Opportunities in the Zero Emissions HDV Supply Chain

Hi, everyone, thanks very much for joining today. And I won't talk too long, because we've got some great speakers coming up and say I'm just here to do a little bit of scene setting for you. My name is Charlotte Taylor, and I lead on low carbon transport, for Scottish Enterprise.

I just wanted to talk to you a little bit today about the opportunities we see around this area of low carbon transport. We all appreciate and understand the need to decarbonise our transport system and the challenges that go alongside that. 

But that presents some opportunities, and we can see within Scotland and a few key opportunity areas. Some specific ones around battery technology, Hydrogen, and heavy-duty vehicles. That's really the kind of area that we were, that the session today has come out of for us.

By heavy duty vehicles, we mean aviation, and rail, and maritime. But specifically, the session today has come out of the work that we've been doing on and off-road vehicles, which we affectionately calling big wheels. That's a joint program of work that we've been doing with Transport Scotland. That work and let us to ask LowCVP who you're going to be hearing from after me and to summarise some of the key technology challenges within that.

We wanted to highlight these two and the current and potential supply chain to highlight where the opportunities are coming. Now is the time to be thinking about, about getting into this. 

This is really an introductory session. We want to kind of highlight these areas that we can see, the challenges coming up and that they are cross cutting time to just stay, where I say the work has come out of these big wheels, what we've been doing. 

We wanted to go into future sessions looking at these specific areas, but we may well combine them with some of those other major tasks for that. Because you will see that some of the challenges that are cross cutting. If you're interested, please get in touch. We do have support for companies wanting to get in and to have a look at these areas.

We can provide some subsidised consultancy support with our supplier framework. Companies wanting to get a bit more information about the market getting into that, please do get in touch. 

As I mentioned, we're going to go on and hear from LowCVP, who will highlight those technology challenge areas that we mentioned, and what they've done around that.

But we also want to set a picture of the landscape and some of the kind of key players in that. So, we're going to hear from Sarah, from MSIP – Michelin Scotland Innovation Parc – who are a key part of the landscape in their sector. 

Then, we're going to hear from one of our innovative heavy duty vehicle companies, Emergency One, and some of the really interesting work that they've been doing. 

Last but not least, we'll hear from Dan from Urban Foresight. He’s going to talk a bit about our new initiative - which is a sustainable mobility Scotland, Cluster builder which is helping companies make connections and find ways to get into this very interesting sector. I’d like to pass on to Andrew from LowCVP.

Good morning.

Thank you very much for the introduction. It’s pleasure to be with you all here this morning.

Thanks for the opportunity to share some knowledge with you. So, quick introduction of myself, when I'm Andrea Fraser, a chartered mechanical engineer.

Most of my background has been with Ford Motor Company, who I worked for many years in Britain, Germany, and America. Some roles, including Commercial Vehicle Manager at the R&D Centre here in Essex, along, the way my career.

Now working with LowCVP. I'm pleased to be engaged by Scottish enterprise, to give you a high-level view of the heavy duty and off-road market today. So, we're going to take a quick spin through some of those arrows.

As I said, look at some of the technology, some of the challenges, in the arena - the big wheel markets. 

It's a good title. It's a discussion post here we come up with. It's very, very varied. In broad terms, it splits into two major groups: agricultural - tractors and all the other machinery, which you would be familiar. And construction - which is hugely diverse, you can see from the little picture at the bottom of the screen there, vast range of items in there.

Many of them. Mobility is their primary occupation, but, of course, many things, like, excavators do most of their stationary and, moving is, in, some ways, a bit of a secondary function. So that's worth bearing in mind that, as we progress only, low carbon journey towards zero, that the operation of the machine involves both mobility as well as operations.

Heavy duty vehicles, huge range. Anything about 3.5 tons classes as heavy duty. Many people think of 7.5 tons upwards, and that's probably the typical segments, vast, range movement of freight of course, is the dominant activity.

Many, many other variants refuse collection, concrete delivery, firefighting and we'll hear from emergency one shortly.

Emergency support services across a wide spectrum. Sweeping and cleaning break down service vehicles, a vast range of specially adapted vehicles. All looking at different ways of achieving lower and zero carbon, with different technology challenges associated with them.

To give you a feeling of the scale of this market, the total OEM turnover in Britain is around £8.2 billion. It's a big, big sector.

When the engine manufacturers, and we're home to some of the biggest global engine manufacturers, all diesels currently, such as Caterpillar, Cummins and Perkins.

With that, included, the total scale of a sector growth around £18 billion. We're about the fifth biggest country in the world in terms of turnover in this sector. So, a really, really strong opportunity, both at the complete vehicle level and in the supply chain.

