May 25, 2023 • 28 mins
Does flying have to be bad for the environment? Val Miftakhov, the founder and CEO of ZeroAvia, doesn’t think so. His company built a plane that’s powered by hydrogen fuel, which produces zero carbon emissions. It had a successful test flight earlier this year and Miftakhov hopes it will be ready for commercial use by 2025.
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Speaker 1 (00:15):
Pushkin, you are in fact a pilot?
Speaker 2 (00:21):
No? Yes, indeed, indeed, is that in.
Speaker 1 (00:24):
Fact a pilot headset that you're wearing.
Speaker 2 (00:26):
It is in fact a pilot hatseet, can you give.
Speaker 1 (00:29):
Me a little like you're the pilot and I'm on
the plane, Just give me a little bit of that?
Speaker 2 (00:33):
Uh? What am I doing? Yes, ladies and gentlemen, get
ready for takeoff? Are about to go to sustainable future?
How about that? Very good?
Speaker 1 (00:49):
I'm Jacob Goldstein and this is What's Your Problem? The
show where I talk to people who are trying to
make technological progress. My guest today is Val Misikov. He's
the founder and CEO of zero Opia. His problem is this,
how can we have commercial air travel that doesn't make
climate change worse? As you'll hear, this is a very hard,
(01:10):
very high stakes problem. Zero Avia is trying to solve
it by using hydrogen fuel cells to power planes. The
company has about three hundred employees, and earlier this year
they had a successful test flight of a small hydrogen
fueled plane they hope will be in commercial use by
twenty twenty five. So how did you like? What was
how did you get to starting this company?
Speaker 2 (01:30):
Yeah? So the short version is, you know, my previous
company that I co found, it grew and sold, you know,
and now is actually a basis off a one of
the largest e mobility platforms in Europe.
Speaker 1 (01:43):
Yeah, and to be clear, that company was basically doing charging,
doing charging for electric vehicles.
Speaker 2 (01:47):
Exactly right, right, So since twenty ten or so, I
was in sustainable transportation space as an entrepreneur. When I
sold that company and as you correctly noted, a pilot
myself for the last twenty years or so. So when
I sold that company, started thinking about what's next. Sustainable
transfer was already in the car, so to speak, and
(02:08):
an aviation at to that and then sustainable aviation, so
that was relatively natural.
Speaker 1 (02:13):
I mean, sustainable aviation is really hard, right, Like I
feel like, you know, there's the very big picture, the
sort of the energy transition, decarbonization, and like electricity generation,
we're doing great. We can get electricity without burning fossil fuels.
We've got some transmission and some storage issues that are hard,
but basically we can we can get electricity without burning
(02:35):
fossil fuels. Cars We're doing really well. Ev is great,
We've we've got that one. Planes seem really hard.
Speaker 2 (02:42):
Planes seem harder, exactly right, And that's why I started it, right,
because somebody's got to do it. Yeah, it's a huge problem.
It's actually on track to become the largest problem we
have in terms of sustainability.
Speaker 1 (02:56):
Because we're solving the other ones and we haven't really
cracked planes exactly right.
Speaker 2 (03:01):
And this is actually planes or aviation. Commercial aviation is
one of the fastest growing transportation modes worldwide. There's either
ten or fifteen percent I don't remember the exact naml right,
only ten or fifteen percent of people have flown on aircraft, right.
And obviously, as you know, people get a little bit
(03:22):
richer and the standards of living go up. People jump
on a plane and they want to go somewhere.
Speaker 1 (03:28):
So you have the sort of rising middle class. Say
in a lot of Asia, you have billions of people
who've never been on a plane who in the next
ten twenty years they or their kids are going to
start flying the way we fly in the.
Speaker 2 (03:38):
West, exactly right, exactly right. And while in the West
we're sort of you know, some Scandinavian country started as
the flight shaming movement right from Sweden and all that
we're thinking, oh, well, maybe we should fly less and
all that. That is a developed nation centric view. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (03:54):
No, we're not going to shame people into not flying.
I'm very comfortable with that. We can stipulate that.
Speaker 2 (04:00):
Right.
Speaker 1 (04:00):
So we have to figure out how to fly planes
without generating fossil fuels and other bad emission.
Speaker 2 (04:06):
Yeah. So, and the problem there is a not just carbon, right,
which is important. So from carbon accounting perspective, aviation is
about three percent today off all human emissions, but the
actual impact on climate is at least triple that, right,
because of the high altitude emissions off combustion artifacts. Right,
(04:27):
So that's the particular emissions, high temperature, water vapor, all
that stuff emitted up in the atmosphere.
Speaker 1 (04:33):
All the other stuff besides carbon. Carbon dioxide is particularly
bad for climate change if it happens at whatever, thirty
thousand feet above.
Speaker 2 (04:41):
The good right. Right. So, as a result, already aviation
is anywhere between seven and ten percent of total human
climate impact.
Speaker 1 (04:50):
Presumably, as you sort of turn to it, you think
through the different possibilities. How can we solve this? So
how do you sort of think through the different possible solutions?
Speaker 2 (05:02):
Yeah, yeah, and you're very right. So, really in order
to fully solve the problem and reduce the impact profile affreviation,
you have to get away from combustion.
Speaker 1 (05:14):
And there are a few different options there. Right, once
you get to the long term even that is, people
are trying different things. So if we're going to stop
burning things, we're going to make electric planes, that basically
leave us with the choice of batteries or hydrogen fuel cells.
Speaker 2 (05:31):
Is that we or fuel cells off some kinds, right,
So there are multiple types of fuel cells. There are
you know, fuel cells that work on methanol for example,
and things like that.
Speaker 1 (05:41):
Before we get to fuel cells, I mean, we've got
electric cars. They seem cool, they work with batteries. Why
not do that for a plane?
Speaker 2 (05:50):
Very good question, and we actually did this analysis relatively
early on. We say, okay, well, look at let's look
at all the transportation modes starting from personal car all
the way to commercial aircraft. Right and along the way
you have taxis, you have like small trucks that deliver
postal services, and they have big trucks, and you have
airplanes and they have you know, large commercial planes. You
(06:13):
take personal car that's about two to three percent off
its total weight of the vehicle is gasoline or diesel fuel. Yeah,
and then you move to the other side of the spectrum,
which is commercial aircraft, you have up to forty percent
off to take off weight is fuel. So that's twenty
x difference on the energy intensity, right, And that gives
(06:34):
you a perspective off like, hey, how much energy do
I need to store on board my vehicle in order
to enable commercial operation or viable operation?
