 Welcome to Stan Energyman, I'm Stan Osserman from the Hawaii Center for Advanced Transportation Technologies. It's hard to get that out on a long, after a long week, it's been a tough week this week. Lots going on. And the first thing I'd like to do before we get into introducing our guests is talk a little bit about going to the VIP reception at last night's Hawaii Auto Show. I'd like to thank Dave Ralf for putting that big event on at the convention center. It's awesome. And on the screen you see Pastor Kordau Keikoa, from Kamehameha Schools doing the blessing and unbuckling the ceremonial seat belt at the opening with all the auto dealers there. And it was a great, great evening, a lot of cool cars over there. So if you get a chance to get the family out to the convention center this weekend, if you want to see anything from antique cars to the fastest things made in Europe right now, Ferraris and Maserati's and everything else, they're all there. Big vans, big trucks, little cars, SUVs, you name it, and they're just all sitting there waiting for you to check them out. A lot of folks there were excited last night to see all the new models, including of course my favorite, the Toyota Mirai, which is a hydrogen vehicle, of course. It's got to be my favorite. But our guests today are a real special guest, especially for Ms. Rachel James and I who work at HCAT because we've also been working with some young folks from the Hawaii Center, excuse me, the Center for Tomorrow's Leaders, which is a non-for-profit here in town that takes some high school students and brings them on board and they get to do some different things like work with HCAT folks and other things, so they'll fill in the blanks there. But today we have three of the young folks, we can only put two at a time on the screen. Starting off we have Kylie and we have Georgio from Center for Tomorrow's Leaders and thank you for being here, we really appreciate it and I'm glad you got a chance to join us. So let's talk a little bit about what you went through over the past couple months. So first of all, Kylie, why don't you tell us a little bit about how the program, how you got into the program a little bit, where you went to school or where you go to school, and where you plan to go to school, and things like that, and no one asked Georgio to give his to us. All right, well I actually heard about CTL over KISS K, so not like how everyone else heard about it, but yeah my mom and I were driving, we heard about it and I just decided to apply and luckily I got an interview and here I am. Great. But yeah, I go to commandment schools, I'm a junior there and I'm still not too sure where I want to go to college, but hopefully somewhere on the east coast, fingers crossed. You want to be far, far away? Well not necessarily, but you know it's something different. Okay, what do you think you're going to major in? I'm interested in being in the OBGYN, so hopefully that'll plan to help, yeah. Okay good, and you Georgio, where do you go to school? So I go to McKinney High School, and I'm currently a senior, so for how I got into CTL is I got actually got recommended by my friend who was a fellow last year, Kelly Zhang, and I mean I was dubious at first because you know I didn't know what to expect, but you know I just gave it a shot. I just went for it and here I am today as well as Kylie. And where are you going to go to school do you think? Where are you looking at school? Because you're a senior, right? Yeah, yeah, so I actually plan to go to UH Manoa, so I got accepted, and I plan to major, actually I'm kind of ambitious right now, I'm thinking of double majoring in kinesiology and environmental studies. So yeah, environmental studies kind of came from our project, so it made me more open. Well let's talk a little bit about the project because you guys actually are going to be doing a production that covers the whole period that you've been working with Rachel and I at HCAP, but you know what are some of the things that struck you about what we're doing because the project overall was to look at a new technology for you, which is hydrogen fuel cell vehicles and how they might impact Hawaii, and ultimately maybe to convert a vehicle to run on hydrogen, and we didn't actually get the conversion done, but we got up to the training to do the conversion, and if we can keep you around for a couple more weeks we're going to actually do the conversion. But what about the program really struck you or surprised you? I mean you felt like you really went a long ways, you learned a lot, and what are some of the things that you learned when you went through this program? I think personally, I didn't know anything about hydrogen, I'm honest. I didn't know anything about hydrogen when I first came into CTL, and then you guys just showed up and were like, oh... We're going to convert a vehicle to run on hydrogen. And I didn't even know that hydrogen was that versatile, and that you can do many things with it, as well as its abundance, because I thought everything was made out of carbon, but carbon is not as universal as hydrogen, now that I know, because hydrogen I learned that can be found in our galaxy, in our atmosphere, in our water, in our organic molecules, and all of that. But then with