The first session at VDS 2025  opened with a topic that’s been on everyone’s mind: how Europe can stay competitive against the U.S. and China when it comes to investment. Three points stood out for me: Chris Broad  stressed the value of international teams — and therefore, the importance of easy cross-border movement. Álvaro-Miguel Cabrera  argued for EU-wide startup rules  — common frameworks for funding, stock options, and governance. Andrés Ubierna  noted that raising capital in Europe remains harder than in the U.S. or China. I agree with the first two, but not entirely with the last one. Having just moved to Paris , I know first-hand how difficult it is to move professionally between EU countries — and that’s exactly what Europe should fix first. Mobility fuels innovation. A European legal framework for startups  would indeed be transformative, but I doubt it can happen without deeper political integration. As for funding — yes, it’s tougher here. But maybe that’s not entirely bad. Less money wasted means more capital available for good projects . Europe’s edge has always been collaboration . Out of the three takeaways, the only one we can realistically act on in the short term is professional mobility . What do you think Europe could achieve in the next year or two to strengthen its competitiveness?

The “Double Valley of Death” diagram below has become something of a classic in innovation policy circles. The first valley, between research and product development, is where most startups fail due to a lack of proof or a prototype. The second valley — between demonstration and commercial scale — is where climate hardware dies. Source: The EU Startup and Scaleup Strategy That’s the FOAK stage. First-of-a-kind plant. First commercial line. First scaled system. And this valley is deep. When government grants fade, angels reach their limits, and venture capital is still wary of industrial risk, there’s almost no one left to bridge the gap. Banks and capital markets only step in once you’ve already made it to the other side. So yes — “we need more capital” to bridge this stage. But what’s starting to bother me is how some people now propose to fill that gap. The first “solution”: Crowdfunding like a VC I first came across this idea through Yoann Berno, who’s building one such platform. The pitch sounds seductive: crowd VC democratizes startup investing, lets retail investors put small tickets into early-stage climate companies, and they too can be part of the next big success story. The problem is that “investing like a VC” isn’t the same as being one. A venture capitalist’s portfolio might include anywhere from five to a hundred startups. Ninety-nine per cent will fail. But because the VC is playing with size and probability — and often with other people’s money — a couple of big wins can make up for all the losses. For an ordinary person with a few thousand euros of savings, that math simply doesn’t work. They might invest in one, two, or three companies, and the odds are brutally against them. History isn’t kind here. I can’t recall a financial innovation that allowed retail investors to access high-risk assets safely. From South Sea bubbles to ICOs, from FX trading to the housing bubble of 2008, the outcome has always been the same — professionals win, amateurs lose. Maybe with one exception: gold. But don’t take my investment advice here) Crowdfunding may have a place — as a community-building tool or a form of donation with emotional return. But presenting it as a way for ordinary people to play the venture game is misleading, even predatory. The second “solution”: Pension funds This idea is even more worrying. I am now reading a report titled “Venture & Growth Capital in Europe – Mapping Pension Funds’ Attitudes”. The argument is that Europe’s pension funds should allocate more of their capital to growth equity — including climate tech and, in some cases, FOAK projects. At first glance, that might sound reasonable: we need long-term investors to fill long-term gaps. But think about it. Pension funds are not supposed to chase outsized returns. Their job is to preserve and compound the savings of millions of people who have no other safety net. Their fiduciary duty is prudence, not heroism. When a venture fund loses half its portfolio, that’s the business. When a pension fund loses it, that’s a social tragedy. Putting pension money into FOAK projects — where even experienced investors struggle to quantify risk — feels like handing matches to a toddler and hoping for warmth instead of fire. And yet, this is precisely the shortcut that policymakers might be tempted to take when they realise how much capital the climate transition actually needs. What we really need to bridge the Valley of Death We are short of capital to fund the first commercial scale of clean technologies. But let’s be honest about what kind of capital is missing, and it’s certainly not “democratised” retail money or pensioners’ savings. What’s missing is patient, risk-tolerant, strategic capital — the kind that sits between public grants and commercial loans. This can only come from a deliberate architecture of instruments: Public guarantees to reduce risk for private lenders. Dedicated FOAK funds co-financed by governments and industry. Outcome-based contracts that pay for real-world deployment and performance, not promises. And off-takes with generous upfront payments, where buyers help bring new tech to market by committing early volumes. That’s hard, slow, and unglamorous work — but it’s what built every great industrial revolution before. We need more bridges across the valley. But we don’t build them by gambling with the savings of those who can least afford to lose. If we do that, the valley won’t just stay — it will deepen.

