So welcome to the j who garcia podcast, as i see here - you're um you're from advanced power vehicles in mexico right. Why don't you tell us a little bit about what you do there? Yes, hi! Thank you for inviting me to show alright. Thank you, nice to be here, yeah. Well, the idea of this project company, whatever you want to call it, is to accelerate the transition into electric vehicles here in mexico, yeah and obviously the the technologies is expensive, especially since it's always been expensive and still is expensive.

So i just thought: okay, maybe a way to accelerate. This is with the conversions. You know, you're very familiar with that yeah and that's how the the idea started off of the project. Okay, so yeah.

Definitely i mean it's expensive, no matter where you are uh here. In the states is quite a bit of expensive right, the battery technology is really really expensive, and so for other countries, it's probably even more expensive. I want to say right because at least here we have a lot of access to secondhand batteries right and that's what we've been using. I don't know what what are you using over there and which part of mexico are you established, yeah? Okay, i'm in guadalajara, jalisco, which is close to the to the pacific, is the second largest or more important city in the country and well.

The thing here i mean in mexico, even though we were next to the states all we're, always like 10 years behind in technology, uh yeah, like tesla, it came 10 years after it was founded, tesla opened in mexico in 2017.. Officially, you know there were people that imported their cars, but there was no no, no officially here so so we're always 10 years behind. I thought. Okay, that's gon na be the same with with electric vehicles.

I actually i tried to to bring tesla uh when they were just starting. I contacted them like in 2007, when i heard about it. I was like. Oh, my god.

This is so great. I wan na have a dealership for of teslas, but then i i learned that that was not the not the way they were doing business, so i couldn't bring it to mexico, yeah yeah, they're kind of anti-dealerships yeah, and they they were starting right. It was uh. It took a little while for them to get in 2007, i mean that's uh.

They was that the roadster area that was pre-roasted area yeah, so exactly with the roaster yeah yeah, and that was that was played with a lot of delays and yeah. It would have been. Maybe it was a good thing that you didn't get involved. They almost didn't make it because of that thing, so you might have suffered the same or that faith down there right.

Well, i was already into into the i of electric vehicles back then, when i was a kid i had these professional radio control cars, so i was already familiar with electric vehicles, obviously not in that size. That's just a toy, but i was like, like uh like used to that and then when i was in college in the last year, i worked on the project uh the university, which i studied this, which is a technological monterey. They brought this uh project to work with from an engineer. Actually he was from from malay from burbank and he had developed these flywheels to store energy.

Oh yeah uh. I don't know if you're familiar with the concept of the flywheels yeah, so they developed that for for a car actually really 1992. yeah 1982 kevin costner was the the founder of that company one one of the founders investors of that company of the project, but equally They couldn't sell it to the big three back, then yeah. Actually, that system ended up in satellites for nasa yeah.

That makes sense in satellites, because a spinning, disk or spinning mask there's a gyroscope right which is good for a satellite, maybe not for a car, because if you want to turn, then the car's not going to want to turn, you know it's going to do some Weird things with the, but i see that you can save energy by spinning a mass really fast, and then it conserves the energy there for quite a bit. There's large uh grid scale spinning discs right and they that's how they save energy to to handle the inrush, or you know, uh peaks or whatever you know they buff they're, like buffers yeah yeah. The thing is, if you compare a flywheel even in in the 90s, with lead acid battery, the flywheel was way superior, really wow. Okay, so the energy density was higher yeah the energy density.

They could have like 20 000 cycles, wow um lighter smaller, i mean without the chemical, the chemicals yeah. It was a very good idea and - and they wanted to put this in cars like obviously in pairs rotating contrary, so you can cancel them. Oh, so you can cancel the forces in okay, so the thing is they couldn't do it, the the company came down, they couldn't sell it, they ended up selling to two satellites, but it was not the big product they they they thought. So i met them in 2004 and i kept thinking of this, like, oh, my god.