Many of the names here, we household names too: JCB, of course, one of the biggest ones, Caterpillar, Komatsu for many imports around the world. So, it's a very, very diverse sector with some major players. All headquartered here, or operating in.

A very good geographic diversity, company's manufacturing vehicles, and products really spread all over the country. That's a good representation in Scotland.

We can see there Northern Ireland, England. Perhaps, a bit of a clustering around the traditional manufacturing areas of the Midlands in England. You can see a fair number of the company space there. But by no means, exclusively right down into the south-west, and south-east is a very, very diverse industry geographically, as well as the products.

Then looking one layer deeper at some of the big suppliers in this market - Again, geographically diverse wrote down from Plymouth, in the south-west to Thurso, in the north-east. AMTE one of the Scottish success growth companies.

It’s quite encouraging almost wherever a company is operating, there's going to be supplier further nearby. Working already in this heavy-duty space, again you might recognise some of the names on there.

Denzo, the big Japanese supplier. JCB, again, they have their own supply division engines. Perkins, of course, well recognised but also some new names in here, HyperDrive, which is a spinoff from the Nissan Battery Plants in the north-east, Hyperbat then in Coventry, both producing batteries. Johnson Matthey, that currently make automotive catalysts and they're moving into the fuel cell, and battery spaces. Kawasaki, make some high precision hydraulics.

In Scotland, we have Bosch Rexorth, quite a famous company making industrial control systems in hydraulics provide a lot of equipment to heavy duty sector.

So, in the off-road section, currently, there are no legislative drivers to encourage low carbon. There's been huge amount in the news. You've seen the light duty sector. That's really leading the way, so 3.5 tonne vans and cars with the 2030 announcement of phasing its own combustion engines as the prime mover.

Most of the recent activity in off road and heavy duty has been around air quality with the Stage five admissions directives. So, there's not such a strong driver yet for the off-road sector, but we're convinced that it will come.

Fuel efficiency and with the CO2 reductions being progressing, many evolutionary actions, hybridisation, there's been very popular and diesel electric in some of the heavy sectors. The things like bulldozers, frequently use that sort of technology.

Zero emission variants, which, in most cases, today, are battery powered rule in the smaller segments where the battery can achieve the onboard energy storage requirement. It's difficult to achieve that in the larger machines, as we'll see in a second.

For the on-road sector with suppliers like, DAF trucks, for example, based in Lancashire the first regulatory requirements have not been agreed. There's a join industry target of a 15% reduction by 2025, versus last year it was a baseline. Then up to 30% in 2030, so they are on quite a steep CO2 reduction path.

But again, as with the off-road, the tailpipe emissions have been a key driver in the area. The Euro six standard, which is the current standard for the heavy duty, has been a big success in terms of reducing particulate and NOx. That's been a really big push. Now, the potential move into zero emission zones for urban areas is giving further impetus to development in that segment.

So, it's the over overarching CO two reduction and the specific urban axes shown. I see the European manufacturer representative body, set a target of ending fossil fuel power trucks or HD on road vehicles by 2040.

So, 10 years after the current British goal for light vehicles, it's not yet clear whether this will outlaw all engines or whether those running on renewable fuels like biodiesel remains to be seen.

The key challenge in this segment, is these machines use a lot of energy operating, whether it is moving. As mentioned earlier, particularly in the case of trucks, or digging in, this case, the JCB. A day's operation for JCB to reproduce the 150 litters of diesel, which they currently carry needs a substantial battery.

This one in the picture here, is the standard GCB, would be around a 550-kilowatt hour battery and with the current battery technology, that would be about 3 tonne battery, would be about 1.7 cubic meter. So, these would require huge batteries to operate all day long.

You may be familiar with the Volvo which used to be Terex in Motherwell. They build the big mining machines. They currently have 500 litre diesel tanks so replacing that with electric energy storage is even more of an acute issue.

That really is the challenge in a nutshell. Therefore, at the moment it's only the small machines such as mini excavators’ and loaders should be considered. JCB for example have quite an extensive range in the area and other companies are bringing products to market.

It was mentioned earlier. In some cases, they are also often used inside buildings. So, there's a further advantage of having zero tailpipe emissions.

When you're thinking about supply chain opportunities and as Charlotte currently mentioned, really, batteries are going to be one of the big areas. Even in the smaller vehicles, the batteries could often be 25 to 30% of the value of the vehicle.

So, if you're the supplier that you're getting approximately a third of the value that the OEM is capturing, which is an opportunity. But other areas pick the things like control systems will also be strong.

As I mentioned, other areas, electric motors, and transmissions. All vehicles, whether there, the energy storage, is in batteries or in hydrogen, are likely to use electric motors and transmissions of different types. That will progress over the next 20 years or so.

