll need to make sure that all of those networks are, uh, educated, equipped, and prepared to also serve this new type, uh, of power plants.
And, uh, of course we'll be quite involved in the beginning, but we can't over time just control that part of the equation. And so we need that part of the ecosystem start coming over, and we have some strategies on how we actually enable that and bring them along.
Jason: Now, in order for this to happen is there a retrofitting solution or would it require all new planes?
Val Miftakhov: A retrofitting is one of the primary approaches that we're actually going for. So the objective for our power plant development is to arrive at as much off a drop in replacement as possible for the existing power plants. Because we realize, especially in the larger sort of commercial area, even in smaller aircraft takes a five to 10 years to bring a new aircraft to market, which means that if you rely on the clean sheet designs only then your time to market is basically, uh, bottlenecked by that process, especially for a larger aircraft. So what we are hoping to do is to create a, uh, set of engine platforms that can be qualified into existing types of vehicles. And that doesn't mean that everything will be retrofit. It could be a re- ... what's called forward fit as well.
When a company like British Airways, for example, orders, uh, another ATR 72 or a- a similar size plane, but it gets equipped with ZeroAvia engines from the factory, right? But it's an existing type. So we d- ... we don't have to completely redesign the aircraft. Maybe we need to do some modifications to the aircraft. And these are parts of STC, Supplemental Type Certificate where we don't need to research it by the whole air frame.
Jason: I'm bouncing around a bit, but you also mentioned that there's a public private partnership involved here. That's not something that I've typically seen. And again, I'm just learning. So there's a lot of typical things that I probably haven't seen, but in these small high-growth companies backed by the- the venture capital firms or- or even private equity for that matter. Can you talk a bit about the nature of that relationship and also more generically where you think these public private partnerships might be interesting and valuable for early stage companies or said another way, what types of early stage companies would be good candidates to explore them?
Val Miftakhov: It's a little bit correlating to the types of companies that the investors like, uh, you know, Breakthrough Energy Ventures and such would be interested in, which are driving transformation in major industries. So for the government, for example, in- in the UK, in this specific case, we have quite a bit of traction of course. And what's important to the government is to ensure the transformational technologies are developed in the UK utilizing the, uh, UK's aviation ecosystem. And, uh, the technology is developed, uh, within the country for export outside of the country. They want to see manufacturing capabilities being developed in the country as well. So they have, of course, Rolls Royce is one of the major engine manufacturers, which is a great, uh, engineering success story for, uh, the UK aerospace. And they want to see more of that.
They also see that, um, the- the transformation is coming in the industry and new propulsion is coming and they want to attract companies like us to- to their markets and, uh, ensure that we have a good path there. So that's what the governments are after. Of course, in Europe, especially, and hopefully now in the United States with the new administration, we are going to see ... So in Europe, we already see that, right? A lot of emphasis on sustainability and sustainable technologies, and hopefully in the US we're gonna see that as well.
Jason: In terms of the path to helping this market to materialize what are the things that are keeping you up most at night within the purview of your control? And then same question, what are the things that are keeping you up at night outside of your control?
Val Miftakhov: The- the biggest one is regulatory side, right? And it's partially in our control partially outside of our control, right? 'Cause it's regulations and- and interaction with regulatory bodies like FAA, CAA, EASA. The uncertainty there is that, it is a timing uncertainty on these certification timelines. And we think that our timelines are realistic, of course, that we are talking about. And we- we already had a lot of interactions with the regulators in the UK. We were especially close to the regulator there, but there is intrinsic uncertainty there. It's a new type of power plants never certified before. And there is no test book, for example, there is no means of compliance as they call them that say, okay, if you have a hydrogen electric engine, this is how you test it. These are the test criteria. This is what you have to pass. And then if you pass all the check, all these boxes, then you have a certified, uh, power plant there, nothing like that. We have to write it together. And that adds some uncertainty in the timelines.
And that's really probably the biggest source of uncertainty in our business, because we believe, especially for the first commercial offering for a 600 kilowatt engine, we believe that we got a pretty good handle on the technology side of things. And of course, we're already reasonably credible with, uh, having Mueller version off our power plants in the air with flying prototype, which nobody else can really say. So we got a lot of learnings from that, but, you know, the- the regulatory sides is a substantial source of uncertainty. So that's something that I spent a good amount of time on, and the team has spent a good amount of time on.
Jason: What about the appetite and the urgency of the airline industry itself to do things differently, where are they at? And what's your perception there in terms of how serious they are about change and how ripe the fruit is in- in that regard?
