Hello and welcome to

this special episode of the CORDIScovery Podcast.

Today we're focusing on the future of energy and mobility.

Two areas at the heart of Europe's transition to a greener,

smarter and more sustainable economy.

From smarter air traffic control to advanced

electric vehicles and more fuel-efficient aircraft.

Research and innovation are helping to reshape the way we travel.

So, I'm joined today

by representatives of three projects that have received funding from the EU

Horizon Europe program, and these projects point to a future where

mobility is not only more sustainable, but also more connected and resilient.

First of all, we have with us Gabriel García Rodríguez,

who is an industrial engineer by training with an academic background,

also in market research and techniques.

He has almost 20 years

of experience in aviation, and he manages the ECHOES project,

a new flagship project demonstrating space-based VHF

combined with surveillance solutions to make flights safer,

greener and more efficient.

We also have with us Christoph Abart from Austria,

where he works as senior project manager at AVL List Company.

He's the technical coordinator of the HiEFFICIENT project.

And now he coordinates the follow up activity, HiPower 5.0,

supported under the Chips Joint Undertaking.

And then we have Jerome, Dr Jérome Geneix, who is a core member of the team

behind RACER, a high-speed demonstrator developed

under the Clean Sky 2 European Research program.

And on the RACER project Dr Geneix led the dynamic systems development.

So, if I could turn to you first, Gabriel.

On the ECHOES project, your aim is to extend VHF

coverage into oceanic, polar, and other remote areas.

Can you tell us why that's so important?

Thanks.

This project is a really huge project

that we are about to finalize by the end of this year.

The goal of this project is that we are extending the VHF

coverage that it is now.

Now, this is the more reliable in communication

for aeronautical purposes, which is used currently

and commonly in continental areas.

We are extending it to the, to oceanic areas.

The good thing of this, or the key thing of this, is that,

once the aircraft enters

a few hundred kilometres in the ocean,

it loses this coverage, this is VHF coverage;

and it has to rely on other, like RF, which is

older and less reliable, and others like Satcom.

I would say Satcom is like 1 to 1 conversation, like telephone calls.

But the thing, the good thing of VHF is that once you press the button,

everyone in the frequency, listens to you and everyone is aware.

It generates a general awareness.

Okay, so this is a key point for security.

Sorry not for security, for safety. Yes.

What difference would it make in terms of safety?

In safety, as I told you,

once you enter in the oceanic, you lose the same type of communication,

and then you have to rely on less and less reliable ones.

And in order to keep safety,

you have to put more separation

between aircrafts. So, you come from a continental

where you can separate aircrafts, eight nautical miles

to up to 50

or 80 nautical miles, depending on the space.

So, well, this is really inefficient, but it is what it is because

the oceanic regions are like this,

but now we are going to change this with ECHOES.

Indeed, in ECHOES, we achieve the first ever voice and data

communication between aircraft and aircraft, and traffic controllers

based in the space.

And this is our real goal.

All this without changing anything in the aircraft,

because this is one of the key points,

we are not changing anything

in the aircraft, nor in the procedures of the pilots or the controllers.

The application of this is instant.

And, well, it saves a lot of money.

It saves a lot of money, it's safer, more efficient.

You mentioned space.

I think your project relies on the launch of a constellation

of over 200 low Earth orbit satellites to monitor aeronautical frequencies.

How many of these satellites are actually up there in the sky right now?

Okay, there are two. There are two satellites.

And I'm going to make a little, appointment

to what you said, because we are not monitoring frequencies.

We are using some of these frequencies in order to provide services.

Okay, and back to the main question.

We have launch, in this space, we have launched to satellites.

Two demonstrators, IOD-1 and IOD-2, which are currently flying.

Currently we are performing tests with them,

successful tests with them, and, well, they perform well.

And what will it take to get from 2 to 200 and how long would that take?

Okay.

We expect it to have

the constellation deployed by the end of the decade,

2030,

2031, and start providing services by then.

Okay.

Thank you very much, Gabriel.

Let's come back to you in the discussion afterwards.

But now I'd like to turn to Christophe from the HiEFFICIENT project.

Your project aims to promote resource efficient and decarbonized transportation.

Particularly, it focuses on electronic power circuits and systems

of electrified vehicles, testing systems and charging infrastructure.

So, all very topical,

and I'm sure are of great interest to our listeners

who may own electric vehicles or be considering buying an electric vehicle.

Well, all these power electronic circuits are at the heart of an electric vehicle,

you know?

So, you need to charge your vehicle, you need to drive your vehicle.

And these components are mandatory to do these things, right?

So, when you're at home and we want to charge your vehicle,

you need, for example, an onboard charger in the vehicle.

And here you want to have as much efficient, component as possible.

So, to lose, not money at the end.

Then of course, when you are

then thinking about the inverter, which is driving your e-motor,

you want to get as much far as you can get with your vehicle.