Power electronics, very heavy-duty power, between 100 and perhaps 500 plus kilowatts, for these larger machines. They have to combine the precision to get the control and the high energy capability unlinked about batteries and the electronics are thermal management systems – keeping the system is mostly cool, but also keeping batteries warm, and with the times they don't want to get too cold.

Some companies are developing quite rapidly in those areas. Company in Birmingham called Grace and Thermal systems. Have developed quite a strong niche in providing the sort of thermal systems for low carbon vehicles.

Just talking to hydrogen then is the main alternative to electric vehicles. It's a light vehicle here, but the components are broadly the sign. Fundamentally, a hydrogen storage cylinder which stores the energy as a high-pressure gas, that's the current industry technology. A fuel cell, to convert that, the hydrogen into electrical energy by combining with oxygen, using water as a by-product. 

They still have quite a significant size battery worth bearing in mind the battery is component element, but it is smaller. It doesn't have to store all the energy, but it's still quite significant. Then again, in common with electric vehicles, will be power, control, electronics.

Hydrogen as we probably recognise a very light gas, and needs to be stored at extremely high pressure, so typically 350, and sometimes as much as 700 bar. It requires very specialised solders made out of, usually, aluminium with a carbon fibre wrap to store it.

Many companies are looking at this, in the heavy-duty sector, its definitely interest, because it does generally allow a higher amount of energy to be stored. But there are challenges with the size and shape of the cylinders.

A lot of the debate in the industry about the extent to which hydrogen will penetrate.

There is no clear winner, as it were between batteries and hydrogen in this sector. Very much in development at the moment. With those high-pressure cylinders comes, the high-pressure pipe work, valves and pressure regulators, of course, will have to handle that gas and must be leak free.

Fuel cells themselves, not an area in which the UK is currently very well represented, unfortunately.

There's only one company manufacturing, Intelligent Energy based in Loughborough. They have manufactured some units up to around 100 kilowatts for potential use in this sector, but they're mainly focusing on small elements for things like military applications and drones currently.

The dominant player in the market is Ballard from Canada, they are very, very active in public service vehicles and busses and trains.

Cummins you'll recognise his name from the diesel engine segment, they have diversified. They bought a company called Hydrogenics back in 2017. They are growing that business quite rapidly. There's a new arm of their business in fuel cells. They recently started the factory in Germany to supply fuel cells for hydrogen powered trains.

Johnson Matthey, who I mentioned earlier, interestingly they supply the components of this fuel cell. Although, they don't make the complete fuel cell. They are for the supply chain using their chemical chemistry knowledge in that segment.

Hydrogen is very new. So, most of the suppliers that come in, as I mentioned, like Cummins already exist, and they're diversifying into that segment.

The segment is tiny, but it will grow light duty, vehicle market. The zero emission is around 3% in the heavy duty, big wheel market, it's still really less than 1%. So small, but she has that moment. But a lot of growth potential in the next 20 years. That's really the key message.

Just to give a, a bit of a flavour of some of the diversity that's going on in this market, a lot of different routes to market for suppliers, whether it's a non-automotive supplier diversifying low carbon. There's, some examples there, that make hydrogen cylinders.

Some of the existing automotive suppliers moving from traditional technologies into low carbon products like Grace and I mentioned Cummins.

Then there are new suppliers coming into the market dedicated to that low carbon automotive, AMT power, Thurso Britishvolt, Hyperdrive and so on. So, it's quite a diverse market, lots of different opportunities to enter from different corporate backgrounds that don't have to be an existing automotive supplier into the space. I think that's the message.

So that's my quick introduction. Thank you for your time and if you have any questions, please feel free to drop me an email.

Thank you, Andrew.

Hi everybody. I'm Sarah Petrie, an Innovation Director at Michelin Scotland Innovation Parc and my role today is to give you a bit of a flavour for what Michelin Scotland Innovation Parc is all about, and how we're working with partners across Scotland to support the development supply chain. 

So, what is our vision?

Michelin Scotland Innovation Parc has been set up by a partnership of Michelin, Scottish Enterprise and Dundee City Council - Our aim is to become a global reference site for collaboration across innovation, manufacturing, and skills. We very much focused on sustainable mobility and decarbonisation technologies as being the sweet spot for the strategic direction of all the partners in Michelin Scotland Innovation Parc.

Our plan is to support companies by providing them with access to both innovative, attractive, and flexible, tendency options at Michelin Scotland Innovation Parc.

We’re working to provide a very supportive environment for companies to support the development collaborations and partnerships to help with technology development and market penetration.

As well as manufacturing activities, and to provide access to the infrastructure that they might require to transform their early-stage ideas into practical business.

So, what do we offer?

We have a very large physical park, which is 32 hectares, with a substantial number of large-scale buildings and on some smaller scale buildings, as well. That provides a really flexible, physical environment that allows companies to locate at the start of the journey for them to grow all within one postcode. Which provides huge benefits in terms of supply chain, staffing.