This is a good idea. We could do this and i thought like maybe we could do this in mexico, because regulations is different, not to say a little bit less. So i was trying to find investors for for this for for some time uh, but then i contact these guys, which is uh well. The engineer was jack uh javitr um, but they didn't want to work on this anymore.

They had other projects, but then formula one came hybrid, like in 2009, and one of the teams incorporated the flywheel, which was was built by a british company and then the team, which is williams, williams racing. They brought the idea in-house and started developing to commercialize the flywheels for vehicles. So when i heard of this, i contacted them like in 2012 with the idea of bringing this technology to mexico as a distribution, and i told them about the potential of customers. I had already contacted some possible customers.

There are companies here that have fleets of 30 000 40 000 vehicles yeah and one of those companies was already converting uh small small believable trucks uh. So they were like yeah yeah. That's a pretty good idea. So, let's, let's do it, but we're we're uh, we're developing here in england, so there's no way no no case of developing two sides, parts of the world - so so we'll finish here once it's a product, we'll talk about it.

So after two years, they finally uh told me like okay, it's a product, but then they sold all the technology and the project to another big company and i lost track, and i was kind of frustrated like oh, my god. I was waiting for some years. I contacted this, this new company that got the technology and they said uh, so they actually gave me numbers, and i also always had in mind that the best way to start electric vehicles was with the heavy ones, because the return of investment would be better because You burn more fuel with heavy vehicles, so that's what cash right so the more cash you save the faster you can pay for for your technology. So i was not afraid of making big electric vehicles on on the contrary of the market.

That was kind of doing. Only a small light vehicles right yeah and this this company actually developed the the flywheel system, which was some kind of like, like a hybrid like uh uh when, with the braking uh, getting all the energy from the braking and then uh using it for the acceleration. After the bus stop and it will help - and actually i think the savings was somewhere around 30 35 - oh okay, so you still have an engine, a combustion engine on board and then you're using some of that energy recapturing and putting on the spinning wheel, yeah. The thing is: that's: when batteries were like two thousand five thousand per kilowatt hour, you know yeah yeah yeah, so i you wanted to avoid bad batteries and back then i was also enemy of batteries, because i just thought this flywheel was the thing.

Eight wonder of the world, so what kind of like just to put it in perspective? What kind of energy density we're talking about here like and for how long like how much yeah? How much can you store in one of these spinning discs because they got to be like not huge right, i mean, i guess, for a bus. It could be kind of big. What's the size of roughly size, energy, they're kind of small um, i i don't know how to relate it to something physical but um. I don't know - maybe this this wine - oh really, maybe less than a foot or less than yeah, like a foot tall, maybe a little bit more wow.

Okay, i mean you can barry, you can vary the design with the size. You know um and what's the yield like, can you store a kilowatt hour worth of energy in there and for how long? Because it's got to spin and then it starts diminishing right, but it's a way to store energy for a time a period of time. I just don't know how much that time is the cool thing about this technology. Is that um first yeah yeah you can store energy, but you can get it.

You can put it in and get it back out really fast. Yeah, like you, can have c rates of 50 20 50. I mean because um there's um, it depends on how fast you can slow the disc. You know yeah with with the model that is also a generator so yeah, so you can have very good series um, which back then with lithium-ion batteries.

You couldn't right, so you can put these uh flywheels with these uh cylinders in series in parallel and get all the power you wanted. It would depend on on the project now how much power you wanted to have these guys the the fly was they were producing. I think there was somewhere around like kilo a kilowatt hour per flywheel, so you would have maybe like three or four for for a bus just to have enough energy like for for reaching and when braking acceleration, and they would get up to speed by a small Motor you know that was generating electricity, a small on-board generator right, yes, okay, yeah, so that makes sense yeah you use a small engine with a small generator that gets the things up spinning. So that means you can just hop in this vehicle and take off.