Therefore, increasing efficiency is key.

And when you're thinking about, components today, having 94, 95% of efficiency,

we demonstrated components going up to 99% in that project.

So, we're getting close to the maximum.

And additionally,

what we did in the project is also applying new semiconductor

technologies to our solutions, reducing the volume, increasing

efficiency and, also, increasing the reliability of these components.

Because, in the future, there are new applications coming up

like these Vehicle-To-Grid

and Grid-To-Vehicle functionality, so, you can charge your vehicle,

but it can give the energy back to the grid to stabilize the grid.

Because of these new renewables you have, not every time everything available.

So, we can support, by electric vehicles, the grid.

And therefore, you need increased lifetime.

So, starting from the day in having 8000 hours of operation,

you're going up to 200.000 hours of operation.

So, you see there's a quite a leap in reliability necessary.

And this was investigated in the course of the project.

Okay.

And I believe your project relies on something called wide band

gap technologies.

Can you explain to our listeners

exactly what that is and what the significance is?

Right, I can try to do that.

So, in the past you used silicon-based semiconductors, basically.

That's the standard technology, which is durable.

And well know over the

last century, last decades, I would say.

And a couple of years ago,

wideband chip technologies made it to the market.

They are favourable compared to silicon semiconductors based on efficiency,

based on their properties, how it operates them.

And therefore, you can make things more compact, more efficient.

And that's the benefit for the end user at the end,

that helps you to improve all these components.

Okay.

What difference could, more efficient electronic power circuits

make compared for example, to improved battery technologies?

Which is going to be more impactful.

Do we need both?

It will be both actually.

So, of course you can increase the efficiency

of the power electronic circuits, as I said, going from 94 to 99%

there, that's bringing you 4 or 5% maximum.

That's not the big game changer, I would say.

But of course, when you are thinking about the batteries, we can increase

the power densities over the next years, significantly, I would say.

So having just a half the size of the battery,

that would make much more impact, I would say, because batteries,

the thing in the vehicle, which is the weight, so to say.

And here reducing the weight significantly will help you extend your driving range,

or you can get, well you can charge it faster.

So, there are a lot of parameters which you can tune here, in that area.

Right, and how near or far are we from seeing these more efficient

electronic power circuits actually in vehicles?

Well, when we so we started already back in 2008

with another project which was called High Perform at that point in time.

So, we were almost the first, bringing a wide band

gap-based semiconductors to the automotive domain.

And this at this point in time, it was silicon carbide.

Yeah, that's one of these semiconductors.

And this is quite common already.

So, Tesla was the first one, bringing it to the vehicle.

And now also the German OEMs are using it quite frequently already.

So that's in the market. Yeah.

But the next step is now gallium nitride.

Which is even more favourable in some applications.

But this is not yet in the market.

So, we focused in HiEFFICIENT quite a lot on this technology.

To make it more durable and, really bring it to the market

since you also had the automotive companies involved in this project.

So, this is for sure

maybe the next game changer so to say, make it a little bit bold.

But this will take

a couple of years still, I think,

to really driving on the road.

Yeah, yeah.

Okay. Thank you very much, Christoph.

Let me now turn to share home from the racer project.

You’re developing, or you aim to develop, a commercially viable aircraft

that flies as fast as an airplane but can also hover like a helicopter.

I think this isn't a totally new idea, but why is the time

right now to be able to make some progress?

Yeah.

You fully right Tony, it's not totally new.

And it's now, decades

later on Airbus Helicopters side that these different projects

that are aiming for an increase of speed in the helicopter world.

Now, let's say, we have,

thanks to the previous demonstrator, which is named X cube, which was,

a demonstrator a proof of concept.

So, a demonstrator that we build from different parts

from existing rotorcraft that we have in our fleet, we create a demonstrator

just to check the viability in terms of engine quality,

in terms of viability of the concept itself.

But this aircraft, by this way

of manufacturing, has a lot of limitations,

and it makes sense to have one step more advanced

through a demonstrator of mission, an aircraft which is,

let us say, representative

in terms of payload and range and that could demonstrate the mission.

And it's the aim of RACER.

I see, and you're responsible for the dynamic systems.

What are some of the technical challenges you've had to overcome in bridging

this gap between traditional helicopters and fixed wing aircraft?

That is a lot, lot,

it's difficult to list them,

but I would say that the main, let's say, limitation

today on conventional helicopter speed is not technical.

It's physics.

It's, something that is quite difficult to fight against.

It’s the limit of speed of the advancing blade,

which is just the sum of the forward speed of the aircraft

and the speed of rotation of the blade itself on the main rotor.

And so, we don't want to cross

the speed

of sound, and to have some, let's say, vibrations and so on.

So, this is a physical limitation.

And there is a lot of techniques

to go over this limitation.