Allowing companies to crawl, without having to worry about the impact that moving might have on both aspects of their business.

At MSIP, we have the opportunity to benefit from the advancements, that Michelin made in both green unsustainable energy at the park and companies can benefit from access to both of those, providing clean and potential energy.

We're developing the site to have a very attractive, campus style and proportion part of the site side-by-side with industrial activity that we hope will help to facilitate both, really innovative collaborations between manufacturers and technology people.

We're Developing Skills Academy, which is going to be organised and run by Dundee and Angus college, in partnership with universities, and it is dedicated to future skills, low carbon and specifically in sustainable mobility.

We have felt close partnerships with a number of universities and industrial catapult, and we can use those relationships to facilitate access to those for companies to help support them in their journey.

We also hope to be able to offer best in class certification and taste facilities through some of the investors we are talking to about locating the MSIP.

Because of our relationship with Scottish Enterprise Michelin, and on Dundee City Council, we can offer access to a range of support packages to help companies to grow.

So, all in all, we're looking to develop an environment, and encourage companies to innovate, prototype, demonstrate, manufacture, on schema, all in one location, and provide them with opportunity systems.

So, this is our park, and it's 32 hectares. As I say, we have a number of buildings that are available for our tenants to move into.

You can see our two wind turbines on the park, which provide 4.2 megawatts of renewable energy. On the roof of one of our buildings we are planning to put a solar array on the roof of that building. I will take you through some of them as we move ahead.

So, this just gives you a sense of how the park will be redeveloped, the buildings in gold at the Southern end of the part, we are allocated for manufacturing activities.

They are large-scale manufacturing shapes that Michelin used previously with our manufacturing process, and we have a significant interest in those sheds from companies, including electric vehicle battery manufacturers, electric vehicle manufacturers, people involved in fuel sales, and technology integrators. 

So, the southern part of the park, we are looking to allocate, specifically, to manufacturing activities, and to the North of that, and the more colourful part of the park, we will locate our skills academy all of our innovation focused activities and have some office spaces, as well.

So, the Skills Academy and perform is co-located with the innovation campus and the adjacent to the manufacturing activity, so that companies can access that easily and swiftly. Companies can look at training up their staff before they actually need them.

That supply chain of staff effectively ready to go, when you need them.

In green, our innovation offering will include an innovation hub, which will provide flexible hot desking, meeting space, networking space, cafe and museum demonstrator type activity, as well.

That will be linked to our Accelerator labs, which here in blue, which will be small and roughly 80 square meter project type spaces for companies to take on a very flexible basis, on per week, or a month, or a year, to help them progress, particular projects in their companies.

So, the idea, very much, is in that colourful, central part which we will focus all of our innovation activities, and that's where the campus environment will be based to encourage collaboration and partnerships across the 10 companies and beyond.

Our conversations with a number of potential tenant companies are demonstrating how we can help support the development of sustainable mobility in Scotland. Through conversations with people such as electric vehicle battery manufacturers and they're looking at the supply chain that they need to support their product development.

We are working with them to look at how we bring that supply chain into Scotland and potentially to MSIP.

So, onto our green Energy, and this is proving to be hugely valuable for MSIP and to the potential tenant to MSIP.

And I've mentioned the wind turbines. So, we have two, 2.1-megawatt wind turbines which are used to power the Michelin processes on the park. We're looking to the wire those and specifically for the production of green hydrogen. So, we will have a hydrogen production facility on the park. That will be tied in with a hydrogen refuelling Station, specifically for heavy vehicles at the park.

We are also co-located with an Energy from Waste plant, which can provide access to up to 17 megawatts of steam, industrial steam, or up to eight megawatts of electricity, through a private wire. So, companies can benefit from access to that energy, on a, behind the wire basis so the energy is imported to the site.

The warehouse at the bottom has the capacity for up to 1.5-megawatt solar array, as I mentioned.

We are looking at and all sorts of other forms of green energy on the part including and battery energy storage, heat pumps, air source heat pumps, so that we can provide companies with access to abundant green energy.

So, my role, at MSIP is very much around supporting innovation. How do we support innovation in tenant companies through facilitating collaborative partnerships and relationships with other companies were doing a lot of 1 to 1 introduction, which has generated significant value for the companies that we're working with.

We, also, through our relationships, with university partners, have the opportunity to tie complaints back into some of the expertise that we have within Scottish Universities and beyond.

Again, that's proving very valuable to the companies that we're speaking to.

We tried to help co-ordinate the delivery of partner innovation support for companies and even in these challenging times that we are in at the moment. That I think is even more challenging. But through work with Scottish Enterprise and Innovate UK and their Knowledge Transfer Network, we are managing to point companies in the right direction to access some of that innovation support.