You have to power the the the spinning discs right uh until they were up to speed and they had the energy stored there, and then you probably would take off and and - and there was probably a lot of energy management, as you were, driving around that the System would have to do to keep those charged. Yes, yes, it worked pretty good in formula one cars, really, that's so crazy and i never knew that they were already in racing cars. Yeah i mean racing cars you'd have to it's high performance. It's not just the works, it has to work really well right, exactly yeah and he has to be safe, wow, that's crazy, okay, yeah! So so we i tried to bring this technology to here.

Uh and i already had contact with a brt company that has the public transport service here in mexico, which they have uh 18 meter buses. 30 ton uh. I think, that's like 60 000 pounds, 60 000 pounds yep yeah, somewhere around there uh, which is this uh. It was very similar to the product they had in the state in england, which was like for the double decker buses.

You know, so i i contacted the public transport company, we analyzed the numbers and they were like yeah. It sounds good, but the return of investment is not right there. The thing is back, then, that was 2012 no 14 diesel prices in mexico were kind of cheap yeah, so the payback was not that good, so they i couldn't get them to to be interested in the project. So i got frustrated and i was like: oh my god, i've been waiting for this like two years at least or maybe even more and the technology doesn't fit to the problems we have here in mexico.

So i just thought i'm gon na make my own technology or my own solution right. So i look for for funding. I got a funding from the national science. I don't know how to translate the name.

It's the the the council for national signing, something like that. Uh i got the first round of funding, so i started to work on a conversion project for buses for buses: okay, with batteries yeah. When i started i wanted to to determine which was going to be the better way of doing it right. So i started uh working on the numbers and then i realized like okay.

This flywheel solution works great, but it's a hybrid right. It's a hybrid! It's a hybrid uh. I want it to be a hundred percent electric, but then uh you will need a lot of flywheels and and then i started back. Then i had batteries.

They were heavy bulky, expensive um, not that powerful right, yeah uh, especially real expensive. So i was trying to build batteries, but then i did some research and i found some batteries that were kind of there with the tower you know. So i said, okay and - and i saw all these projects in no, no, no, no in the states but like in china and everything of these buses like the proterra bus, huge buses with huge batteries, uh that could last all day long, but they cost like a Million dollars that would be impossible to pay uh here. So i said: okay, that's another way to go.

You don't you, don't really need a vehicle that has all day long range if you are going in a loop 10 times per day, you're going around 13 times per day, so you can do some fast charging um in some of those turns uh. So i was looking okay, let's have a small battery with that can be powerful enough to provide the acceleration for the heavy bus and then we'll do some some fast charging. Maybe if it's it has to be every every lap. I don't know so that that was the the main concept of the break and uh and yeah.

We built the boss, the first stage of the boss. We were able to convert it in six months after we like got the bus and started the work and from there we started testing developing. Obviously, the technology was too early for for here for mexico and then another project came to the door, which is the electric carriage electric carriage and we got a little distracted with that. But that's a really good story: wow yeah, so the cat there's the horse-drawn carriage right like uh, like we see in new york city and the central park, for example.

Yes, okay! Yes, so the thing is, we were developing uh, the electric bus and we were doing demonstrations to to customers. We took it to mexico. City did a lot of demonstrations there, but obviously, even though it was like half the price of what a new boss would cost um, it was still expensive, right and and people didn't trust the electric technology yet and then the the the elections here was very, very Close so every politician starts thinking about that and stop thinking about projects you know so i was like. Oh my god.

This is. This is gon na this project is gon na lose uh momentum because we're some months into into election year uh. What we're gon na do, and then i heard on the on the news uh, because here in guadalajara we have the horizon carriages 100 years ago. As a tourist attraction, i mean - and i heard on the news that they wanted to put a mortar watering to them, because uh using courses was not civilized in a 21st century and blah blah blah all those things uh which i'm sure.

Actually, that happened the same way in new york and some other places. So when i heard this, i was like what what they're gon na do. They're gon na put a two uh two strokes engine motorcycle engine into these things and yes, it's gon na sound terrible. The vibration, the smell they're gon na avoid experience uh.