Speaker 1 (06:43):
And just to be clear, the answer to that question
for a passenger car is not that much energy, that's right,
And the answer for a jet is an incredible amount
of energy. The jet is like by weight almost half
energy storage.
Speaker 2 (06:56):
Right, gets to that point, okay.
Speaker 1 (06:58):
And just to be clear, batteries even relative to regular fuel, like,
a key problem with batteries is they are not very
energy dense. You need a lot of battery to get
a little bit of energy. Big problem for batteries in general.
Speaker 2 (07:11):
Exactly. So when you have you know, for small car,
your fuel is two percent off the weight of the car,
then you say, well, even if my battery is twenty
times heavier or twenty times lower energy density, it's okay.
You know, I can have a battery that's now forty
percent off the car weight, which is what you have
(07:31):
in you know, early teslas. Right, But it's still fine, huh, Right.
Speaker 1 (07:34):
You can still make a functional car that's half.
Speaker 2 (07:37):
Battery, Yeah you can. You can make a viable vehicle.
But when you start with a forty percent nothing you
can do.
Speaker 1 (07:44):
You can't make a plane that's two hundred percent battery.
Speaker 2 (07:47):
And it's actually interesting point there because you know, it's
like you get into into this problem of what I
call a rocket equation, right, which is like in a rocket,
for example, in space rocket, most of the fuel is
used to carry fuel right through the through the beginning
of your ascent right.
Speaker 1 (08:06):
Right, because the rocket is almost entirely fuel, right, And
so when it's blasting off, it's expending a tremendous amount
of energy to carry the fuel that it's going to
need in ten seconds to get it a little bit
higher and so on.
Speaker 2 (08:19):
Exactly right, exactly, you got it. So with battery airplane
you get into the same kind of circular dependency.
Speaker 1 (08:25):
So, okay, so you land on a fuel cell, let's
just do like a really basic like what is a
fuel cell?
Speaker 2 (08:33):
All right? So fuel cell is an electro chemical device
that takes fuel and oxygen and converse it into electricity
through a catalyst based reaction. Right, So there is no
high temperature combustion involved and you have direct electricity production,
and that's what makes that thing very efficient.
Speaker 1 (08:53):
So let's talk about end to end, the dream of
how it's going to work. Afterwards, we can talk about
sort of where you are now and what you still
have to figure out. But like when you sort of
close your eyes and imagine the world in ten years
or whatever, how's it going to work?
Speaker 2 (09:07):
Yeah, So we are going to have hydrogen production on
site at the airports. Okay, it's a green hydrogen production
through electrolysis, local renewable power.
Speaker 1 (09:17):
So the airports will have little hydrogen factories. Basically, what's
that going to look like?
Speaker 2 (09:22):
Yeah, but it's actually quite sizeable hydrogen factory.
Speaker 1 (09:24):
They're not little. They're gonna have hydrogen factories, big hydrogen factory.
It's great. So what's that gonna look like?
Speaker 2 (09:29):
Yeah, So we're going to have so let's say right now,
every large airport, a medium airport as well, they have
what's called fuel farm. Okay, so that's a separate area
dedicated to receiving, storing, processing, dispensing fuel. Now we're going
to have part of that fuel farm will be dedicated
to hydrogen production through electrolysism.
Speaker 1 (09:51):
And that electrolysis, what's happening there? What is that step one?
Speaker 2 (09:54):
So it's again you know a system right here. You
take water in electricity, produce hydrogen and oxygen.
Speaker 1 (10:02):
Okay, okay, you're getting the electricity from a from a
solar panel or a turbine, not from burning natural gas.
So sure you've got your electricity coming from the solar farm.
You're using that electricity to create hydrogen.
Speaker 2 (10:15):
Yeah, so it's a hydrogen at the airport, so it's
piped over to the airside and then it fills the
aircraft with hydrogen electric engines. Then it's used to produce
electricity on board and you operate all this aircraft less noise,
no emissions. And that's where the messaging has parallels with
(10:38):
the automotive, right when Tesla came in and said, well, actually,
you know, electric car is a better car because it's
so much more efficient, better torque, better acceleration, all those things.
So similar here, the electric propulsion is much more efficient
than any combustion propulsion you can have, even for the
largest engines that we have that are running on seven
(10:59):
eighty sevens and beyond. They are less efficient than even
small fuel cell electric engines that we fly in twenty
seat planes.
Speaker 1 (11:09):
So there was a crash of one of your test
flights last year, right, tell me briefly what happened there.
Speaker 2 (11:15):
Yeah, So mostly I would say the root cause was
a loss of power on the engine, right, so you know, duh, naturally,
otherwise we wouldn't have landed in the field.
Speaker 1 (11:28):
But the real cost is bad, right, You don't want
to have lots of power in it.
Speaker 2 (11:31):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, but you know, you test experimental engine,
so you know, and you test it through sort of
expansion of the envelope. So in this case, uh, you know,
there were some human factors that resulted in wrong points
in the pattern for the power to be switched off,
wrong altitude to be flown, and now those things kind
(11:53):
of compounded together, and then there are some other things.
But mostly I would say human factors.
Speaker 1 (11:59):
And nobody was hurt, right, that's right, that's right.
Speaker 2 (12:02):
So, and the the entire system, you know, the hydrogen storage,
the fuel system, the hyders and fuel cell and all that,
we're safe throughout the whole sequence. There was no leakage,
there's no anything.
Speaker 1 (12:17):
I know, you know, you kept working on everything after that,
And I understand you had a test flight earlier this
year that was something of a milestone.
Speaker 2 (12:24):
Yes, so that was our third prototype. We've flown smaller
planes before with our systems. This is our latest design.
Speaker 1 (12:33):
And how big is it? What was the plane that
flew this year?
Speaker 2 (12:36):
It's a twenty seat aircraft?
Speaker 1 (12:37):
And is that do you hope to have a twenty
seat plane in commercial use in the foreseeable future?
Speaker 2 (12:43):
So that's type of a plane. That size of a
plane ten to twenty seat is our first launch target
in two years twenty twenty five.
Speaker 1 (12:51):
And so does two years mean you mostly have it
figured out and you just have to get regulatory approval?
I mean just I'm sure it's not just, but like,
do you basically know how to build that plane now?
Are you confident that it works?
Speaker 2 (13:04):
Yeah? Pretty much, pretty much. We were finalizing the design
of the engine to submit certification in the next six months.
Speaker 1 (13:11):
Do you do you have to fly it for thousands
of hours or something? I mean, I imagine those regulatory requirements
are quite stringent. A whole new kind of propulsion.