What we also aim to do in the future is co-ordinate and on part presence of business support providers on their doorstep.

We are looking at the develop of workshop and makerspace on testing facilities. As I've mentioned, MSIT and if anybody has any feedback or suggestions and thought that makerspace tasting facilities valuable in Scotland, then we would be interested to hear, and what you think that needs to look like, so that we can make sure it meets the market demand.

One of the other things that were seeing an opportunity to do is to use Michelin Scotland Innovation Parc as a safe and secure environment for demonstration projects. Because of the abundant renewable energy that we have, the fact that we can operate off grid, we have a secure site. We can use that, and the internal load network, as well. We can use that as a demonstrating site for a number of different technologies.

We're really interested in understanding where that might add value to the supply chain, and the networks in Scotland 

So, that's a quick whistle stop tour of Michelin Scotland Innovation Parc. I'll apologise for the noise in the background if you can hear that. But for now, I'm going to hand over to Steven Bell.

Thank you.

Hi, good morning, everyone. Steven Bell, one of the directors from Emergency One group. So, as you can see from the slides there, we look after group to companies so Emergency one and Clan Tools & Plant Ltd.

So, going to be talking today mainly about our ambitions to move into zero emissions pumping, appliance. As, most people would see a fire engine.

Believe that not all fire engines are not the same, they are not all just red boxes. They don't all squirt water. They all have various features and various standards and various challenges that we need to what to look after our customers. It is quite a niche market and almost as a cottage industry.

So, Emergency One and Clan Tools both individually have about 30 years' experience between each of them, and Emergency One are the largest manufacturer and coach builder in the UK of fire appliances, and specialist fire vehicles. We supply about 240 vehicles each year.

Through that process, we supply about 80% of the market within the UK. I'd just start with some of the challenges I'm looking at export vehicles 

[Intro Video Plays – No transcript]

So, hopefully that gives everyone a bit of a flavour of what Emergency One do.

We started off as a small company, in Cumnock in the West Coast of Scotland that has grown over the years, and now have a staff of almost 240 employees. 

All based, locally to the factory for what used to be quite a large textile industry down in Cumnock. Over the years this has grown into different premises around there. 

We also support such opportunities at Princess Trust Apprenticeship program. We bring in about 10 apprentices every year into the factory and train them up. We also feedback into the community with community firefighter. So, Charlotte, as you see in the bottom right, is actually one of the design team on the vehicles but is also a trained firefighter. 

So, we have a number of staff that volunteer at the local fire stations as well just to get the interaction.

Everything that we build within emergency one, is a bespoke solution. That's one of the issues that we face is rate as we move along within each of the products that we have tried to manufacture, certainly each of them that you've seen in the video in terms of the outlay of the vehicles.

When we interact with the customers, each of them has got a specific requirement and what they are trying to achieve.

So, on the electric vehicle side of things, what was the challenge that faced us in what we were looking at as a business? We have seen a lot of councils and cities moving towards electric vehicles. Whether it be for busses, whether it be for smaller infrastructure, whether they're looking at transport, which is obviously quite a popular one.

The fire engine and the fire appliance take on a completely different challenge and what it's actually got to do. So, it's not a gradually driving vehicle. We're talking about response drive and especially in urban areas where it needs to respond and generally speaking, it drives a very short distance, at high performance, and then it can set stationary in some cases for hours. 

We had to work on looking at both driving the vehicle and then effectively driving the pump off the back of PTO. We had to make sure as well that when we're designing the vehicle and developing it, we didn't move too much away from the norm.

So, again, if you look at a fight appliance, they all look similar terms in the design and layout.

But they all have confines in terms of storage, the equipment, the water that's carried on it, the pumps, and so on.

We had to be cautious that it was a usable appliance. So, we didn’t want to manufacture a concept vehicle of something that hadn't been done before. 

The likes of Volvo, a lot of these manufacturers, Volta, trucks, and so on, are starting to develop these vehicles which take on a common theme in terms of appearance and from what we’ve got but now. Certainly, withing the fire industry, what you'll see is quite bespoke is different from what we had previously before.

So, we worked very hard on this, to create what wanting to achieve as the world's first electric fighter appliance - there's no one else in the world that's done this. It's not hybrid vehicle.

We do have options to increase the battery systems, smart charge systems, but this can operate, fully meeting EM standards as well as a complete fighter appliance on an electric solution.

[Video plays with showing the Electric Fire Engine – no audio]

So, this is our EV Zero Fire Appliance. It was designed, developed, and manufactured and inhouse. We have a staff of around 240, which includes designers, electrical engineers, software engineers. So, this was designed from the ground up.

Predominantly our market is within the UK, we hold around 80% market share within the UK. We are starting to get into export.