Val Miftakhov: Uh, I think not everybody of course, but all lots off the operators out there, especially over in Europe, are on with the program and they see what's coming and they see even before the pandemic, we've seen, they fly [Chieming 00:28:15] movements over in the Northern Europe, starting taking place. Uh, and actually not just people talking, but actual drops in air service because of that, right? I think Sweden, reported that they see out to 10% drop because people are no longer comfortable with emission levels and sustainability problems of flying it out. So they opt for rail or- or they opt for not going somewhere that far and instead vacationing closer to home or whatnot.
So it was appreciable impact and it's only getting worse or better. It depends on your [laughs] point of view, but, uh, it's, it's getting more meaningful in terms of the impact and the ... especially in Europe, the operators actually see that and they understand what's in the future and what they need to do. So in Europe, we find that these conversations with the operators land on fertile ground, so to speak. And we see the US side or North America side also coming around quite a bit, especially in the last, you know, 12 months.
Jason: Given that you're a few years in now, and- and you've done a lot in those few years, looking back, what do you wish existed that didn't exist at the time that would have made your journey easier and relatively, and for whatever reason, I ask my questions in twos. What do you think we could put in place that doesn't exist today that would foster more of this type of important, hard tech innovation?
Val Miftakhov: It's a good two-part question because the- the answer is kinda the same. So it would be great if it existed before and we need more of it even now. And that being balanced focus on sort of disruptive and transformational versus incremental in the solution space. And what I mean by that is, I think especially two, three years ago, there was a lot of incremental focus on things, uh, which we would say, Hey, you know, we're, yeah, we're gonna fight this thing by more efficient air frames and more efficient engine. And so at the same time, uh, we're gonna bring this, uh, incremental improvements to bear and then sustainable aviation fuels, uh, will help us there, but effectively also utilizing the same type of airframe and power plant technology.
Jason: And we can plant trees. We can plant trees for the rest.
Val Miftakhov: [laughs] Yep, yeah, exactly. And then you run out, and then you run out of trees, right?
Jason: [laughs].
Val Miftakhov: Because everybody wants to plant trees and that there is no, there's no more land. Yeah. So don't get me started on- on the, on the carbon offsets and all that. But, uh, you know, you had a lot of incremental stuff and- and- and then slowly, this sort of realization comes in that says, well, even if we are super successful and all of that, this is only like a small part of the problem. Because if you look at the business as usual in aviation and now pandemic notwithstanding, right?
Like ... 'cause we're gonna bounce back and all that, and already, you know, US uh, air traffic, uh, on some routes already 200%. So we gonna bounce back. And if you abstract from that, it's a temporary blip. And you look at the growth rates, worldwide aviation, uh, and you just projected out by 2050, in 30 years, the emissions even with all those incremental improvements, triple three, 4X, uh, you know, various assessments, uh, vary, but, uh, it's like at least triple. Clearly, you can't get at 2050 as everybody wants to like all the countries and everybody except China, I think which said 2060, which is also close, they want to go in net zero. How are you gonna go net zero, if even with all the incremental improvements in 30 years, which is by the way, a lifetime of a single vehicle. So you buy a 737 today, you're gonna be retiring it at 30 years as a less or- or airline if you, if you keep it to that long, the vehicle lifetime is 30 years.
Just in one vehicle lifetime, you need to like go from that to- to zero. And it's ... like, how are you going to do that without transformative technology? So people started realizing that, what do we need more off it? And the ways we need that to manifest are things like, for example, and that's what we're working with, the UK government, and some other officials on as well is, dedicated R&D funding. For example, specifically for transformational approaches, and so like new types of power plants, new types of fuels, things like that. We need more of that.
And also parallel to that. And that segues to your previous question. My answer on the regulatory side, we need to empower the regulators to be appropriately situated and staffed, to really take on those challenges from the regulatory side of things. Because when we show up, for example, with our technology, through the regulator, we need the regulator to have enough bandwidth and- and priority to spend enough time to understand the technology and to react to our proposals, so that we can move them at an appropriate pace. And it's, you know, getting better and better, but we need to do more.
Jason: And in terms of sources of capital. I mean, you talked about the public private partnership and you also talked about the BEVs and the, and the Amazons of the world that are set up to be with you over the long haul, how do you think about traditional venture capital as an asset class? And how much overlap there is between traditional venture capital and this type of deep tech innovation?