Speaker 2 (13:20):
We have to operate the engines for thousands of hours,
we don't necessarily have to fly again. And that's part
of our approach is that we work with existing aircraft types. Yeah,
so our initial business model go to market is retrofitting
the existing fleets. So we go to the operators and
we say, hey, you got a fleet of hundreds of
(13:43):
these aircraft, we can repower them with a better engine.
Because while aircraft themselves last for thirty forty years in
commercial service, especially in the small aircraft space, they go
through multiple sets of engines over that light time. Huh.
Speaker 1 (13:59):
So it's like, hey, you're going to need a new
engine for this plane anyways, let me sell you one
of these fuels, right yeah, And is it right you
have some number of orders.
Speaker 2 (14:08):
For correct those is that right? Yeah? Yeah, about fifteen
hundred engines on pre order right now, so, oney, five
hundred or so, and I think four out of top
ten airlines worldwide are customers already with those pre orders,
about ten billion dollars worth of you know, pre order revenue,
future revenue.
Speaker 1 (14:27):
So what has to happen for you to actually sell
those engines, to get those engines to those airlines?
Speaker 2 (14:33):
Oh, we have to get them certified, and we have
to deliver on the performance targets that we have committed
to with these airlines, right, which means that we have
to develop certain amount of power so that that aircraft
can take off in a certain distance and climb at
a certain rates and all that. Then we know we
can do it.
Speaker 1 (14:52):
You also need to get the infrastructure in place at airports,
right Like that seems.
Speaker 2 (14:55):
Yeah, the infrastructure is actually everybody gets hung up on that.
Speaker 3 (14:59):
But we think that I'm interested, yeah, yeah, no, but
everybody everybody is, okay, So, but we think that infrastructure
is a really the easier part of the equation here
Right in the.
Speaker 2 (15:12):
US, the total number of all commercial airports is just
four hundred four hundred locations, and one hundred of those
airports account for ninety five percent of the traffic.
Speaker 1 (15:23):
Right, The answer is, you don't need that many.
Speaker 2 (15:25):
But we you know, we were not attempting to build
all the infrastructure as well. Right. We have partners like
shel for example, is a major investor in zero Audia,
and they are looking to bring hydrogen infrastructure to these
airports as well. But we work with them in the
back end. We aggregate that supply into our business model,
and when we go to the airlines, we are the
(15:47):
one stop contract.
Speaker 1 (15:50):
In a minute. What validis colleagues still have to figure
out to get their first hydrogen fuel cell on a
commercial plane. That's the end of the ads. Now we're
going back to the show. You mentioned that the engines
(16:12):
have to meet certain performance specifications. Are you there yet
on those?
Speaker 2 (16:19):
Yeah? On the performance, we're we're almost there. We get
the we get the actual power, we get the efficiency.
What we're working on now is mostly around weight reduction
for the engine. The engine is going to be about
twice as heavy as the turbine engine that it replaces,
(16:41):
so you take some trade off on the range of
the aircraft, but not nearly as much as you would
have to do with batteries.
Speaker 1 (16:48):
So these planes won't be able to fly as far
as a jet fuel powered plane. So you're hoping to
launch in small planes in a couple of years, and
I know you want to eventually get to big planes,
to the big commercial jets that you fly across the
country in, or fly across the Atlantic in, or whatever.
What is hard about about scaling in that way? What's
(17:09):
hard about going from where you almost are now to
where you want to be in ten years.
Speaker 2 (17:14):
Two things, two main things from the technology standpoint. One
is we need to move from a sort of typical
low temperature fuel cells that are used in the cars
or types that they're using cars, to higher temperature fuel
cells that are optimized for aviation.
Speaker 1 (17:34):
And so why do you need to develop essentially a
new kind of fuel cell to fly bigger planes?
Speaker 2 (17:40):
Right? Because the more bigger planes require disproportionately more power too, right,
So they're generally faster. Right, So all those jets they
fly much faster, which means the power levels are significantly higher.
Speaker 1 (17:57):
So a plane that's twice as big requires way more
than twice.
Speaker 2 (18:00):
As long, more than twice as much power.
Speaker 1 (18:02):
But that's hard, that's hard. You can't just build a
bigger fuel cellar.
Speaker 2 (18:06):
But yeah, the reason that's hard with the current type
of a few cells, at least currently using automotive is
because when you scale power, you also scale the heat
production because no, no system is one hundred percent efficient,
so you have the heat that you need to remove
from the system. And that, yeah, that's right inefficiency. And
(18:27):
now for low temperature fuel cells, that heat is thrown
off at low temperature and it's difficult to remove it because,
for example, a good hot environment example is Phoenix, Arizona,
in the middle of a summer, it's fifty degrees celsius
on our runway, sometimes even more so. Your fuel cell
(18:49):
typical fuel cell in a car operates at about sixty
sixty five celsius internal temperature. So you now have sixty
five versus fifty. That's not much delta that you can
use to cool it, right, because if you're if your
ambient temperature is the same as your core temper you
cannot cool it right. And so what do you need
to do is you need to either you know, have
(19:12):
humongous heat exchangers or radiators, right, which is prohibitive because
then if they weigh a lot, they introduced drag and
all that. Or you can increase the temperature off the
fuel cell, right and just even small, relatively small increases
of temperature give you very significant benefits. So our inniuce
(19:33):
technology is operating instead of sixty five seventies degrees cells
is it operates at one eighty to two hundred C.
But it's if you if you take again an example
of Phoenix, right.
Speaker 1 (19:46):
Basically it can be air cooled the hotter, it runs.
Speaker 2 (19:50):
Just cooled. Right.
Speaker 1 (19:51):
That's that's like a fundamental kind of engineering problem that
you have to solve is making a hotter fuel cell.
Speaker 2 (19:57):
That's right. So that's one. The second one is for
large aircraft, you need to go from gaseous fuel storage
to cryogenic liquid storage of hydrog on board because other
you cannot store enough. Basically, So those compressed gas cylinders,
while they're super simple, super safe, all those tanks, right,
they're heavy because they need to contain that huge pressure.
(20:20):
So you know, best in class right now is only
eight percent of your fuel tank system is fuel. Ninety
two percent is tank.
Speaker 1 (20:30):
Okay, oh wow, so that's the tanks you're putting on
the twenty seat plane. It's mostly tank.
Speaker 2 (20:35):
It's mostly tank.
Speaker 1 (20:36):
It's brutal, right, that's brutal.