We were exceptionally surprised at however, when we put it out there what we hoped for good feedback. We, effectively, are now sitting somewhere in the region of about 150,000 views of this video. 

That's been watched from all around the world with inquiries from North America, South America, Asia, Australia, New Zealand into the Middle East – it has gained a lot of attraction and attention. Especially in this industry, when we look at the key players, they have all started on the hybrid – hydrogen and electric – solutions but they are not quite there yet.

A lot of them marry in with logistics. So, where we are looking at, this industry that we're talking about, everything's very bespoke. Everything's quite unique to what it does. We're not all unfortunately, ploughing up and down a motorway with regular stops and intervals. Everything from day to day can be, can be independent of what it was from the day before.

The system that we had to fit in place - again, when we have packaging up battery systems and putting this in, we had to be mindful that it was still a fire appliance. So, we still have to carry the full toolbox, which is a lot of kit, a lot of water, and pump systems, ladders and so on. Weight is a big consideration with best performance, is obviously a major consideration on this vehicle, and the space of where we can package things as well. 

One of the things you see down the bottom right is terms of the driving solutions of the vehicle. So, where we have ERD (Emergency Response Driving) and EFAD, which is emergency response driving, basically, so we're not set not 56 miles per hour within the vehicles that we supply the speed limit, as I've taken off these, to allow them to respond in an emergency situation.

So, you can see there, where the range goes from 187 miles right down to, 50 or 70 miles. Inevitably, fire appliances will travel between 5 and 10 miles at the very most within the geography of where it's going. These are generally cities, towns, and so on that we are looking at. Out with that, they need to go away from the biggest system after that after is they actually need to be able to pump once they are getting there.

So, that electric battery solution or the power source, that there needs to be able to drive the vehicle to the site, to the incident, and then indeed, perform from there.

Some of the complexities with the Pump Drive System vary between that and how we actually worked from the system. So, some of the challenges that were there in terms of the torque, for example, of an electric motor going into a PTO system that then drives a pump.

The direct drive system, that what managed to put any vehicle there, that reduces the complexity of the bill, noise, weight from a traditional PTO system. You'll see that in the bottom right-hand side a quick graph on all the calculations that we had to work out (Table of Low Pressure and High-Pressure Pump systems). The biggest thing with a fire appliance is not always drive. The biggest use of that is a toolbox once it's there - the pump.

So, a fire appliance can drive 2 miles to the location. But it can sit outside the house for 2- or 3-hours supplying water in life critical situations. So, we had to make sure that app is still able to do the job of existing fire appliances. And we still offer that capability of what we have at the moment.

There are various aspects to consider in the batter system. Different ways of packaging them as you see on this system - (Image of the battery storage Computer Aided Design model) our demo vehicle we had loaded up behind the bulkhead.

We had various issues behind that, and it was to try and keep our customers in mind for water tank size and what they were trying to do with the capacity of the vehicle.

We looked at LiFePO4 batteries as well. Again, looking at ethical sourcing issues, looking at thermal runaway which is a consideration for these vehicles. There's a lot of things that we have to look out which is different and out of the norm for the traditional electric vehicles that we see and in terms of the charging systems and how they actually match the workload.

These are all set up to be packaged and bespoke to each manufacturer. So again, we can put these on a Volvo, a chassis, Scania and again to suit the fire service and what they might require for a fire appliance.

So, charging systems was the next issue that we faced, moving through on these vehicles.

There are domestic charging systems available. Mostly, generally, we see 22-kilowatt systems, however they are starting to generate up to 44-kilowatts. 

A lot of the problem that we face, with the smaller charging systems is a charge time. Fire appliances can be in and out the door 5, 10, 11, 12 times during the course of a day. We need quick charging systems. We need the solutions that are going to walk with the vehicle. We need the infrastructure put in place with that, and we need to make sure it's not going to damage any of the batteries or any of the system.

So, these are separate challenges out with unique drive systems that we have had to try and manufacture - the battery systems that we've tried to put in place with charging systems that we've got there.

We have found difficulty with all these technologies being relatively new to the market. And what we have found, there's, a lot of people have a lot of good ideas and a lot of theory. But, in terms of actually producing them, they are in very early stages and infancy.

So, unfortunately, a lot of that has made the cost drive up a little bit further again. When services are looking at it, through local councils it's got to be a consideration - while the electric future is just going to come and is going to happen. There is also the financial situation, they've got to look out with us.

Going into the charging systems and what is available. So, looking at station infrastructure, we've looked at everything from cable systems, solutions. What the fire stations have got, just now between old buildings, new buildings. We have looked at wireless charging capabilities, as well. Rapid charge systems are an option we have considered too.

The challenges of what is physically available for us to launch in push this product through now. 