We have five senses — but somehow, car designers decided we should only use one: sight. Even something as basic as changing a radio station is turning from a satisfying click-click of a knob into a 10-second finger ballet across a smudged touchscreen. Here is a software-defined vehicle for you. Some say it will be fixed with voice control. Give me a break! Watch that famous elevator video below, or “2001: A Space Odyssey"(“I’m sorry, Dave, I’m afraid I can’t do that.”) Why are we turning driving — an activity that demands focus — into a mini UX experiment? Clearly, what we all needed at 80 km/h was more menus. Occam would probably say: if a button works, keep the button. What do you think? Should we bring back the humble knobs and switches — or is the screen-first cockpit here to stay? This post was inspired by this post by Rupesh N. Bhambwani https://www.linkedin.com/posts/rupeshbhambwani_automotivesafety-techinnovation-cardesign-activity-7377916706075275265-zXbl?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_desktop&rcm=ACoAAAm_aQkB7bt-OaLgge9sItcV5ZWIE1ClWZ0 #AutomotiveDesign #OccamsRazor #CarSafety #HumanMachineInterface

In our conversation, Dirk Singer made a point that one of the biggest investors in e-fuels isn’t an airline or an energy company — it’s the military. “Armed forces are very interested in e-fuels… The US military is one of the biggest investors, not for environmental reasons, but for energy security and operational resilience.” It makes perfect sense. Moving fuel is one of the most dangerous and expensive operations in any conflict. Solar panels, batteries, and, with creative application of insulation foam, were already used by the US Army in the early 1990s to improve energy efficiency at field bases. What began as a tactical solution later became a civilian standard. The military has always been the earliest adopter of promising new technologies. If we stick to Clayton Christensen’s definition of disruption, every successful disruptive technology starts in a highly specialised, niche market before going mainstream. Defence is exactly that kind of market. The same pattern might now repeat with e-fuels and modular energy systems. Producing synthetic fuel on-site — from captured CO₂ and green hydrogen — could save convoys, lives, and logistics headaches. What bothers me is that for this approach to e-fuels to work, we are using the least energy-efficient methods: first, capturing CO2, which takes a ton of energy; second, making hydrogen, which is not known for high efficiency; and third, spending even more energy to make e-fuel! For this work, a military base should be located close to a nuclear power plant or a hydropower dam. For more insights into the future of sustainable aviation, watch my interview with Dirk Singer here .

I spoke with a European founder developing his own battery cells. Just getting permits for the mixing and coating stages pushed his project back by three years. Those two stages alone would make up over 60% of total capex. That’s why building dedicated electrode toll-manufacturing foundries for scaleups makes so much sense — they can shortcut years of permitting and tens of millions in investment. At higher volumes, though, around 5–8 GWh, it flips. The economics start favouring in-house manufacturing. The next wave of collaboration will likely emerge between those two extremes — shared infrastructure for early-stage scaleups, a foundry for founders, and independence for mature ones.

I’ve seen this before—in Russia. Decisions made not for policy, not for strategy, but for unchecked power. Now I see this playing out in the U.S. When Trump first took office, I found comfort in Jigar Shah, then head of the DOE Loans Program Office, who said climate funding would continue because many projects were in Republican states. What I didn’t expect was worse: the federal government is now cancelling support for projects in Democratic states only. Blanket cancellation would at least send a clear (if stupid) message: “we don’t care about climate.” But targeting only Democratic projects says something else: “we don’t care about anything, except power. Our power.” This logic is familiar to me. It reminds me of Russia, where decisions are driven not by strategy, not even ideology, but by the immediate pursuit of unchecked authority. Ok, rant over. Back to business. The U.S. is fast losing its credibility as a place where law-abiding businesses can count on politics not to ruin long-term investments. That leaves Europe as the last major region where investors can still count on rules and continuity. Here is the source article: https://www.latitudemedia.com/news/scoop-these-are-the-321-awards-doe-is-canceling/