So i i reached the city and i said you know i can do this electric and it's gon na look better. It's gon na keep the the feel of of a nice soft ride that the horse provides, but without the horse. So the locked idea obviously did help that i had an electric bus. So then you, okay, you did that you can.

You can do this obviously and uh, so we started working on this project uh and but they only gave us four months to have it ready, oh wow, and on the beginning the first idea was: okay: let's convert the old ones, so i went downtown to see The old ones i was like, oh my god, no, you cannot convert it. Okay, all of them were different um different sizes, different shapes well, obviously, all of them with uh made out of wood, the old way of a horizon carriage yeah. So i thought, okay, no! We're going to have to make a new one, and then i started analyzing, i'm into some designer, so so i know how to go from idea to to a product. So i thought: okay, cars are the the grandsons of carriages yeah.

The first car was a horse run carriage with an internal combustion uh and even there's there's proof that electric cars were are almost uh as old as any in internal combustion. Aren't they, i think, they're older, i think the first cars there were some that were earlier. Well, i don't know, maybe not uh, but yeah at the. I think.

At the same time, they were starting right at the before the turn of the century. Yeah, definitely yeah exactly exactly in the late 1890s yeah somewhere somewhere there. So i started analyzing. I called the history and uh some years before this, like in 2015, i went to detroit and i had the opportunity to go into for into the fore museum, which is really cool and obviously there you can see all the evolution of cars, yeah and - and i Started thinking about that like okay, so i have to make this electric electric carriage as a as a today car.

You know, so i'm not gon na use wood anymore. It's gon na be all steel, uh and and more like, like a tourist product because they used to do the carriages like they were doing them 150 years ago, with the same traditions and techniques. I was like yeah, that's good, like for restoration, but that's not a a tourist product, but you know like, like the footsteps were really small and it had on one. So you had to jump like two feet to reach the step and another two feet to reach.

The the inside of the carriage and that was dangerous, difficult, so uh, we redesigned uh everything uh and we built the carriage in in four months. We went from project to prototype and it was presented to the city and it was a huge thing. I mean, i just couldn't believe the boom it was in in media and not even in mexico. Even uh.

There were many um news from other countries that replied, because there are a lot of uh original carriers in many cities around the world. You can have them in in melbourne, in australia, in canada, everywhere yeah and in each city. They have these uh advocate groups that different horses. Well, i think so.

Yeah things are changing right. Cities are becoming more congested, they're becoming more dangerous. Yeah a horse doesn't fit in the middle of a city, it's uh. I guess it could be kind of cruel to have this horse working all day in the middle of all that stuff, right, uh, breathing all the fumes.

You know it's like it's dangerous for us. I mean it's also for the horse, so yeah they're they're facing a lot of uh a lot of concerns and a lot of people that don't want to see those horses out uh working all day, right, yeah, so they're facing the same challenges around the world. Yeah. Yes, actually these things, the same thing happened in new york, uh like in 2012, and actually somebody built a a big electric vehicle that looked like more like a model teeth, oh yeah uh, and they had this uh like public boating and people wanted to keep the Horses, but the thing in new york is different because you have the cube central part.

Yeah central park is like a little island where you you're shielded from just the chaos, that's happening in the rest of the city uh. So i guess maybe it's like a different thing: yeah yeah in some of the other cities. They they go through the through the streets next to the buses and to the trucks and to the cars and so yeah. It's it's complicated, so we thought okay yeah.

This is the best solution you can have an electric forceless carriage yeah. The future is coming. Finally, it's more like going back to the future right. Yes, oh wow, okay, so that had good results.

Did they uh? Did it get past uh past the point of the one, the one uh one that you built, that it was like a prototype? Yes, yes, there are already 16., oh wow, okay on the streets going every day, no way, okay, yeah yeah - and it's been. It's been a great project um this all the owners are really happy. Just imagine some of the of the owners. Well yeah.

