 heard about this airplane before today, already. It's about half, a little bit more than half. So RIMPLZ, that's a project we dreamt about 15 years ago. And the idea was to develop an airplane which can fly forever, at least theoretically, but unlimited endurance, a new paradigm. And to be able to do this, and you will see in fact why afterwards, it was clear that we needed to get the energy on the airplane when we were flying. And barking energy from the ground was impossible because energy is weight. You need energy to carry energy. You have a limit. We know current airplanes fly 12, 15, 18 hours, maybe maximum. And the only energy that we had available is the sun. So that's what we used. But you certainly know that solar energy in some ways is limited. If you take one square meter at noon at the best moment, it gives you something like 1,000 watts. 1,000 watts, it's the power of a hair dryer. And the sun is not what you get as electricity. So it's limited. So the only way to fly day and night, which means through the night using the energy we get through the day, was to build a very efficient airplane. So it's a demonstration of energy efficiency. I explained why, in fact, it's so big. That's the size of 747, or even bigger. Explains why it was so light, the weight of a car, about two tons. And of course, explain why we have chosen electric propulsion. Because on one side, it's an airplane which is solar. On the other side, it's an airplane which is electric. Electric propulsion gives us the efficiency we need it. Just to give you an idea, the efficiency of the water we had is 1970%. The efficiency of a combustion engine, if you still have a combustion engine, it's about 30%, which means two liters out of three that you put in the tank is lost. It doesn't provide anything for propulsion. So why did we do this? We did this to show, in fact, what we should do on Earth. If we can make our world efficient in the same way as we did this airplane efficient, renewable energies are sufficient afterwards to provide the power we need for our daily activities. If we use this technology, we can reduce energy consumption by 50%. So that's was the goal of this project, to build a symbol, to build an ambassador of what we can do with these technologies. And so 15 years ago, we had no ambition to revolutionize aviation. We didn't want people to expect flying solar to go on vacation. But as we started to discover what we can do with these technologies, I mean, I can say that I started to fall in love with electric propulsion. You will certainly not fly solar. As you understood, one square meter, one hair dryer, if you take an Airbus 380, maybe you can provide energy for the video system. But you will certainly not provide with the technology and the knowledge we have today the energy to propel the airplane. But airplanes today can be electric. And that's what is extremely interesting and exciting. On one side, I'm sure you know that the limits is the battery. That's what we heard on cars. And that's the problem we had with cars, because people were trying to replace combustion engine with electric motors. And they were disappointed to discover that they can drive only 50 kilometers. So the negative part of it is that we have, of course, difficulty to store energy. But the fantastic opportunity is that we can change the design of the airplane. And we can build airplanes in a different way so that we can have so much benefits that the hurdle of the low energy density of batteries is not an issue. I think in the cars Elon Musk demonstrated this a little bit, but in airplane we have the third dimension that we can use. And this is what I would like to explore together with Garret this morning. I'm trying to provide you a vision of what we can do with the technology which exists today. It's not a question of inventing new technologies. It's a question of finding the right mindset. When we started Solar Impulse, we went to the aviation industry and said, that's what we need to have as an airplane. And immediately they told us that they believe it was impossible. And so we had to develop our own solution. It was clear that the aviation industry did not have the technology to be able to build it. And we had to find the solution somewhere else. And it's exactly the same with electric propulsion today. It's not the big corporation who will invent this new solution. It will come from innovators, pioneers, maybe the Silicon Valley. They are working on it. But let's see what we can do. So Garret, if you want to join me, I think we still have a question. That's fascinating to see, Andre. So I wonder if we can take the story right back. We're going to hear obviously a lot more about Solar Impulse and a lot more about your thoughts about the technologies of the future and so on. But maybe right back to the beginning when you're a boy and you're fascinated by flight. You take some flying lessons. And I should say, by the way, that this session is being recorded. It's being streamed live as well. And the Q&A is recorded as well. So where did your interest in flying come from in the first place, Andre? I think all these starts with passion. You're absolutely right to say it. And when I was a kid, I was reading a lot of books about the people who made the aviation we know today. And this gave me, in fact, the will to become a pilot and had the chance to do my first solo flight when I was 15, got my license when I was 17. But flying was not the only thing. I mean, I became an Air Force pilot thereafter. I could fly in Switzerland as a pilot, but being an entrepreneur as a profession. So it was almost like a hobby. But I was impressed by the life of these people who invented aviation. I mean, imagine that on one side, you had people who were trying to demonstrate that flying was impossible at the time of the White Brothers. On the other time, the other people was trying to imagine how it could work. And when they had built something, they had to try it. There was no flight instructor. So getting into the machine and getting into the air without knowing how it will happen for me was fascinating. And I thought, I mean, I have to do this once in my life. So I had to wait the age of 50 to meet my partner, Bertrand Picard, who had this idea of flying without the dependence on fossil energy. I think when I met him, I had the impression that the door was opening to this world of pioneers that I had been dreaming when I was a little kid. And I think passion in this type of project is extremely, but that's the driving force. Yeah. And that must have been really exciting, the idea that there was still some space to be a pioneer. That in a way, we thought we knew aviation. We thought we understood propulsion. And this was just an incremental journey of marginal improvements to airframes and propulsion techniques, actually throwing that whole playbook away and really starting from scratch with a new aviation paradigm. That must have been intoxicatingly exciting, I guess. Well, that's the same. That was the same here. In fact, you need to believe in it. You need to believe it's possible. And then you need to have the perseverance to go through the process of making it happening. And from outside, you have the impression, you go from one success to the next, building a first airplane, second airplane, first flight. But basically, in fact, you go from