When Elon Musk announced #robotaxis some time ago, nothing to do with slowing #Tesla sales, of course, LinkedIn and social media erupted with predictions: everything will be self-driving, the taxi industry will collapse, and disruption is imminent! Yawn. My usual response to such hype is to grab popcorn and wait. Reality is always known to deliver a kick in the pants, just a little later, after everyone forgot about the viral posts. In this case, it took a relatively short time. The Economist just published a sober look at the economics of self-driving taxis, using San Francisco as the test case. Waymo has been running robotaxis there for years, joined more recently by Zoox and Tesla. The reality is not quite the “end of taxi drivers” story. Who would’ve thought? Employment in the San-Francisco taxi sector has been stable, even growing. The total market expanded. Instead of replacing drivers, robotaxis seem to have increased overall demand for taxis, perhaps because more people prefer not to drive. Two things stand out on robotaxis from the San-Francisco experience: 1. They are 20–40% more expensive than regular taxis. 2. They are much slower. Their ultra-cautious algorithms mean they take it safe and slow, and they often get bullied by human drivers for the right of the way, slowing them down even more. So, the current robotaxi customer is someone who has a lot of money and time. Do you know many of those people? Sure, costs will fall, and software will improve. But you still won’t be able to lean in and say: “Step on it!” #ev #autonomousdriving #hype

Last week, at the Battery Day in the Netherlands, I heard a presentation by  Rob W. Postma , Managing Director of  Airbus  Netherlands. He told the story of how Airbus became a global leader by creating a European-wide collaboration that, within a few decades, managed to overtake Boeing.  Airbus didn’t try to build everything under one roof. Instead, it mastered the art of distributed manufacturing and cross-border collaboration—leveraging national strengths across Europe and binding them into one coherent whole.  The message of Mr Postma to the audience of battery professionals was simple - if we could do it, so can you. The “Moneyball & Moonshots” Perspective  An article by  Charlie Parker  on  BatteryTechOnline  put it nicely: the battery sector often swings between “moneyball” strategies—incremental efficiency gains and cost reductions—and “moonshots”—radical new chemistries and disruptive models. You can check it out here:  https://www.batterytechonline.com/battery-manufacturing/moneyball-moonshots-strategies-for-innovation-in-the-battery-industry .  What caught my attention most was the section on Contract Research Organisations (CROs) and “partners in success.” CROs in pharma showed how companies can outsource specialised R&D without losing speed or quality. Applied to batteries, that could mean new collaborative manufacturing models where specialised players share risk and scale together, rather than each company reinventing the entire value chain in-house.  This thinking is close to what I’ve been writing about over the past year: - Could a battery factory operate like a franchise? (spoiler: yes, if we design it right). - Can Europe build its industry not through copy-pasting Chinese gigafactories, but through leveraging its strengths in distributed supply chains? - Should we consider hub-and-spoke models that pool investment in cell factories, materials, and equipment across borders?  You can find these posts on my blog:  Franchise model   How to build a battery industry   Hub & Spoke Model   EU battery industry: a new hope   Why Europe Should Lead With Collaboration  Chinese and Korean champions perfected the vertically integrated gigafactory model. Europe is unlikely to beat them at their own game. But Europe has something different: a proven track record of collaborative industrial ecosystems—Airbus and ASML being prime examples.  This culture of distributed production, integration of highly specialised suppliers, and cross-border collaboration is precisely what the battery industry needs. Instead of each startup or OEM building its own silo, we can create networks of partners in success, each contributing to a shared outcome.  That could mean: - Electrode foundries serving multiple cell producers. - Shared R&D hubs acting like CROs for chemistry and process innovation. - Equipment makers embedding themselves not as vendors, but as co-developers of production lines. - A fabric of mid-sized specialised players forming a resilient European supply chain.  The (EU) Future Is Collaborative  More and more people are now questioning whether a future built solely on giant vertically integrated gigafactories is desirable—or even possible—in Europe. The alternative is not fragmentation, but orchestration: distributed but connected, specialised but aligned.  Just as Airbus showed, you can build a world leader by spreading production across many regions, if you master governance, quality, and integration.  For Europe’s battery industry, this might be the smarter “moneyball” path forward. And perhaps the only realistic “moonshot” too.  What do you think? Is the future of batteries in Europe built on one-roof gigafactories, or on collaborative industrial ecosystems? Or is there a future for Europe in the battery industry at all?