Speaker 2 (20:38):
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Now what helps is, of course, hydrogen
itself is three times better energy density than jet fuel,
and then with fuel cell you use it twice as efficient,
so you're sort of six times better than jet fuel.
Speaker 1 (20:52):
But I'm still bummed that your tank full of hydrogen
is ninety percent tank and ten percent hydrogen, right, That
makes me sad, that's right.
Speaker 2 (20:58):
That's right. So in order to move from that, you
have to go cry agenic liquid, which is low low
pressure storage, so you don't need those you know, hue.
Speaker 1 (21:09):
But it has to be super cold. Is probably has
to be super cold.
Speaker 2 (21:13):
Yeah, you have to you have to be super cold.
But there, you know, people know how to store those things, right.
AT's the vacuum insulated yours? Right, Yeah, like a thermos. Yeah, yeah,
exactly right, a thermos, Yeah, carbon composite thermos. So then
most off your tank is actually fuel right by weight,
(21:34):
and that's that That changes the dynamics quite a bit,
and that that's how you you're going to make airplanes
go potentially even further than today's kerosene planes, right if
anybody can handle more than twenty hours on the plane.
Speaker 1 (21:48):
So you need much much colder fuel and much hotter
fuel cells.
Speaker 2 (21:53):
That's right, Yeah, that's right, which is actually a very
very interesting point because you can then use you know,
to marry that cold. Yeah, you can cool the hotter
fuel cells with colder fuel and get additional efficiency.
Speaker 1 (22:09):
Tell me the ways in which shifting from gaseous hydrogen
to very cold liquid hydrogen is hard? Sounds hard? Is
it hard?
Speaker 2 (22:17):
Yeah? It is? It is hard. The reason it's hard
is because there is virtually no history of vehicle use
of liquid hydrogen, right for propulsion, Right, So.
Speaker 1 (22:31):
I mean hydrogen is Look, I've gone this whole time
without saying Hindenberg, I was trying not to say it,
but hydrogen is very reactive. It blows up, right, I mean,
is that a concern when you're talking about this new
kind of fuel, or.
Speaker 2 (22:44):
Well, with any fuel, you have this concern, right, Garrison
blows up, gasoline blows up, all any anytime you have
significant amount of energy stored, you're gonna you know, you're
gonna have issues, right, Yeah.
Speaker 1 (22:56):
So does that become a challenge when you're trying to
store hydrogen in this way that it hasn't been stored
in vehicles before in this shift?
Speaker 2 (23:04):
Yeah? Yeah, yeah, So you have to you have to
basically design the the the safety system around it that
manages it correctly as possible. Liquid hydrogen is used in
the industry a lot, right, So the industry knows is
stationary applications, you know, pharmaceuticals, and so people know how
to do it.
Speaker 1 (23:24):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (23:24):
Right, it's just that now we need to make it lightweight,
We need to certify through the aviation certification standards. Right,
So that's that's significant challenge.
Speaker 1 (23:33):
What you're doing is hard. Clearly, if it doesn't work,
I hope it works obviously for you and for everybody.
But if it doesn't work, like, what do you think
is the most likely reason it wouldn't work?
Speaker 2 (23:45):
Frankly, I don't. I don't see the reason there. I
don't see the reason.
Speaker 1 (23:51):
That's the classic entrepreneur angle. Right, it will work.
Speaker 2 (23:55):
But you know, I'm a I'm a physicist as well.
Back around and we have you know, a good number
of scientists on the team, and.
Speaker 1 (24:01):
Y, I mean there are things like execution risk, right,
there's there's the like first principles of things that should
work don't work in the world because of idiosyncratic reasons.
Speaker 2 (24:11):
Right right, right, right, So there is always that, but
from the sort of physics and science perspective, there are
no there are no real barriers and and and the
thing is, you know, we like society, we have to
make it work. It is becoming larger and larger part
of the problem. So it will happen, which means that
(24:31):
it's a huge opportunity to be taken. And that's uh,
that's what we're doing.
Speaker 1 (24:38):
In a minute, the lightning Round, including the metaphysical lessons
of a physics PhD and cold plunges. Now let's get
back to the show. I just want to do a
few sort of lightning round semi random questions to finish.
(25:02):
You have a PhD in physics from Princeton, and I'm
curious what studying physics taught you about the fabric of reality.
Speaker 2 (25:12):
Well, first of all, that the the best approach to
things is a really first principle approach to not get
clouded and how how things were done, but look at
the look at the core. On a more metaphysical sort
of side of your question, I think any scientist that
(25:35):
is sort of real scientists will tell you that it's
pretty clear that we don't know most of what there
is to know, right. So sometimes it might be you
might have had a temptation to say that, hey, we're
we're in this you know, advanced state of society or
human knowledge, that we know most of the things know.
(25:59):
In fact, you know, we don't know most and probably
we don't know even one percent of what there is
to know. And it helps to be have a little humility.
Why cold plunges, Yeah, so, uh, let's see. Actually the
(26:22):
real the real answer is probably uh, testing the theory
that human body is capable of anything pretty much.
Speaker 1 (26:31):
Well, we know it's not capable of anything.
Speaker 2 (26:33):
Well, you know, or rather much more than you expect.
Speaker 1 (26:38):
Okay, tell me about your cold plunge game.
Speaker 2 (26:41):
Well, we have a little di y thing. Okay, it's
a it's actually a fish dank cooler and it against
it gets what are too nice three degrees you know, Celsius.
Speaker 1 (26:53):
It's just barely about freezing, very cold.
Speaker 2 (26:56):
That's right, that's wrong, very long in that water, five
to ten minutes.
Speaker 1 (26:59):
That's much longer than I would have expected. What was
the worst moment you had in an iron Man triathlon?
Speaker 2 (27:09):
Mh well, uh, I decided in the in the second
half of the run, I, in my infinite wisdom, I
had a water mix with some fuel mix. So I
I'm like, hey, I'm not going to carry it. I'm
gonna be efficient. I'm not going to carry my water
(27:30):
with me. I'm going to drink it all right now,
right as over a leader of water. And and that
caught up to me, you know, through the through the run.
So that was not pretty.
Speaker 1 (27:39):
That was the best moment in an iron man the bike.
Speaker 2 (27:43):
I love the bikes. I don't. I don't actually have
a car. My wife has a car, but sometimes I
borrow it so I bike everywhere. So that's my favorite
part of the UH of any Triathlonkov.
Speaker 1 (28:01):
Is the founder and CEO of Zero. Today's show was
produced by Edith Russelo. It was edited by Sarah Nix
and Rob Smith, and engineered by Amanda k Wong. I'm
Jacob Goldstein. You can find me on Twitter at Jacob Goldstein,
or you can email us at problem at Pushkin dot fm.
