I loved the iPad when it came out. The idea of keyless entry, handwriting, and replacing a laptop felt like the future. More than a decade later, my iPads are gathering dust. My MacBook still handles 80% of the work (the rest is on the iPhone). I even bought a keyboard and mouse to lift the MacBook for better posture. The iPad looked like the future then. It didn’t materialise.  It feels to me that the car industry is going through a similar phase with the “software-defined vehicle.” But this time it’s not Apple, it's China setting the pace.  I read an article by  Dr. Gabriel Seiberth  on the hidden costs of the Chinese automotive industry, and then comments from several respected automotive experts like  Hakan DOGU  and  Michael Sura .  I saw two worlds: one obsessed with touchscreens, OTA updates and the breakneck speed of Chinese automotive industry growth. The other is more sceptical, highlighting unsustainable business models, government oversight and (so far) limited geographical penetration. There are tons of insights both in the article and in the comments and the linked articles. Check it out!  For me, that takeaway from the discussion and my own experiences is that touchscreens and voice controls are like iPads (which they are) - cool, nice to have, but ultimately useless.  #Batteries  are a different matter.  China’s real strength in EVs isn’t WeChat integration or going from idea to vehicle in three years. It’s in batteries, their supply chain, and manufacturing discipline. Take that away, and no hyperscreen will save the Chinese automakers. And that’s the fundamental weakness of Western car makers. Until they master batteries and their supply chain, China will dominate global  #EV  markets, regardless of whether knobs or voice commands regulate your cockpit temperature.

Most founders think of the supply chain as something that starts after the prototype works. In FOAK projects, that’s already too late. Your supply chain starts the moment you begin sketching your pilot. If you wait until things work to call suppliers, you’ll be fighting lead times instead of managing them. This post expands on my earlier FOAK Supply Chain Framework . Here are five steps to build your FOAK supply chain before you need it 👇 1️⃣ Start planning your FOAK supply chain before your pilot SunFolding learned this the hard way — they hired a COO after landing their first large solar project. By then, their supply chain was already locked and under-prepared. Lead times don’t shrink because you’re in a hurry. If a vendor needs nine months to get the part you need, you will wait nine months. When you start designing your pilot, map your supply dependencies: * Lead times & origin countries * Material specs & documentation * Backup vendors & regulatory constraints You don’t need to list every nut and bolt — focus on the few key items that won’t change between pilot, demo, and FOAK. And start talking to suppliers while your pilot is still on paper. You’re not asking for quotes yet — you’re stress-testing your assumptions. 2️⃣ Show suppliers the money (or at least the commitments) Suppliers don’t worry about your technology — they worry about getting paid. Even when I represented Rosatom — a state giant — some suppliers still wanted to see project approvals before committing. For startups, investment commitments speak louder than promises. If you’ve secured funding for a pilot or demo, make it known. A credible investor or corporate backer boosts your standing. Even better if that backer could become a customer for your supplier — they’ll see you as a gateway, not a gamble. 3️⃣ Secure customer commitments early Nothing calms suppliers like a real buyer at the end of the chain. When we built a wind-turbine supply chain in Russia, we had 660 MW of projects with guaranteed payments. That 10-year visibility changed everything. Suppliers invested in specialised presses and moulds just to serve us. Your startup may not have that scale, but the principle is the same. MOUs are nice. Conditional offtakes or long-term terms of reference are better. The harder and longer the customer commitment, the easier your supplier conversations. 4️⃣ Choose the right kind of suppliers Big name suppliers bring credibility and support — but they move slowly, negotiate hard, and prioritise their largest clients when things get tight. Smaller or mid-size suppliers move faster, adapt more easily, and often love being part of something new. They might even promote your partnership to others. Of course, that comes with risk. CustomCells survived the collapse of Lilium, but it was a close call. If your supplier is also a startup, make sure they can survive your FOAK cycle. 5️⃣ Build trust and professionalise procurement When your shipment is stuck in a port, you want your supplier to pick up the phone and care. That doesn’t come from contracts — it comes from trust. Suppliers judge you by your RFQs, contracts, and payment discipline. A vague order process or late payment pushes you to the bottom of the list — or adds a “startup premium.” Hire at least one person who speaks both “startup” and “procurement.” And remember: trust is built in the small things — answering fast, checking quality before shipment, and being transparent about delays. Bottom line A FOAK supply chain isn’t a logistics problem. It’s a relationship problem under pressure. Start early. Show you’re credible. Bring customers and suppliers into your journey before the first purchase order. Because once you hit the FOAK phase, your scarcest resources will be time and trust. 💬 What was the hardest part of building your own supply chain — lead times, contracts, or trust? #FOAK #Scaleup #Cleantech #SupplyChain #ClimateTech #HardwareStartups