this project, I understand that it has a potential in the transportation industry, especially for the clean energy because you can get hydrogen from multiple ways, and it has zero emission. Right. How about you, Kylie? Coming to this program, just like Giorgio, I had absolutely no knowledge on any of this, and the fact that we were going to convert a vehicle, I was like, oh my goodness. But yeah, we have a really good group that we're working with, so they've definitely helped me get pushed along and follow along with you guys. And also, when we actually got to go to HCAT and look at the vehicle, see the vehicle, I'm more of a visual learner, so that's when everything started clicking for me. Because prior to that, I was still very confused on the whole process, but yeah, definitely it's very interesting. It's great to be working with everyone. OK, so other than being kind of clean and green, Giorgio mentioned that it's kind of versatile. What are some of the things you learned about hydrogen that other people might not be aware of that you found interesting? Versatile in what different kind of ways you can use it for cooking or you can use it for when you're making the hydrogen. You're also making oxygen when you use an electrolyzer. What other kind of things did you learn? I think throughout this process, we kind of had to do our own research, but I found out that NASA actually uses hydrogen to shoot the rockets up into space. Right. Raw rocket fuel, it's exceptionally good. In fact, it's pretty much the universal fuels with what they call hydrogen peroxide, and they send rockets out of the atmosphere with a lot of power in there, a lot of energy. So hydrogen is basically an energy carrier. It's one of the best energy carriers out there. So I know we've talked about we can burn hydrogen and the base skill we get is what? Water. Even if you burn it. Even if you literally burn it in a flame, you get water. And the Greek's name, the hydrogen comes from the Greek for water maker. A lot of people don't know that, but it just gives you water back at the end. So even if you burn it or you use it in a fuel cell, you still get water out of the tailpipe of the car. So a hydrogen vehicle, a lot of people don't realize it's really what kind of vehicle. It's not an internal combustion engine, but it's an electric vehicle. So a lot of people, when they hear a hydrogen vehicle, they're going, oh, it's some new kind of vehicle. But basically, it's an electric vehicle. And the fuel cell is really just a self-charging, anything you can think of. Well, it charges the battery. It's a battery. It's like a self-charging battery. Because if you look at a fuel cell, it's got a cathode, an anode, and partitions, and just like other batteries. But it's neat because it can charge itself with hydrogen and oxygen and make electricity. So it's really a real basic, basic chemistry. And it's been used for a long, long time. So we started looking at the vehicle. And what kind of vehicle did we end up looking at to convert? Well, what's the kind of answer? The gem. Is that it? No, but it's a gem. 1,400 LSB. Mr. Detail. Yeah, he's a. Out of the broad idea of it. Yeah, but you've driven it. He hasn't. True. So how was it to drive the gem? OK, driving the gem. Not the same as driving a regular car, that's for sure. Because, man, you, like, pressed down on the gas. I would have, like, ran into everyone's cars at age cap. But yeah, it's definitely something different. It's not difficult to drive. I mean, after you start getting used to it. But I wouldn't say I completely feel comfortable driving it right now. Just your practice. Yeah. But I mean, it's not, yeah, nothing complicated. Quiet? Yeah, very quiet. It sounds like it's off. I didn't have much chance to really go very far. But it has a lot of power. I mean, you know, we've driven it on the road, and it's limited to 25 miles an hour. But it has quite a bit of power. It gets up and goes when you really chomp on that XR. I was really surprised that you could drive it to Montgomery Motors. Because doesn't it only go, like, 25? Yes, but we got there. So you were just cruising along. Just a couple of old people in the car. But we got there. So when we, what are some of the steps we went through? Like, first when we started, we were meeting with you at the Gold Bond building on Sundays, and we're talking about things. And you're really the end product. And we'll talk to Julian more about this after the break is the production. So how much thought went into organizing that production? And at the end state, what's your goal when you actually finish your product, your production, your video, whatever? What is your goal when you finish that? What do you want to do? So ultimately, our production is going to serve as a platform for public education. Because yesterday, for example, we went to Montgomery Power Sports. And some of the workers there didn't even know about hydrogen. So the people within the industry are not even informed about the alternatives that they can take. So if we are able to target those type of audiences, or even their customers, about more greener and more sustainable alternatives for transportation, then we'll definitely have an impact on Hawaii. And like they said too, they totally take into account