one challenge, from one obstacle, from one difficulty to the next one. So where did the idea initially come from, to even consider electric propulsion and renewable electric propulsion in flying? So where did that idea came from, that first insight that maybe we could use electric propulsion, and not just electricity, but renewable electricity? Because to me, it seems so counterintuitive. So where did that idea come from? You remember my partner Bertrand flying around the world with the balloon? Yes. It was 1999. They used photons of propane. And when he got to the coast of Africa, they had 40 kilograms left in the bottle. Barely made it across the ocean with a lot of tension and suspense as you can imagine. And he asked himself at this moment if he could not get rid of the dependence on the energy you take on board, and use the energy which is available around renewable energy. So that's how the idea started. But we didn't know if an airship would make sense. An airplane would be possible. So we had to dig in, in fact, to get the feeling of what was feasible. So that was the starting point 15 years ago. And of course, you studied engineering. You became an entrepreneur. You've run companies and so on. But wearing your engineering hat wasn't there part of you that you know the laws of motion. You know what it takes to get a heavy an air machine into the air as an aircraft, not like a balloon or something like that. The amount of force that it needs to get the aircraft off the ground, did you for one minute doubt that electric propulsion could actually allow you to take off in an aircraft with fixed wings? What was critical was to understand the balance between day and night. And that's a little bit what we are facing in our civilization in some ways. Are we consuming everything during the day and there's nothing for the night in our aircraft? Are we consuming everything during our generation and there is nothing for next generation? So to find this balance between day and night was the critical issue. Can we collect enough and can we save enough so that's at the end of the night we are still in the air? But think about it, when we are at the sunrise, the level of batteries we have is about 10%. So it's the same if you have your portable phone, you know when it's getting red and you know you can do one phone call and that's over. But we are at this moment over the ocean and there is no plug underneath. So the understanding of how close we were to the limits was extremely important and of course it led to an airplane which is extremely light, something that the aviation industry was unable to build, didn't have the technologies. And I remember in fact I was looking for a company who could manufacture this airplane and you have to imagine that this is a skeleton made of carbon fibers, something which is extremely light and very stiff and the company I found was a company specialized in boat building. Yes. Innovative, knowing the materials but no clue about aviation. And when I presented my engineers, structure engineers from the erotical world to this company, my team said Andrea you're completely crazy. These guys have no understanding about what we are doing, it will never work. And this company, their technicians told me your engineers are not too bad but they have no idea about how to use our materials. You'll never be able to make a design which is good enough to get the benefits of what we can do. So it was not a question of technology, it was a question of trying to develop the right mindset between these team to make them work together. It took two years. You know when you bring different people in the same room, everyone wants to demonstrate that his vision of the world is the right one. And you have to make sure that they start in fact to understand what the other person is doing to see how the idea of the other person can improve my solution. And that's what took time to develop. Yeah, so I mean this is a huge research effort and it was pioneering in every way, nobody had done this. So just tell us a little bit about the, there were two solar impulse aircrafts, so obviously the world record breaking one was solar impulse two. So if we just could have hop forward to that one, just tell us a bit about the construction of the aircraft, obviously it has the electric motors, just tell us a little bit about it. So it's a skeleton build of carbon fibers. So the weight is essential. The solar cells provides the electricity, the energy to the batteries and to the motors. So it's, I would say, a very simple functioning. What has to be optimized in the entire system? It's not thinking about how to make the best motor is to think how can I make this working within my weight budget. So this was the, this was the chance, this was the critical question. But when we fly this, what we realize is that these technologies are extremely reliable in what they provide in the way they function. And this is a great advantage of electric propulsion. Electric propulsion has different features, I think, which will help us to change the world of aviation. It's very easy to command. It's using electric boards. It reacts instantaneously. As soon as you apply electricity, you get the torque. It's very simply manufactured, therefore very reliable. It's quiet, it's clean. So basically it addresses all the questions and maybe the criticism we make in the world of aviation. Noise, pollution, cost, maintenance, something you can resolve with electric propulsion. That's the reasons why it's so attractive. Yeah, so a bit like going from diesel locomotives on the railways to electric, kind of high torque, more reliable, easier to maintain trains. This is obviously taking it into the skies. But it does seem, Andreas, if your big engineering challenge was the batteries and there were problems you had that record-breaking flight as part of the round-the-world journey, there was that record-breaking leg from Japan to Hawaii, five days and five nights. Everything worked well, but it took a heavy toll on the batteries, didn't it, that flight? So tell me why the batteries were the big challenge here. It's the limiting factor for cars. It's the limiting factor for airplanes. It was the limiting factor for us as well. So the only way was to make something light. And the only way, in fact, if you look at what we can do with aviation is to make it different. So think about the drones that we see. The drones have four motors. These drones are more stable in winds and in turbulence than a helicopter which costs 10 million. Why? Because you have simple electronics which control it. And why? Because electric motors reactively and can balance the drone. So you can start thinking about building an airplane taking vertically like a helicopter, but in a much more simple way. Actually, you don't need these big rotors which is extremely difficult to manufacture, difficult to maintain, noisy, inefficient. You can start thinking about something like we have downstairs taking vertically, but then flying like an airplane. If you fly like a drone, like we see on the model downstairs, it's inefficient. Getting your lift and sustaining the flight with propellers uses a lot of energy. So we need something which has the same principle to move up, but then flies like an airplane. That's what we call flying cars. And that's where we see the huge potential today.