Val Miftakhov: I would say the investor types that we got and, uh, the types that are interested in the types of things that we do, are a segment of what we would call traditional venture capital. They're just focusing on sustainability, focusing on deep tech problems, uh, as opposed to, you know, the next iPhone app, perhaps. But it's a, it's a segment, they- they all have venture capital approaches, meaning that they're in it for, uh, out-sized returns. They're looking for home rounds, 10X, uh, you know, 100X, if they can, if they can swing it, uh, returns, while, uh, working on these types of problems. So it's a, it's a segment dollar VC.
It's a relatively, I would say maybe small inter- ... definitely in terms of the number of firms, uh, small segments in terms of the, uh, capital committed, it's a larger segment and more and more people are orienting themselves towards it, which is good. 'Cause you see people see their writing on the wall, so to speak when a large investors like pension funds and so forth are- are saying that, Hey, we're gonna start divesting from fossil fuels, for example, right? From coal and from oil and gas. That sends pretty strong signal to the upstream investors as well. That gives a signal on what's gonna be valued in the future. And those that pick up those signals will generate out-sized returns. So I think the segment will grow.
Jason: And if you could wave your magic wand and change one thing, right? It could be a policy thing, could be a technology breakthrough could be anything that would most accelerate your efforts here. And the efforts of hydrogen powered aviation, what would you change and how would you change it?
Val Miftakhov: I think the most impactful piece that is outside of our control would be a proper market mechanism for sustainability, like across multiple sectors, across, you know, global mechanism, right? Because in aviation specifically, right? It's any- any regional mechanism is not super impactful because I think there was stories last year, or maybe, maybe two years ago when some countries tried to clamp down on- on, I think carbon intensity off the aviation fuels. People would just, you know, fly their planes to, uh, refuel in another country. So in aviation, any kind of policy around these things will have to be global because just the vehicles move around the globe, uh, every day. But that type of global and it, and it's so- so complex that it would probably require a magic wand to actually make it happen, uh, from a political standpoint and all that. But if we could make it happen that globally, worldwide, we have a science driven, meaningful system to price these emissions ex- externalities, and then feed that into- into various business models that would be the best help as we could get.
Jason: But you it sounds like have little to no confidence that we will see anything like that in any reasonable timeframe.
Val Miftakhov: I think the confidence level is relatively low, although you- you know, it's, uh ... the crisis brings solutions. We- we all wish that it wouldn't come to that. But, uh, if, if we really start seeing the stream impact from climate change, uh, as predicted, then I think people will mobilize and then they interim some localized activities are already there. Of course they are less effective than the ... than global for the initial segments. For example, in all regional aviation, that could be helpful. Uh, if- if these things are done at the, let's say continent level, take our airplanes that we are targeting, right? These are all sort of sub 1000 miles for the next seven, 10 years. So they don't cross oceans. So something that is done, let's say in continental Europe or Asia, or, um, uh, you know, Australia or United States already would have some impact.
Jason: And last question is just for anyone listening, that's intrigued about what you're doing. Who do you wanna hear from, and how can people be helpful to you? Could be open jobs, could be certain types of partnerships you're looking for, or expertise. Just- just a quick chance to shout out anything you wanna call attention to, or any type of inbound you wanna foster.
Val Miftakhov: We're hiring a lot of people. We're doing something, uh, revolutionary, of course, uh, for the industry and the world. Uh, so we're looking for a great engineers and also there are a number of openings on the business side as well. Uh, you can go to zeroavia.com and, uh, see most of our openings are published. You can check out our LinkedIn page as well for, uh, ZeroAvia and see, uh, see what we have there. On the partnership side, we are looking, uh, to partner with forward-looking, uh, airlines that wants to help us lead the transformation to a zero emission in a scalable way. So we'd like to hear from the operators regional and beyond.
Jason: Anything I didn't ask that I should have, or any parting words for listeners?
Val Miftakhov: No, I think you're pretty thorough. I appreciate the questions. And for the listeners really hope we were able to deliver a part of that message that this transformation is real. It will come sooner than a lot expect as there will be commercial flights on zero emission aircraft this decade.
Jason: Well, what a great point to end on. So Val, thanks so much for coming on the show for the important work that you're doing, and best of luck to you and the ZeroAvia team.
Val Miftakhov: Thanks, Jason, great to be with you.
Jason: Hey everyone, Jason here. Thanks again for joining me on My Climate Journey. If you'd like to learn more about the journey, you can visit us at myclimatejourney.co, note that is .co not that com. Someday we'll get the dotcom, but right now .co. You can also find me on Twitter at JJacobs22, where I would encourage you to share your feedback on the episode or suggestions for future guests you'd like to hear. And before I let you go, if you enjoyed the show, please share an episode with a friend or consider leaving a review on iTunes. The lawyers made me say that. Thank you.