everything that the customers have to say. So I mean, if you share the idea with them, they're more than happy to actually look into it and maybe make a model out of it. So have either of you ever made a suggestion someplace and been surprised that people actually listened to your suggestion and haven't happened? Yesterday? OK, there you go. So do you think that a high school junior and a high school senior can make a difference in the world? Definitely. Yeah. So I think one of the best learning points in this whole program is you realize that you may just be high school kids right now, but you're stepping up to your inner leadership program and you're stepping up into the world. But if you have an idea that you think it's worth looking at and worth listening to and you've done your homework, you've done your research, people will listen to you because sometimes even people as old as me that have experience need to be smart enough to listen to somebody with a different perspective or a different viewpoint and understand the merits of it and say, hey, maybe we should try that. So I appreciate that you're spending the time doing this project and putting the effort in. And I know we'll see more of you as we get into the conversion. But for right now, we're going to take a quick break and we're going to go to some advertising for some of our other shows here on Think Tech and we'll get back in about those 60 seconds or so. Thank you for watching Think Tech. I'm Grace Chang, the new host for Global Connections. You can find me here live every Thursday at 1 PM, where we'll be talking to people around the islands or visiting the islands who are connected in various aspects of global affairs. So please tune in and aloha and thanks for watching. I'm Ethan Allen, host of likeable science here on Think Tech Hawaii. Every Friday afternoon at 2 PM, you'll have a chance to come and listen and learn from scientists around the world, scientists who talk about their work in meaningful, easy to understand ways. And you'll come to appreciate science as a wonderful way of thinking, a way of knowing about the world. You'll learn interesting facts, interesting ideas. You'll be stimulated to think more. Please come join us every Friday afternoon at 2 PM here on Think Tech Hawaii for likeable science. With me, your host Ethan Allen. Aloha, I'm State Senator Russell Ruderman. I represent the Pune and Kau district on the Big Island and the host of Ruderman Roundtable. We're here on Think Tech Hawaii every other Tuesday at 2 PM. You can join us at ThinkTechHawaii.com. You can find a link there to a page where you can see past episodes. And we talk here about good government, environmental issues and issues of the day facing the state of Hawaii. I'm Russell Ruderman. Please join us for the Ruderman Roundtable. Mahalo. Hey, welcome back to my lunch hour. Stan the energy man here. We've done some magic and swapped out Kylie for Julia. And we've got one of the other team members here on the screen and Julia is really the one that's actually doing the production. So we kind of had her sitting on the sideline watching the production go so she could figure out some of the magic they do here at Think Tech to get their productions online. So Julia, welcome to the show. Hi. Tell us a little bit about, you know, school, where you go to school, what you do, what you're gonna do after high school and into college. Okay, so I'm a junior at Kaiser High School right now. And I'm not really sure what I'm gonna do after high school. I'm thinking about majoring in communications, but we'll see. It'll probably change. I haven't decided if I want to like move to the mainland, like for college or stay here. It doesn't really matter. So you're not like Kylie who wants a bail on us and go all the way back? No. I mean, like it would be a good experience to experience the mainland because I haven't really gotten to go. But I mean like, Hawaii will always be home for me, so yeah. Well, being that you're in charge of the production part of putting this video and stuff together, what are some of the things you learned as we've gone through the process? I learned that I really need to work with my team to like, because I don't know everything after you get advice from him and see what we want to have and really coordinate with the whole group to like create something that we all will like. So I'm still like collecting videos and pictures and trying to put together and hopefully you will get it done soon. Do you feel like you can make a difference in Hawaii with this video that once you finish the production, people go, wow, that's really good. I mean, I never thought of it that way. Hopefully that's our goal. We want to show it to like different groups and like wide ranges of ages from like high schoolers to adults and seniors. So hopefully that has an impact and have them have an open mind about hydrogen. So who are some of the groups, Georgia, that you plan to talk to? So we are targeting, so we're presenting to Kaiser High School on, I believe, Earth Day. Okay. And yeah, so we're gonna have our mini display of salt water. Oh yeah, your little cars. Yeah, the little car. So to get a glimpse of like what they, what they might have in mind, you know, about like hydrogen in general, or