I stumbled across Martin Gallardo’s post and decided that it would be worthwhile to rewrite my comment into a full post. The consulting business has never been so good, but with the advent of AI, people were predicting that it would soon go out of business. I believe that these comments are made by people who either had a very negative experience hiring consultants (I had that experience, too) or have no idea what they are talking about. I’ve seen three very different ways in which top-tier consultants like McKinsey, BCG or Roland Berger are used inside large corporations, and AI can’t replace any of them. First: the “cover-your-ass” document Hiring McKinsey can serve as management’s indulgence—if the strategy fails, the blame is safely outsourced to a glossy consultant report. Second: the battering ram When I once developed a new strategy, my boss said: *“Let’s hire McKinsey first. The board won’t believe it if it comes from us—but they’ll approve it if McKinsey puts their logo on it.”* Sometimes, you need that external stamp of authority. Third: genuine value creation. I worked with Roland Berger for a couple of years, and they exceeded my and everyone else's expectations. They didn’t just deliver a report (they did, and it was great in itself). They embedded themselves into our business, became part of the team, established a project management and reporting mechanism for a $1B project that didn’t require our teams to fill out endless time-sheets or status reports, and at the same time provided clear visibility of the project status to the C-suite. I’ve written more about that experience here . Now, the top-tier consultants cost a fortune. McKinsey rarely bills less than $2M for any kind of work. The cheapest offers I saw from other top-tire firms were never less than $300K. If you’re a startup or scale-up, you don’t need to spend millions to get this kind of insight. I work with founders and investors to bridge the gap between technology and large-scale deployment—without the overhead of Big Three pricing. If that sounds relevant, reach out—I’d be glad to help!

This was my second Battery Day in the Netherlands. Last year I came for the first time and was surprised at how much battery innovation is happening here. This year the event was bigger, much better organised, and had over 600 participants. It also gained an international dimension — with Matthieu Hubert from ACC giving a keynote on the French sector, and a dedicated session on cooperation with China. A few takeaways: 1) Scaling Dutch startups means going international. The government recognises that startups like LeydenJar, E-Magy and LionVolt cannot scale alone in the Netherlands. They need cross-border financing, partnerships with Asian manufacturers, and access to larger markets. 2) The ASML / Airbus model was mentioned several times. The call was clear: Dutch battery companies should think beyond national borders and build supplier and manufacturing networks across Europe and beyond. With more than 20,000 new industrial customers unable to connect today to the Dutch grid, massive local scale-up is out of question. 3) Push without pull. Subsidies, grants and shared facilities provide a useful push, but almost no “pull” measures exist to create a stable demand for battery technologies in the Netherlands. That gap remains critical. 4) China's cooperation was openly debated. The consensus was “yes, there should be cooperation” — but with risk management in mind. My own question to the panel on what happens in the event of a blockade or invasion of Taiwan added a layer: diversifying suppliers and technological partnerships with Korea and Japan. 5) Recycling is everywhere in the discussion. Circularity matters, but with low volumes of retired batteries expected for at least a decade, the current attention to recycling feels like a safe distraction from harder conversations about scaling and the pain points of decarbonisation. And, of course, the best part: meeting many colleagues and making new connections — Rene Vounckx, Ashley Cooke, Kevin Brundish, Casper Peeters, Elena Orlova, Andre Schilt, Mustafa Amhaouch, Ellen Jacobs, Gunjan Kapadia, Man Yong Toh and many others, it was great to see and connect with you! Battery Day 2025 showed both the ambition and the constraints of the Dutch and European battery ecosystem. Scaling climate technologies remains the real frontier.