We'll be back next week with another episode of What's
(28:23):
Your Problem
Pushkin, you are in fact a pilot?
Speaker 2 (00:21):
No? Yes, indeed, indeed, is that in.
Speaker 1 (00:24):
Fact a pilot headset that you're wearing.
Speaker 2 (00:26):
It is in fact a pilot hatseet, can you give.
Speaker 1 (00:29):
Me a little like you're the pilot and I'm on
the plane, Just give me a little bit of that?
Speaker 2 (00:33):
Uh? What am I doing? Yes, ladies and gentlemen, get
ready for takeoff? Are about to go to sustainable future?
How about that? Very good?
Speaker 1 (00:49):
I'm Jacob Goldstein and this is What's Your Problem? The
show where I talk to people who are trying to
make technological progress. My guest today is Val Misikov. He's
the founder and CEO of zero Opia. His problem is this,
how can we have commercial air travel that doesn't make
climate change worse? As you'll hear, this is a very hard,
(01:10):
very high stakes problem. Zero Avia is trying to solve
it by using hydrogen fuel cells to power planes. The
company has about three hundred employees, and earlier this year
they had a successful test flight of a small hydrogen
fueled plane they hope will be in commercial use by
twenty twenty five. So how did you like? What was
how did you get to starting this company?
Speaker 2 (01:30):
Yeah? So the short version is, you know, my previous
company that I co found, it grew and sold, you know,
and now is actually a basis off a one of
the largest e mobility platforms in Europe.
Speaker 1 (01:43):
Yeah, and to be clear, that company was basically doing charging,
doing charging for electric vehicles.
Speaker 2 (01:47):
Exactly right, right, So since twenty ten or so, I
was in sustainable transportation space as an entrepreneur. When I
sold that company and as you correctly noted, a pilot
myself for the last twenty years or so. So when
I sold that company, started thinking about what's next. Sustainable
transfer was already in the car, so to speak, and
(02:08):
an aviation at to that and then sustainable aviation, so
that was relatively natural.
Speaker 1 (02:13):
I mean, sustainable aviation is really hard, right, Like I
feel like, you know, there's the very big picture, the
sort of the energy transition, decarbonization, and like electricity generation,
we're doing great. We can get electricity without burning fossil fuels.
We've got some transmission and some storage issues that are hard,
but basically we can we can get electricity without burning
(02:35):
fossil fuels. Cars We're doing really well. Ev is great,
We've we've got that one. Planes seem really hard.
Speaker 2 (02:42):
Planes seem harder, exactly right, And that's why I started it, right,
because somebody's got to do it. Yeah, it's a huge problem.
It's actually on track to become the largest problem we
have in terms of sustainability.
Speaker 1 (02:56):
Because we're solving the other ones and we haven't really
cracked planes exactly right.
Speaker 2 (03:01):
And this is actually planes or aviation. Commercial aviation is
one of the fastest growing transportation modes worldwide. There's either
ten or fifteen percent I don't remember the exact naml right,
only ten or fifteen percent of people have flown on aircraft, right.
And obviously, as you know, people get a little bit
(03:22):
richer and the standards of living go up. People jump
on a plane and they want to go somewhere.
Speaker 1 (03:28):
So you have the sort of rising middle class. Say
in a lot of Asia, you have billions of people
who've never been on a plane who in the next
ten twenty years they or their kids are going to
start flying the way we fly in the.
Speaker 2 (03:38):
West, exactly right, exactly right. And while in the West
we're sort of you know, some Scandinavian country started as
the flight shaming movement right from Sweden and all that
we're thinking, oh, well, maybe we should fly less and
all that. That is a developed nation centric view. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (03:54):
No, we're not going to shame people into not flying.
I'm very comfortable with that. We can stipulate that.
Speaker 2 (04:00):
Right.
Speaker 1 (04:00):
So we have to figure out how to fly planes
without generating fossil fuels and other bad emission.
Speaker 2 (04:06):
Yeah. So, and the problem there is a not just carbon, right,
which is important. So from carbon accounting perspective, aviation is
about three percent today off all human emissions, but the
actual impact on climate is at least triple that, right,
because of the high altitude emissions off combustion artifacts. Right,
(04:27):
So that's the particular emissions, high temperature, water vapor, all
that stuff emitted up in the atmosphere.
Speaker 1 (04:33):
All the other stuff besides carbon. Carbon dioxide is particularly
bad for climate change if it happens at whatever, thirty
thousand feet above.
Speaker 2 (04:41):
The good right. Right. So, as a result, already aviation
is anywhere between seven and ten percent of total human
climate impact.
Speaker 1 (04:50):
Presumably, as you sort of turn to it, you think
through the different possibilities. How can we solve this? So
how do you sort of think through the different possible solutions?
Speaker 2 (05:02):
Yeah, yeah, and you're very right. So, really in order
to fully solve the problem and reduce the impact profile affreviation,
you have to get away from combustion.
Speaker 1 (05:14):
And there are a few different options there. Right, once
you get to the long term even that is, people
are trying different things. So if we're going to stop
burning things, we're going to make electric planes, that basically
leave us with the choice of batteries or hydrogen fuel cells.
Speaker 2 (05:31):
Is that we or fuel cells off some kinds, right,
So there are multiple types of fuel cells. There are
you know, fuel cells that work on methanol for example,
and things like that.
Speaker 1 (05:41):
Before we get to fuel cells, I mean, we've got
electric cars. They seem cool, they work with batteries. Why
not do that for a plane?
Speaker 2 (05:50):
Very good question, and we actually did this analysis relatively
early on. We say, okay, well, look at let's look
at all the transportation modes starting from personal car all
the way to commercial aircraft. Right and along the way
you have taxis, you have like small trucks that deliver
postal services, and they have big trucks, and you have
airplanes and they have you know, large commercial planes. You
(06:13):
take personal car that's about two to three percent off
its total weight of the vehicle is gasoline or diesel fuel. Yeah,
and then you move to the other side of the spectrum,
which is commercial aircraft, you have up to forty percent
off to take off weight is fuel. So that's twenty
x difference on the energy intensity, right, And that gives
(06:34):
you a perspective off like, hey, how much energy do
I need to store on board my vehicle in order
to enable commercial operation or viable operation?
Speaker 1 (06:43):
And just to be clear, the answer to that question
for a passenger car is not that much energy, that's right,
And the answer for a jet is an incredible amount
of energy. The jet is like by weight almost half
energy storage.