like, but that vehicle just basically shows the potential of like fuel cells in general. And our other audiences will be, will be your group, the Hawaii Hydrogen Implementation. Okay, working group? Yeah. And the legislature, are you gonna go talk to any of our legislators? Well, that's what we're thinking about. We don't know for sure if that's gonna happen. Okay. Yeah. Or we're also looking at Clean Energy Day, which is sometime during the summer. Okay. So. With Hawaii Energy Policy Forum. Yeah. Okay. All right. So is there anything that you really felt like you, you learned a lot about in doing this project? I mean, that you didn't expect to learn and really kind of got your attention? Well, first off, I had no idea. You think about hydrogen, I was like, okay, that's something with science. Like, what is that exactly? But I learned that like to like, understand like hydrogen and how it can like, produce energy and you can run your cars out there. Like, you don't have to be like a environmentalist to support it. It's not just about saving the environment, it's also being like. It's a practical thing. Yeah, it's a practical thing. You don't have to like, oh, it's just gonna save the earth. It's more than just like, hoping the earth, it will cut down in costs, hopefully. And then it'll help with all, a lot of different stuff too. Yeah. So you guys got a chance to see our little Millennium Rain Hydrogen Unit and you saw some of our, like the weapons loader and we got to talk about all that. What do you think of those guys from US Hybrid? They do our conversions that they seem pretty knowledgeable about the equipment that they worked on and stuff? Yeah, definitely. I mean, they also seem very passionate about it. And what's the Asian guy's name? But I remember like, he showed us, yeah, he showed us inside the bus how it works. And you know, he also showed us, he just mounted the weapons loader and then showed us the insides, the where the fuel cell is and where the, yeah, and where the tank is, the hydrogen tank and all of that. Yeah, so you got to see all the components on the conversion that we're gonna do. And so like on our gem vehicle, all that stuff will actually sit on the back. But we have a tank and we have a fuel cell and we have a battery controller that tells the fuel cell when to feed the batteries and charge them and when to turn it off. Cause you don't want to overcharge the batteries. And yeah, and then there's some plumbing to connect the tank to the fuel cell and some wires to connect everything else. But it's pretty, a pretty basic conversion. It's nothing, you would think that, oh, we're converting a vehicle to run a hydrogen. It'd be like rocket science. We're building a spacecraft or something, but it's really pretty basic. It's, in fact, from my perspective, it's probably easier. It's on the par working on a lawnmower or something. It's really not that complicated. It's less complicated than working on a car. So were there any big surprises, though, for you in the program that, you know, it's like the just, oh my gosh, I had no idea that I could learn this much or I could do this or that would give me a difference or whatever. Well, first off, I'm not really huge in science. Like, I'm not really good at it. I like it, but I'm not good at it. So when I heard we're converting a car and to run on off hydrogen, that freaked me out. But once you saw it, you learned about the process and what you can do and I realized it wasn't as, like you said, not as complicated as it sounds. It's not rocket science. Yeah, I know, cause I used to fly airplanes and when people would look in the cockpit of my fighter or something and they'd go, oh my God, how do you know what all those switches are and everything? And it's really what we call eating the elephant one bite at a time. You just basically have to learn about the engines and then you have to learn about the radios and then you have to learn about this and you learn them separately and they make sense. And then you put them all together. And it's the same with the conversion. It's like once you learn what the fuel cell does and you learn about the controller and you learn how the tank has to feed them. It makes sense. The pieces make sense. Like one step at a time. Exactly. And so that's a good way to learn a real complex task is you just break it down into separate components and learn those components individually and put them together. So yeah, that's kind of what we're trying to do. Rachel and I were trying to show you that it may sound like a real daunting task. You're going to convert a vehicle around the hydrogen but you break it down into its individual components and you can do it. Anybody can do it. It just takes a little bit of reading and research and you get it done. Just watch some YouTube videos. That's what I did. So do you think that this technology could really make a difference in Hawaii? Do you think that the people in Hawaii are ready to accept hydrogen fuel cell vehicles? Or is that the goal of your production to convince a million people in Hawaii that hydrogen fuel cell vehicles are the way to go? I think maybe everybody can read it all at once. But I want people to be a little bit more open about the idea of it and to welcome them to have it