When I first started working on climate hardware, I thought in terms of one valley of death. You raise early money, build a prototype, and then you face the brutal task of scaling up manufacturing. If you survive that stage, you have a shot at becoming a real business. Talking to Dirk Singer, author of Sustainability in the Air, made me realise that aviation startups face not one but three valleys of death. That difference explains why progress in aviation feels so much slower than in energy, batteries, or transport. The paradox of aviation emissions Today, aviation accounts for roughly 2.5–3% of global CO₂ emissions. A small slice compared to power generation or road transport. Dirk points out that this share is set to rise to over 20% by 2050 as other sectors decarbonise faster. The paradox in aviation is that it is relatively small in size but disproportionately hard to clean up. Physics, regulation, and industry structure all conspire to slow it down. Here is how Dirk describes these three valleys and my takeaways. “Valley one is the product risk: does the technology even work in the real world?” This is not like shipping an app or even launching a new battery cell. In aviation, the baseline is safety at 30,000 feet. Certification cycles run 7–10 years, and a promising lab prototype is only the beginning of a decade-long journey. Only a handful of electric or hydrogen aircraft have flown at all, and those are small prototypes. Getting from the first flight to a certifiable aircraft is a leap few survive. “Valley two is the commercial risk: can you secure real customers, not just pilot projects?” An airline agreeing to a pilot (no pun intended) is not the same as signing a binding contract for a fleet of new aircraft. Airlines operate on tight margins, and their willingness to bet on unproven technology is low. Compare this to wind or solar, where offtake contracts are well established. In aviation, offtakes are rare and often symbolic. Universal Hydrogen managed some test flights and had great press coverage. But when the time came to turn MOUs into orders, investor confidence collapsed. The company shut down last year despite raising over $100 million. “Valley three is the scale risk: can you build and deliver reliably, under budget and at volume?” Even if you have a working aircraft and a first customer, you still face the Everest of industrialisation. Dirk used the example of Elysian, a Dutch electric aircraft startup. Their 90-seater design could take $5–8 billion to bring to market, with realistic service entry no earlier than 2033. That number dwarfs the capital needs of most climate hardware projects. And it explains why, outside of eVTOL, only five aviation startups worldwide have ever raised more than $100 million. Beyond hype Aviation is a test of patience. Investors accustomed to 5-year exits in SaaS or AI will find the timelines unbearable. And yet, if we ignore aviation, its emissions share will balloon as other sectors clean up. Dirk’s framework of the three valleys is a reminder that hype won’t carry us through. Only staged capital, credible execution, and realistic timelines will. And perhaps the hardest truth: success in aviation may not look like disruption from a startup, but gradual infiltration of sustainable fuels, small-scale electrification, and eventually, a reshaped industry. Watch the full interview with Dirk Singer here:

I’m in France for a short stay this week. By pure luck, I arrived after one wave of protests had just finished and before another was about to begin. The mood in the news has been mostly gloomy lately. But in between the headlines, I stumbled upon an Economist article that points to something France rarely gets credit for: boring business excellence. Take Danone, Orange, and Société Générale. Hardly the stuff of tech conferences, yet their share prices have risen 15%, 40%, and 100% since January—making them the best performers globally in their respective industries. Mid-sized French firms? The MSCI index tracking them is up 15% this year, triple the CAC 40 and even outpacing the NASDAQ, despite all the AI hype. Then there are the industrial stalwarts—EDF, Veolia, Vinci, Schneider Electric, Saint-Gobain, and Legrand. They're not flashy, but collectively, they’ve been growing, making profits, and leading their industries globally since 2019—the quiet compounding at its best. And for those who prefer something with a shinier label: the only European AI startup with real global visibility, Mistral, is Paris-based. So while France struggles with protests and political malaise, its “dull” companies are quietly powering ahead. Sometimes, boring is the winning strategy. À bientôt!