Speaker 2 (06:56):
Right, gets to that point, okay.
Speaker 1 (06:58):
And just to be clear, batteries even relative to regular fuel, like,
a key problem with batteries is they are not very
energy dense. You need a lot of battery to get
a little bit of energy. Big problem for batteries in general.
Speaker 2 (07:11):
Exactly. So when you have you know, for small car,
your fuel is two percent off the weight of the car,
then you say, well, even if my battery is twenty
times heavier or twenty times lower energy density, it's okay.
You know, I can have a battery that's now forty
percent off the car weight, which is what you have
(07:31):
in you know, early teslas. Right, But it's still fine, huh, Right.
Speaker 1 (07:34):
You can still make a functional car that's half.
Speaker 2 (07:37):
Battery, Yeah you can. You can make a viable vehicle.
But when you start with a forty percent nothing you
can do.
Speaker 1 (07:44):
You can't make a plane that's two hundred percent battery.
Speaker 2 (07:47):
And it's actually interesting point there because you know, it's
like you get into into this problem of what I
call a rocket equation, right, which is like in a rocket,
for example, in space rocket, most of the fuel is
used to carry fuel right through the through the beginning
of your ascent right.
Speaker 1 (08:06):
Right, because the rocket is almost entirely fuel, right, And
so when it's blasting off, it's expending a tremendous amount
of energy to carry the fuel that it's going to
need in ten seconds to get it a little bit
higher and so on.
Speaker 2 (08:19):
Exactly right, exactly, you got it. So with battery airplane
you get into the same kind of circular dependency.
Speaker 1 (08:25):
So, okay, so you land on a fuel cell, let's
just do like a really basic like what is a
fuel cell?
Speaker 2 (08:33):
All right? So fuel cell is an electro chemical device
that takes fuel and oxygen and converse it into electricity
through a catalyst based reaction. Right, So there is no
high temperature combustion involved and you have direct electricity production,
and that's what makes that thing very efficient.
Speaker 1 (08:53):
So let's talk about end to end, the dream of
how it's going to work. Afterwards, we can talk about
sort of where you are now and what you still
have to figure out. But like when you sort of
close your eyes and imagine the world in ten years
or whatever, how's it going to work?
Speaker 2 (09:07):
Yeah, So we are going to have hydrogen production on
site at the airports. Okay, it's a green hydrogen production
through electrolysis, local renewable power.
Speaker 1 (09:17):
So the airports will have little hydrogen factories. Basically, what's
that going to look like?
Speaker 2 (09:22):
Yeah, but it's actually quite sizeable hydrogen factory.
Speaker 1 (09:24):
They're not little. They're gonna have hydrogen factories, big hydrogen factory.
It's great. So what's that gonna look like?
Speaker 2 (09:29):
Yeah, So we're going to have so let's say right now,
every large airport, a medium airport as well, they have
what's called fuel farm. Okay, so that's a separate area
dedicated to receiving, storing, processing, dispensing fuel. Now we're going
to have part of that fuel farm will be dedicated
to hydrogen production through electrolysism.
Speaker 1 (09:51):
And that electrolysis, what's happening there? What is that step one?
Speaker 2 (09:54):
So it's again you know a system right here. You
take water in electricity, produce hydrogen and oxygen.
Speaker 1 (10:02):
Okay, okay, you're getting the electricity from a from a
solar panel or a turbine, not from burning natural gas.
So sure you've got your electricity coming from the solar farm.
You're using that electricity to create hydrogen.
Speaker 2 (10:15):
Yeah, so it's a hydrogen at the airport, so it's
piped over to the airside and then it fills the
aircraft with hydrogen electric engines. Then it's used to produce
electricity on board and you operate all this aircraft less noise,
no emissions. And that's where the messaging has parallels with
(10:38):
the automotive, right when Tesla came in and said, well, actually,
you know, electric car is a better car because it's
so much more efficient, better torque, better acceleration, all those things.
So similar here, the electric propulsion is much more efficient
than any combustion propulsion you can have, even for the
largest engines that we have that are running on seven
(10:59):
eighty sevens and beyond. They are less efficient than even
small fuel cell electric engines that we fly in twenty
seat planes.
Speaker 1 (11:09):
So there was a crash of one of your test
flights last year, right, tell me briefly what happened there.
Speaker 2 (11:15):
Yeah, So mostly I would say the root cause was
a loss of power on the engine, right, so you know, duh, naturally,
otherwise we wouldn't have landed in the field.
Speaker 1 (11:28):
But the real cost is bad, right, You don't want
to have lots of power in it.
Speaker 2 (11:31):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, but you know, you test experimental engine,
so you know, and you test it through sort of
expansion of the envelope. So in this case, uh, you know,
there were some human factors that resulted in wrong points
in the pattern for the power to be switched off,
wrong altitude to be flown, and now those things kind
(11:53):
of compounded together, and then there are some other things.
But mostly I would say human factors.
Speaker 1 (11:59):
And nobody was hurt, right, that's right, that's right.
Speaker 2 (12:02):
So, and the the entire system, you know, the hydrogen storage,
the fuel system, the hyders and fuel cell and all that,
we're safe throughout the whole sequence. There was no leakage,
there's no anything.
Speaker 1 (12:17):
I know, you know, you kept working on everything after that,
And I understand you had a test flight earlier this
year that was something of a milestone.
Speaker 2 (12:24):
Yes, so that was our third prototype. We've flown smaller
planes before with our systems. This is our latest design.
Speaker 1 (12:33):
And how big is it? What was the plane that
flew this year?
Speaker 2 (12:36):
It's a twenty seat aircraft?
Speaker 1 (12:37):
And is that do you hope to have a twenty
seat plane in commercial use in the foreseeable future?
Speaker 2 (12:43):
So that's type of a plane. That size of a
plane ten to twenty seat is our first launch target
in two years twenty twenty five.
Speaker 1 (12:51):
And so does two years mean you mostly have it
figured out and you just have to get regulatory approval?
I mean just I'm sure it's not just, but like,
do you basically know how to build that plane now?
Are you confident that it works?
Speaker 2 (13:04):
Yeah? Pretty much, pretty much. We were finalizing the design
of the engine to submit certification in the next six months.
Speaker 1 (13:11):
Do you do you have to fly it for thousands
of hours or something? I mean, I imagine those regulatory requirements
are quite stringent. A whole new kind of propulsion.