There's a lot of pressure on companies out there to follow the suit of busses of some electric refuge vehicles watch are out there. Unfortunately, they have the advantage of having set routes, designated duties through the course of the day. Which, the fire appliance and a lot of the vehicles that we are discussing just now, don't have set routines from one day to the next. Which is where we see the bespoke nature of that's been very difficult to actually manage it and keeping case.

So, pump control systems, something that we built inhouse to work with. Our fully electronic pump control screens that go on the back of the remote solutions, which, again, had to link into the battery systems just on the efficiency side of things.

We couldn't always be relying on the battery. Although, the vehicle is capable of doing what we would call a standard duty cycle on the battery. We looked at eSmart charge, and onboard generational systems. Currently, we use the Volvo fuel tank, which is the base model that we used for this, and it's Vauxhall, a GM engine that we use is, as a smart charge system. That is actually charging the batteries rather than driving the vehicle or driving the pump. The pump remains the vehicle Remains is completely zero emissions.

As I say, we had to keep it looking like a standard fire appliance. One of the things is became more is the picture you see in the top right-hand side there (Image inside cabin of filter), which is a HEPA filtration system. Which was originally put in place to protect against carsogens. Which is now obviously, with the introduction of COVID, SARS and a lot of these other things and this is effective against that. 

So, we always have to develop the vehicles and technology that we've got. With the filtration system we can clean the air within the cab making it safer for firefighters to operate in that environment.

There's a lot of certifications that we need to run through, this just gives you an idea of the testing that we need to go through for our specific vehicles. In terms of either the supply chain, or in terms of the customer usage for a fire appliance vehicle, and some of the other testing that needs to go through independently to achieve that. 

So, our issue has always been, that is not something that can always take off the shelf. So, what I'm looking for components to build bespoke solutions. 

But just some of the difficulties that we face, that, again, even when someone has got a solution - i's a complete solution that set to do a job and it doesn't always meet the requirements for the fire services.

A little summary of the supply chain experiences and where we've seen issues. This discussion may open up some opportunities for ourselves or a thought provokes from their and where we can move on and how we can move on as our small industry grows. 

As I say, we are the world’s first in this. I've seen quite a bit of uptake from around the world and a lot of interest, and what are the very early stages - but we can see quite a large boom for the industry, but also for ourselves, as well as we move forward.

Hello everyone, my name is Dan Langford from Urban Foresight.

I've been in mobility for about 6, 7 years now, probably before the new term mobility became a thing, and started being used more broadly beyond telephones - electric wheelchairs, for example.

I have been involved in deployment of 50 autonomous BMWs in Las Vegas. I helped draft one of the world's first sets of legislation around autonomous vehicles. 

Also, had the opportunity to work with numerous transit authorities in the early stages of experimenting, in autonomy, and all the other things that go into what mobility encompasses. And I'll explore a little bit of that here today.

The function of the Cluster Builder is to help grow your business. We will be helping navigate opportunities, will be bringing opportunities to the community. And providing a forum for knowledge, sharing, networking, and collaboration. 

So, whether that's, pursuing funding opportunities, looking for collaborators on different new businesses that you want to pursue - and working one-on-one with the Scottish companies to it to achieve their business goals.

Why sustainability? Why we actually talking about this? So that's worth providing a bit of a background here. Scotland has one of the most aggressive greenhouse gas emission goals on the planet - I believe it's a 75% reduction by 2030, by example. 

Transportation and mobility are one of the major contributors to that. So, it makes an easy target, as you can see in these diagrams here. Transportation in Europe and both the US is one of the greatest contributors to those emissions.

Breaking down what is encompassed in transportation and mobility - road falls in that category as well. Amongst the others you can see in that diagram to the right (Diagram showing breakdown of greenhouse gas emissions by economic sector – Transport is the greatest at 28%). 

Heavy duty vehicles are in that sweet spot. So, that is definitely one of the target areas and I guess why Scotland?

This is a sustainability aspect, you know we have a legacy here of innovation, especially around the energy sector, with the oil and gas majors, and many other businesses, looking at low carbon solutions.

To me in my mind it only makes sense that we do this in Scotland and pursue this as a great opportunity for the country.

Just to clarify a little bit, mobility can be very all encompassing. So, just to whip over these very quickly, we want to identify the types of organisations that might fall under that umbrella. Some could argue that pretty much every business is impacted by mobility and transportation. But just to narrow that a little bit - the high-level areas that we're touching on talking about are autonomous and connected.

So that includes autonomous, is self-explanatory. But keep in mind that includes robotics, machine learning, and artificial intelligence, with which Scotland does have significant expertise in, in other industries. 

The connectivity side of it is very important, looking at data communications and senses, electrification, and an energy - something we're only too familiar with, talking about on this call today. Mobility services refers more to sort of those platforms and services that enable the smart new technologies and disruption that's coming in transportation. Mobility, as a service, is a hot topic that falls within this category. 