more implicated in Hawaii so that we can start having, what is it, the hydrogen chargers? Charging stations. Charging stations. So that would be awesome. Okay. So you saw in HCAT we had the gem vehicle. We had the weapons loader, we had the big buses. So what other kind of equipment do you think would be good to maybe run hydrogen off of hydrogen? I think motorcycles in the future sometimes. Because yesterday we went to Montgomery Power Sports and they were mentioning how motorcycles are more easier to drive. It's like you can, you know, pass people. You put more of them on the highway for sure than cars. Less traffic. So less traffic, less pollution. And you know, if you can make a cool looking one then people will be attracted to it. Because one of the factors that customers look at is how attractive it is, you know. Yeah, let's talk about the interview with the folks at Montgomery yesterday. I think they learned a lot from you. In fact, they could tell from their response a lot of times. They felt like they learned a lot. But you guys learned a lot about business and marketing yesterday. So the, I mean, Kylie even mentioned, you know, you gotta listen to customers. You know, I think that was a big, I saw your guys light bulbs come on behind you. I could see the light bulbs come on behind you. But you know, the companies react to customer input. So, you know, for you as customers, you know that you can write Chevrolet or Ford Motor Company or BMW or whoever and say, hey, I wanna see a hydrogen fuel cell pickup truck. And if you do it and 10 other people do it and then five more people do it from here and there, you might see that thing. But if nobody asks for it, they're not, they may not think of it. So that's an important thing you learned yesterday was, you know, as a customer, you have a responsibility to help build a market and whatever it is you think is important. So I know they talked a little bit about the electric motorcycles. What impressed you about their discussion on the electric motorcycle? Well, I think something that impressed me was that, I mean, they had it in their market for a really long time because people didn't really like know about it that much. Yeah, and it was too expensive. Yeah, exactly, it was expensive. So the affordability. But, you know, our technology is, our technology's potential is growing like exponentially. So hopefully within the next few years, 10 or 20 years, maybe then everything is going to be affordable. I mean, if we look at Tesla, for example, their Model 3 is going to be like $35,000. So that's pretty cheap for an electric vehicle. Yeah, yeah, so. So that's pretty much a trend that you'll see in any technology. The more it gets into the marketplace, the cheaper it gets. The more competitive it is and the more people baking it or competing with each other, the price goes down. So that's one of the things you'd like to see. So yeah, they had to drop their, what do you say, $10,000? Parties like half and half, so it's $20,000, drop it to $10,000. To get it to sell, to get it about the same price as another comparable motorcycle. But in reality, it was actually a very powerful and high-speed machine. It was really a very high-performing motorcycle and probably worth the $20,000. But you gotta wait till the market gets there and you can actually start marketing it at the right price. So, well, is there anything else that stood out to you about what you learned in this process that you'd like to share with everybody? I think for me is the importance of sustainability and like the in-state economy. Because I feel like hydrogen will have opportunities to create more jobs for people. Because if we, for example, make hydrogen, electrolysis stations or something, then the people who build it, they can make some money. People will operate it. Yeah, people will operate it. And I think that's gonna help the state's economy. Because right now, if we keep purchasing fossil fuels and stuff from other places, then our money is going elsewhere and it's not really coming back. But if we're able to generate our own economy, you know. Keep the money in Hawaii. Yeah, keep the money in Hawaii. Yeah, because if you're buying your energy from somewhere else when it's falling around from the sky and the wind is blowing it, you're wasting your money. I know. I think another thing is that we actually have, I think the most expensive, most, the highest price of gasoline in the country only because of importation. Yeah, we got to ship it to Hawaii. Yeah. So if we're able to implement hydrogen here, then we can possibly make a big change in our economy. Great. Well, believe it or not, we've just gone through a half hour of talking to Center for Tomorrow's leaders. So thanks to Kylie over in the back and Georgio and Julia for being here with us today. And we really enjoyed, I know I'm speaking for Rachel too, but I have her permission. We really enjoyed working with you guys and we're not done yet. We still got plenty of work to do. So we'll be working with you some more and we'll have you back on when the project's all done. Maybe we can show you your video. That sounds good. Oh, maybe. Okay. Well, that's it for us today on Standard Energy Manor. Thank you very much for joining us and until next Friday, aloha.