Speaker 2 (13:20):
We have to operate the engines for thousands of hours,
we don't necessarily have to fly again. And that's part
of our approach is that we work with existing aircraft types. Yeah,
so our initial business model go to market is retrofitting
the existing fleets. So we go to the operators and
we say, hey, you got a fleet of hundreds of
(13:43):
these aircraft, we can repower them with a better engine.
Because while aircraft themselves last for thirty forty years in
commercial service, especially in the small aircraft space, they go
through multiple sets of engines over that light time. Huh.
Speaker 1 (13:59):
So it's like, hey, you're going to need a new
engine for this plane anyways, let me sell you one
of these fuels, right yeah, And is it right you
have some number of orders.
Speaker 2 (14:08):
For correct those is that right? Yeah? Yeah, about fifteen
hundred engines on pre order right now, so, oney, five
hundred or so, and I think four out of top
ten airlines worldwide are customers already with those pre orders,
about ten billion dollars worth of you know, pre order revenue,
future revenue.
Speaker 1 (14:27):
So what has to happen for you to actually sell
those engines, to get those engines to those airlines?
Speaker 2 (14:33):
Oh, we have to get them certified, and we have
to deliver on the performance targets that we have committed
to with these airlines, right, which means that we have
to develop certain amount of power so that that aircraft
can take off in a certain distance and climb at
a certain rates and all that. Then we know we
can do it.
Speaker 1 (14:52):
You also need to get the infrastructure in place at airports,
right Like that seems.
Speaker 2 (14:55):
Yeah, the infrastructure is actually everybody gets hung up on that.
Speaker 3 (14:59):
But we think that I'm interested, yeah, yeah, no, but
everybody everybody is, okay, So, but we think that infrastructure
is a really the easier part of the equation here
Right in the.
Speaker 2 (15:12):
US, the total number of all commercial airports is just
four hundred four hundred locations, and one hundred of those
airports account for ninety five percent of the traffic.
Speaker 1 (15:23):
Right, The answer is, you don't need that many.
Speaker 2 (15:25):
But we you know, we were not attempting to build
all the infrastructure as well. Right. We have partners like
shel for example, is a major investor in zero Audia,
and they are looking to bring hydrogen infrastructure to these
airports as well. But we work with them in the
back end. We aggregate that supply into our business model,
and when we go to the airlines, we are the
(15:47):
one stop contract.
Speaker 1 (15:50):
In a minute. What validis colleagues still have to figure
out to get their first hydrogen fuel cell on a
commercial plane. That's the end of the ads. Now we're
going back to the show. You mentioned that the engines
(16:12):
have to meet certain performance specifications. Are you there yet
on those?
Speaker 2 (16:19):
Yeah? On the performance, we're we're almost there. We get
the we get the actual power, we get the efficiency.
What we're working on now is mostly around weight reduction
for the engine. The engine is going to be about
twice as heavy as the turbine engine that it replaces,
(16:41):
so you take some trade off on the range of
the aircraft, but not nearly as much as you would
have to do with batteries.
Speaker 1 (16:48):
So these planes won't be able to fly as far
as a jet fuel powered plane. So you're hoping to
launch in small planes in a couple of years, and
I know you want to eventually get to big planes,
to the big commercial jets that you fly across the
country in, or fly across the Atlantic in, or whatever.
What is hard about about scaling in that way? What's
(17:09):
hard about going from where you almost are now to
where you want to be in ten years.
Speaker 2 (17:14):
Two things, two main things from the technology standpoint. One
is we need to move from a sort of typical
low temperature fuel cells that are used in the cars
or types that they're using cars, to higher temperature fuel
cells that are optimized for aviation.
Speaker 1 (17:34):
And so why do you need to develop essentially a
new kind of fuel cell to fly bigger planes?
Speaker 2 (17:40):
Right? Because the more bigger planes require disproportionately more power too, right,
So they're generally faster. Right, So all those jets they
fly much faster, which means the power levels are significantly higher.
Speaker 1 (17:57):
So a plane that's twice as big requires way more
than twice.
Speaker 2 (18:00):
As long, more than twice as much power.
Speaker 1 (18:02):
But that's hard, that's hard. You can't just build a
bigger fuel cellar.
Speaker 2 (18:06):
But yeah, the reason that's hard with the current type
of a few cells, at least currently using automotive is
because when you scale power, you also scale the heat
production because no, no system is one hundred percent efficient,
so you have the heat that you need to remove
from the system. And that, yeah, that's right inefficiency. And
(18:27):
now for low temperature fuel cells, that heat is thrown
off at low temperature and it's difficult to remove it because,
for example, a good hot environment example is Phoenix, Arizona,
in the middle of a summer, it's fifty degrees celsius
on our runway, sometimes even more so. Your fuel cell
(18:49):
typical fuel cell in a car operates at about sixty
sixty five celsius internal temperature. So you now have sixty
five versus fifty. That's not much delta that you can
use to cool it, right, because if you're if your
ambient temperature is the same as your core temper you
cannot cool it right. And so what do you need
to do is you need to either you know, have
(19:12):
humongous heat exchangers or radiators, right, which is prohibitive because
then if they weigh a lot, they introduced drag and
all that. Or you can increase the temperature off the
fuel cell, right and just even small, relatively small increases
of temperature give you very significant benefits. So our inniuce
(19:33):
technology is operating instead of sixty five seventies degrees cells
is it operates at one eighty to two hundred C.
But it's if you if you take again an example
of Phoenix, right.
Speaker 1 (19:46):
Basically it can be air cooled the hotter, it runs.
Speaker 2 (19:50):
Just cooled. Right.
Speaker 1 (19:51):
That's that's like a fundamental kind of engineering problem that
you have to solve is making a hotter fuel cell.
Speaker 2 (19:57):
That's right. So that's one. The second one is for
large aircraft, you need to go from gaseous fuel storage
to cryogenic liquid storage of hydrog on board because other
you cannot store enough. Basically, So those compressed gas cylinders,
while they're super simple, super safe, all those tanks, right,
they're heavy because they need to contain that huge pressure.
(20:20):
So you know, best in class right now is only
eight percent of your fuel tank system is fuel. Ninety
two percent is tank.
Speaker 1 (20:30):
Okay, oh wow, so that's the tanks you're putting on
the twenty seat plane. It's mostly tank.
Speaker 2 (20:35):
It's mostly tank.
Speaker 1 (20:36):
It's brutal, right, that's brutal.
Speaker 2 (20:38):
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Now what helps is, of course, hydrogen
itself is three times better energy density than jet fuel,
and then with fuel cell you use it twice as efficient,
so you're sort of six times better than jet fuel.