It’s hard to get suppliers to work with your startup. FOAK projects are usually the worst type of customer for suppliers: No track record → you have to build trust from scratch. No certainty → you can’t really guarantee your product will work or that your customer will pay you. No stability → your bill of materials will change as you tweak your design and process. From a supplier’s perspective, why bother talking to you at all? And yet, many do. Smaller suppliers may struggle to win large, predictable contracts and are willing to take a bet on you. Big suppliers might see your FOAK as a showcase for entering a new market. All of them need to hit sales targets—sometimes risk is part of the job. The real questions are: how do you approach them? What should you have ready? What risks should you watch out for? And how do you get the best terms? That’s where my five-step FOAK supply chain setup framework comes in: Start mapping suppliers before your pilot. Secure investment commitments. Secure customer commitments (off-takes are gold). Have a clear FOAK execution plan. Reach out—start with small/medium suppliers, don’t overlook used equipment suppliers. FOAK supply chains are messy, but they can be built systematically. And if you do it right, suppliers can become your biggest allies.

Adapt or mitigate? The climate crisis is unfolding very slowly, not like wars or the rise of AI. Having missed the target of keeping the global temperature rise under 1.5 °C, more voices are talking about investing in climate adaptation technologies. After all, if we cannot stop climate change, then we should adapt to it, so it is prudent to spend more on adaptation, rather than mitigation technologies. The argument misses the fact that mitigation and adaptation don’t actually compete for the same pool of capital. They need different kinds. Mitigation — solar, wind, heat pumps, EVs — is now mature and de-risked. It fits the profile of banks, infra funds, and pension investors: long-term, asset-heavy, and predictable. Adaptation, on the other hand, is still in its early innings. Climate-resilient crops, water reuse—all these require high-risk, patient capital—the kind that comes from angels, VCs, governments, and impact funds. From where I stand, the real fight isn’t between mitigation and adaptation — it’s between money going to AI and wars on one side, and climate on the other. So the capital divide is not the problem. The attention divide is. We’re betting big on AI models that write poetry and war machines that destroy cities — and hoping that someone else will build the seawalls and redesign the power grid. So, when you look at the next climate mitigation or adaptation technology, be sure to check out my framework for understanding whether a climate tech is worth investing in, from the climate perspective.

At VDS 2025, I joined a panel on First-of-a-Kind (FOAK) projects — that messy moment when a technology leaves the lab and enters the real world. The panel had three people, representing each side of a FOAK. First, and foremost, the investors view was delivered by Mirjam Terhorst, partner at Move Energy. Second, the engineering and technical side of a FOAK was represented by Carland Lopez, CTO of Aeroborn, And third was me, representing the bridge builder or consigliere — working on the business models, team structures, and partnerships that make FOAKs succeed. Our panel was also a first-of-a-kind panel at VDS, where software projects usually take the main stage. Just before our panel, we had a panel on AI adoption in large corporations, which was as boring as it was crowded. Our panel was precisely the opposite - a sharp discussion with plenty of free seats. Which kind of illustrated the point that FOAKs are unglamorous and lonely! We covered what FOAKs are and why they are difficult for investors, engineers, and managers. We also discussed how to streamline FOAK financing by reducing risks and getting creative with funding structures. Laurent-Frederic Lohmann smoothly guided us through the panel and then dropped a bomb question, which he had kept quiet about during our prep session - what is the one thing the EU should do to speed up FOAKs in Europe? My answer - copy and paste the U.S. DOE Loan Programs Office—Large-scale, non-dilutive loans that back early deployments. FOAK discussions are a recent feature of climate startup conferences. I only wish that there would be more of them and that they would focus not only on the most fascinating subject of financing FOAKs, but on a more critical one - the execution of a FOAK project. Because we need to learn to FOAK — and FOAK fast.

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