There are 50 54 carriages here here in the city, okay, uh. I think there were like 36 owners, 100 drivers, some of them owners, but some of them being more like employees, but some of the on the drivers of the horses of the horse run carriages. They didn't know how to drive okay, because the horse does all the job. It's like an autonomous vehicle yeah i mean it has a brain and it makes decisions.

Yeah yeah. They learn to see when the car in front stops and they stop. I mean yeah. Some of them can even see like like, like the stop light, and they will stop they're.

Probably they are smart yeah, so so so so the the driver he's more like looking backwards talking to the to the people and telling them the story of the city. Like oh, this is the old building from the uh 18th century and all that yeah. So there were a lot of things to change some of them needed to learn how to drive. Obviously, none of them knew anything about electric vehicles, so we have to teach them like at least the basics and uh.

But yes, it's been a very successful successful project and we're looking forward to replicating this. In some other places, yeah man, i'm gon na - have to go check it out. Yeah uh, i just had my brother - was just in guadalajara um. Not too long ago.

He went with friends to visit there and had i known, i would send them out there to be my reporter um. Can we talk a little bit about the the technology what you end up using on those like, so they have lithium batteries. Obviously, probably oh, hopefully not i mean, hopefully they had lithium batteries. No, the problem was the budget.

Ah, okay yeah. They gave us a budget for for the vehicle uh. So we have to put leverage batteries. Okay, but those are low.

Speed. They'll do they'll do fine because they're not they're, not high performance vehicles, they don't probably don't have to have long distance traveled right like so. The range doesn't require and then the weight, because you're traveling at a low rate of speed. It doesn't do as big of a and you're probably on streets or are flat you're, probably not going up and down too much, probably right, yeah yeah, it's more like a golf cart.

Yes, that strolls right some of the ghost cars people go fast. They want to get to the next hole, but this is kind of a strolling around the city. Uh yeah. That's that's a good! So then wha.

How big of the motors are you using? Are you using dc motors or ac motors? No, no we're using ac motors, say: 7.5 kilowatt uh model; okay, yeah yeah; yes, a 72 volt system, 72 volt system. There you go yeah. So the thing it has a lot of power of torque because you have a 46 inch wheel, yeah, okay and you don't need top speed. So you could have a lot of torque yeah yeah yeah.

You need a lot of torque and this these things are big. I mean i mean seven and a half kilowatt is not nothing to laugh about. That's that's! 10. 12 horsepower.

That's almost 12 horsepower 10 about 10 horsepower. Okay, so the carriage has one horsepower. But yes, the original, so you're you're increasing the power output by my seven folder. That's crazy, yeah um! You know um! I i don't know if you know this, but at least here in the states we have all this, like.

I was saying in the beginning of this that we have all these uh, discarded batteries, lithium batteries, uh and there's a huge industry, that's starting to form because of it. So i don't know if it's happening in mexico, but like there's these companies that dumped a bunch of these scooters into the cities right and so for some reason or another. You know. Sometimes cities will outlaw them, and so then a huge pile of these will go to the recycler they're like okay.

We don't need them here. For some reason it doesn't make sense for the companies to change them or rebrand them or whatever you know, or some of the companies uh are getting out of that business. So then they end up selling the division to somebody else and then all of these scooters that are on the streets are branded the wrong color or whatever you know so then they end up going by the thousands. Tens of thousands of these uh scooters end up at the recyclers, and so people like me are buying those batteries and we're buying the motors and buying stuff.

So right now, for example, i have some batteries here that are 36 volts and i think they have a hundred uh. I was doing the i was. I was doing some forensic work on the bms's and they have a hundred volt uh mosfets, which beans i haven't tested it yet, but that's the next test that i'm doing, i think you can use two of them in series for 72 volts right and so those I'm selling them at about a hundred 120 dollars a kilowatt hour which is impressive, lead acid battery prices for - and these are very, these are really good. These are panasonic ncr, 18650 dd cells right.