Speaker 1 (20:52):
But I'm still bummed that your tank full of hydrogen
is ninety percent tank and ten percent hydrogen, right, That
makes me sad, that's right.
Speaker 2 (20:58):
That's right. So in order to move from that, you
have to go cry agenic liquid, which is low low
pressure storage, so you don't need those you know, hue.
Speaker 1 (21:09):
But it has to be super cold. Is probably has
to be super cold.
Speaker 2 (21:13):
Yeah, you have to you have to be super cold.
But there, you know, people know how to store those things, right.
AT's the vacuum insulated yours? Right, Yeah, like a thermos. Yeah, yeah,
exactly right, a thermos, Yeah, carbon composite thermos. So then
most off your tank is actually fuel right by weight,
(21:34):
and that's that That changes the dynamics quite a bit,
and that that's how you you're going to make airplanes
go potentially even further than today's kerosene planes, right if
anybody can handle more than twenty hours on the plane.
Speaker 1 (21:48):
So you need much much colder fuel and much hotter
fuel cells.
Speaker 2 (21:53):
That's right, Yeah, that's right, which is actually a very
very interesting point because you can then use you know,
to marry that cold. Yeah, you can cool the hotter
fuel cells with colder fuel and get additional efficiency.
Speaker 1 (22:09):
Tell me the ways in which shifting from gaseous hydrogen
to very cold liquid hydrogen is hard? Sounds hard? Is
it hard?
Speaker 2 (22:17):
Yeah? It is? It is hard. The reason it's hard
is because there is virtually no history of vehicle use
of liquid hydrogen, right for propulsion, Right, So.
Speaker 1 (22:31):
I mean hydrogen is Look, I've gone this whole time
without saying Hindenberg, I was trying not to say it,
but hydrogen is very reactive. It blows up, right, I mean,
is that a concern when you're talking about this new
kind of fuel, or.
Speaker 2 (22:44):
Well, with any fuel, you have this concern, right, Garrison
blows up, gasoline blows up, all any anytime you have
significant amount of energy stored, you're gonna you know, you're
gonna have issues, right, Yeah.
Speaker 1 (22:56):
So does that become a challenge when you're trying to
store hydrogen in this way that it hasn't been stored
in vehicles before in this shift?
Speaker 2 (23:04):
Yeah? Yeah, yeah, So you have to you have to
basically design the the the safety system around it that
manages it correctly as possible. Liquid hydrogen is used in
the industry a lot, right, So the industry knows is
stationary applications, you know, pharmaceuticals, and so people know how
to do it.
Speaker 1 (23:24):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (23:24):
Right, it's just that now we need to make it lightweight,
We need to certify through the aviation certification standards. Right,
So that's that's significant challenge.
Speaker 1 (23:33):
What you're doing is hard. Clearly, if it doesn't work,
I hope it works obviously for you and for everybody.
But if it doesn't work, like, what do you think
is the most likely reason it wouldn't work?
Speaker 2 (23:45):
Frankly, I don't. I don't see the reason there. I
don't see the reason.
Speaker 1 (23:51):
That's the classic entrepreneur angle. Right, it will work.
Speaker 2 (23:55):
But you know, I'm a I'm a physicist as well.
Back around and we have you know, a good number
of scientists on the team, and.
Speaker 1 (24:01):
Y, I mean there are things like execution risk, right,
there's there's the like first principles of things that should
work don't work in the world because of idiosyncratic reasons.
Speaker 2 (24:11):
Right right, right, right, So there is always that, but
from the sort of physics and science perspective, there are
no there are no real barriers and and and the
thing is, you know, we like society, we have to
make it work. It is becoming larger and larger part
of the problem. So it will happen, which means that
(24:31):
it's a huge opportunity to be taken. And that's uh,
that's what we're doing.
Speaker 1 (24:38):
In a minute, the lightning Round, including the metaphysical lessons
of a physics PhD and cold plunges. Now let's get
back to the show. I just want to do a
few sort of lightning round semi random questions to finish.
(25:02):
You have a PhD in physics from Princeton, and I'm
curious what studying physics taught you about the fabric of reality.
Speaker 2 (25:12):
Well, first of all, that the the best approach to
things is a really first principle approach to not get
clouded and how how things were done, but look at
the look at the core. On a more metaphysical sort
of side of your question, I think any scientist that
(25:35):
is sort of real scientists will tell you that it's
pretty clear that we don't know most of what there
is to know, right. So sometimes it might be you
might have had a temptation to say that, hey, we're
we're in this you know, advanced state of society or
human knowledge, that we know most of the things know.
(25:59):
In fact, you know, we don't know most and probably
we don't know even one percent of what there is
to know. And it helps to be have a little humility.
Why cold plunges, Yeah, so, uh, let's see. Actually the
(26:22):
real the real answer is probably uh, testing the theory
that human body is capable of anything pretty much.
Speaker 1 (26:31):
Well, we know it's not capable of anything.
Speaker 2 (26:33):
Well, you know, or rather much more than you expect.
Speaker 1 (26:38):
Okay, tell me about your cold plunge game.
Speaker 2 (26:41):
Well, we have a little di y thing. Okay, it's
a it's actually a fish dank cooler and it against
it gets what are too nice three degrees you know, Celsius.
Speaker 1 (26:53):
It's just barely about freezing, very cold.
Speaker 2 (26:56):
That's right, that's wrong, very long in that water, five
to ten minutes.
Speaker 1 (26:59):
That's much longer than I would have expected. What was
the worst moment you had in an iron Man triathlon?
Speaker 2 (27:09):
Mh well, uh, I decided in the in the second
half of the run, I, in my infinite wisdom, I
had a water mix with some fuel mix. So I
I'm like, hey, I'm not going to carry it. I'm
gonna be efficient. I'm not going to carry my water
(27:30):
with me. I'm going to drink it all right now,
right as over a leader of water. And and that
caught up to me, you know, through the through the run.
So that was not pretty.
Speaker 1 (27:39):
That was the best moment in an iron man the bike.
Speaker 2 (27:43):
I love the bikes. I don't. I don't actually have
a car. My wife has a car, but sometimes I
borrow it so I bike everywhere. So that's my favorite
part of the UH of any Triathlonkov.
Speaker 1 (28:01):
Is the founder and CEO of Zero. Today's show was
produced by Edith Russelo. It was edited by Sarah Nix
and Rob Smith, and engineered by Amanda k Wong. I'm
Jacob Goldstein. You can find me on Twitter at Jacob Goldstein,
or you can email us at problem at Pushkin dot fm.
We'll be back next week with another episode of What's
(28:23):
Your Problem
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