Okay.

And I think one of the use

cases for such an aircraft would be in rescue situations.

Could you explain to us what would be the advantages?

Yes. Of course, today helicopter missions are very variable.

There is a lot of different type of mission,

but there is a lot of those missions where speed increase

in a significant manner, could change things.

All the mission where saving time means saving lives.

So, search and rescue mission are the first one

that you could go faster to an area where the people are injured and you

maintain the

capacity of the helicopter to be able to hover,

to land in the unprepared area, and to rescue people?

And the speed to allow you to bring them back directly to a hospital

that has capacity to take in charge the people injured.

All right.

And how soon might we be seeing those kinds of rescue situations

where people would be able to benefit from such an aircraft?

Today there is only one demonstrator.

It's not at the moment a program.

It's a demonstrator where we put in flight a different and new ,

and we are just at the beginning of the story.

The aircraft itself have only 37 flight hours, so we have to learn a lot

again on this aircraft to collect data for the next step.

Okay.

Good luck with that.

It sounds like a really ambitious and valuable project.

Maybe I could, turn back to Gabriel.

Obviously, you know, Horizon

Europe is based a lot around the idea of collaboration with different partners.

I'm sure your project is no exception.

Can you explain to us, you know, what partners you brought to the table?

How the collaboration worked?

How you interacted with different stakeholders?

Yeah. Of course.

ECHOES is really big project.

We are six partners in the consortium and an associated entity.

The scope of ECHOES is geographically immense.

We are performing trials in the South Atlantic Corridor,

which goes from Europe to South America.

And we are performing this test with the satellites with real

pilots and with real controllers in five different airspaces,

from Portugal, from Spain.

Also, we are counting on communication service providers

that cover the data part of the project.

Also, airlines, they are key participants

because they are the end users.

And we have

among our contributors TAP Air Portugal,

Iberia, Plus Ultra, Tui, Vueling.

And how about, I mean, you mentioned the airlines,

you mentioned air traffic controllers.

Are they waiting impatiently for this new technology

to be available, or is there some resistance or scepticism?

No, no, to be honest, they are. They are.

Because mostly pilots, and controllers because air space is big.

But oceans are also really, really big air spaces.

And with this technology,

pilots are able to have a far better

communication that they have now, and they have tested it,

and they have seen that the quality is more than acceptable.

And also, controllers.

So indeed, they are waiting for this. I see.

And Christophe, AVL

List is a family-owned company with a long history.

What new partners have you been able to work with in these projects?

High efficiency and HiPower 5.0.

And what would have been some of the

challenges and the pluses of these collaborations?

Well, as I said before, we started already with HiPerform in 2018,

and since then we made a consortium out of roughly 30 partners.

Now, in HiPower it’s already 45 partners.

So, it grew over the last two years.

And the consortium is really a big one because we wanted really to have

the full value chain within Europe providing this automotive solution.

So, we’re starting really from the semiconductors having for example,

Infineon, Imec, supporting with the semiconductor devices.

So, we developed new semiconductor devices

within the project and brought them to the application.

So, you need everybody in between as well to do that.

And starting from the semiconductors, we had

of course, a lot of RTOs and universities involved, developing

new basic technologies as well as helping in the design of the components

and then going up to the automotive OEM.

So, we had Mercedes-Benz in, next time we have Ampere in, really

working on solutions coming to the end users.

And in between there are also tie up ones like a Valeo, Tesco,

which are also taking up this technology.

So, you need a really a big variety

of different companies to make this project a success.

And, within the project, we also had two different streams, so-called use

cases, developing different demonstrators, we had not just one demonstrator.

We had more than 12 demonstrators in it, in HiEFFICIENT, really, showing

that the semiconductor devices

in different applications related to the automotive domain.

Okay. Thanks.

And Jérome, I think you're working with a lot of industrial partners

for RACER, probably other partners.

What is their vision for the for the project?

Yes. You're right, we have 40 different partners spread all around

Europe in 13 different countries.

So, it means communication is key.

And it constrains you to formalize

a bit more if you work only by yourself.

And this has a really positive drawback at the end.

The aircraft has a maturity as a demonstrator.

That’s very good with very few flights.

We managed to demonstrate our target

speed of 220 knots on only seven flights.

So, 220 knots is the maximum? Yes.

So as an order of comparison, conventional rotorcraft is 140 knots.

So, 50% more speed.

And this is not done at any cost.

So, as you mentioned at the beginning of the discussion,

our aim is to have a cost-effective aircraft.

So, simplicity is a key in this.

It's a huge partnership.

It was also the key to this exchange; to make it, to keep it simple, let say.

So, it was a real teamwork? Yeah. It is.

Okay. Thanks.

I'm afraid that's all we have time for this

episode, I'd like to thank very much, our guests for joining us.

And, to you, for listening into this episode.

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