We're also encompassing drones, and aviation can't forget about those guys. I believe Orkney is getting a hydrogen aircraft - so that's exciting. 

A long history in maritime and the subsea aspects of things as well.

So, if your company falls with within these areas and can potentially be applied to transportation –you're the ones we're talking about and targeting with this new community.

We are going to talk about a couple of the services we provide, and you'll notice that there's a significant overlap in these examples. But where at the core – a community builder, targeting Scottish SMEs, existing networks that are out there, I think we have about 30 partner organisations related to what we do. So, we're bringing them into the fold, as well.

On the demand side we want to make, shall we identify, and bring in those larger organisations and logic companies that have needs that the SMEs in Scotland can help address.

As far as building that community, make sure you connect with us on LinkedIn. I think if you search for Sustainability Scotland on LinkedIn. We have groups in LinkedIn so you can start comparing notes and posting information about activity in this area and also on Twitter as well. 

Business support is one of our major functions and anyone on this call today, we're at the point now, we're relatively new but we're at the point now where we're starting to reach out to Scottish SMEs to understand what the needs really are.

So, we'll be having these, you know, one-on-one discussions to understand where the gaps are in the supply chains, an industry within Scotland and where we can start providing more umbrella support and dedicated to support two different organisations.

The types of support we can provide being urban foresight. We're a team of about 25 people with incredibly diverse backgrounds beyond that I mentioned, our 30 odd partner organisations. So, if I personally or my colleagues can’t provide support, we will direct you to those who can within the Scottish ecosystem.

One of the ways we're reaching out as quarterly events, we're having our first event on February 23. We will have some good keynotes, increasing visibility of specific topics of interest. We’re particularly looking for Scottish technologies and achievements. We really want to talk about success stories in Scottish sustainable mobility.

If you're doing new business deals overseas, you developed a new technology you want to sing about, if you're looking for partners to pursue different collaborations, and please let us know.

Scottish resources and assets. We're looking for those assets out there: Primarily likely in our universities or at places like the Michelin in Scotland Innovation Parc. Where there are different resources, you can take advantage of, as well, as needed.

We will develop some workshops around particular topics of interests, and the types of opportunities we hope to be uncovering and sharing with you all. 

Funding is always a big one. Everyone's always looking for more money to keep their business going. 

Investment opportunities, whether you're exploring new markets overseas or closer to home, we are happy to help you out with that, and share those opportunities.

How to engage, as I mentioned, we're coming up to our launch events. So that's a fairly major opportunity for us to start engaging our SMEs. I also mentioned before, we're looking to explore your capabilities and understanding where your needs lie.

This is going to be a quarterly event, So, you'll see these fairly regularly, and we'll add other workshops as necessary on different topics.

I believe that might be all for me. We're definitely running, but definitely over time, So I had to get through that fairly quickly. So even in the meantime, I mean, don't wait for our event, please reach out to myself. We'd love to start talking to the Scottish companies that need help in sustainable mobility. And taking you to the next step. We expect there'll be some synergies but looking forward to engaging with you all in the future.

Thank you very much for your time.

Jonny: Do we have UK/Scottish manufactures of diesel particulate filters, or DPFs, and selective catalyst emission reduction for offload heavy equipment?

Andrew: Johnson Matthey are major manufacture of filters and catalysts for the automotive market. Based quite close to where I'm currently in Royston here in the corporates are the major player in in Britain.

They make the complete units and also quite a lot of the chemicals, the precious metals and other chemicals that go into them.

Jonny: Can foreign companies interested in Scotland also contact to you and maybe attend those events that you mentioned?

Dan: Absolutely, sorry, one thing I did forget to mention is that our goal of building this community is to sort of start promoting the activity on a global scale.

So, we absolutely invite companies from overseas to get involved.

[Information of a Recruitment phase from Sarah which has since stopped]

Jonny: What engagement have the speakers had with the likes of Police Scotland, or SFRS on hydrogen vehicles? My understanding was that they weren't particularly well engaged. 

Steven: Certainly, from the Scottish Fire and rescue service, the feedback we have had at the moment is generally around the infrastructure of putting in hydrogen tanks to actually refuel the vehicles on stations around the site, seems to be one of the biggest problems. 

I think there's also been some concern about some still using fossil fuels, and so on. Which they are really trying to move away from. But that that's a feedback that we've had at this moment, that there are moves towards battery and purely.

Jonny: Are you considering making any other electric niche vehicles?

Steven: Yeah, the EV Zero solution that we have, can be packaged onto any vehicle that we manufacture. At this moment in time, we have built the demonstration vehicle to show the concept and prove the concept and put it in people’s hands. This can be repackaged onto almost anything that we supply depending on the needs of the user.