So these are like basically, what's on a tesla right tesla. It re-engineered that one a little bit more and now they're coming up with their own sales, but up until the production that just recently stopped. I think that, like this week, the model s x, uh versions, variants of their cars, just stop because they're going to retool and they're going to probably change the battery to the next generation, but up until like last week, they're using that same 18650. That is pretty much the panasonic bd or a couple other i mean the specs are almost the same right.

They have just slight variations of it um, and so that's where we're at i'm like thinking like man. That would be great because again that the performance metrics and the range and speed and stuff for something like that would be great for these, and it wouldn't cost a lot uh to put one of those. What's what's the size of the battery that you ended up putting in each carriage uh, were you seeing nine eight volt batteries, which are what let's do the math here uh so they're like? What's the size of the batteries like a hundred amp hours? Oh this! Oh okay, you mean that uh, it's like a 12 kilobat 12 kilowatt hour: oh okay, 12 kilowatt, okay, so yeah that would be about 24 of these right um and it would actually you need less, because the last battery is not that efficient. Oh that's right! You could only use half of it yeah or maybe a little bit more, maybe like eight ten something somewhere there.

It would be great wow yeah and these could put out well, but you would still need well. You never see that those seven kilowatt, um power output right i mean they, don't use that much. I think they or do they sometimes because yeah sometimes the vehicle is for eight people. Okay, so they load it up so yeah.

So it's it's like uh. I think almost like 3 000 pounds, okay, wow, okay, so so some, so you probably would need uh, seven kilowatts. So let's say seven kilowatt is at 73 at 75. It's only 2 volts right 72 volts times.

I don't know 72 volts times. What would it be? Like 7 000 watts, whoa, no really no it'd be divided right, divided into 72 volts yeah, so you're looking at about a hundred amps, yes, uh, that's what the little power so 100 amps! These batteries could do 25 amps. So you need four. So you need eight of them as little as eight of them, and that would be about four kilowatt hours worth of yeah and you're.

Looking about you're looking about 400 worth of batteries, yeah, so here's the thing if you're doing more, you should probably look into something like that, because here's the thing i i had a large shipment of these that were in mexico city, these those e-bikes, the city, bikes, Uh by uber right and they they commissioned the whole thing and they were going to send them and we were discussing like if we were going to bring them to the states, because that's an extra expense - and i thought no. We should keep these in mexico they're over there. Obviously people could use them over there, but the weird thing is that they disappeared, so there's a little there's, some shady dealings going on down there in the uber people right and the representatives and stuff and they disappeared. Like i mean it was like 2 000 packs uh, so it's quite a bit of battery.

It was quite a bit of battery, and so those are probably in the marketplace somewhere out there. I don't know someone kept them, someone is using them, someone is selling them. Probably uh, hopefully they're doing something good with them, because at the very least, what we're trying to do is just keep the stuff from going to the trash or going to be recycled. I mean these are battery packs that are still have years years of life right.

Many many cycles in them, and so they should be used for something they should be repurposed uh and something like this would be great right. So there's keep an eye on that because there there's definitely an industry in mexico also that and not only that now uh here. What we're doing is we're taking batteries from from teslas we're taking batteries from uh general motor vehicles. Uh, bmw has there's all kinds of stuff we're taking batteries from modems.

You know uh communications. You know that each one has like little packs and we're teaching people how to rip them apart and take the batteries and, and so that i think, that's the thing that is going to trickle down to mexico too, because you guys are basically consuming the same technologies. Just a little bit later, but it's it's reaching there right, and so you guys are going to go to the same thing. That's happening here like we're.

Having so many multiple streams of these batteries in large quantities coming in, that are very, very useful um and we can get them on. You know less than a hundred dollars a kilowatt hour most a lot of the times. So that's great. I think that that can work great for this kind of of projects, because yeah uh yeah these guys can really use uh because they already some of them.

They already changed the batteries. Oh really uh-huh, yeah yeah, because they use all day right all day. Every day they do about an average of 20 miles per day 20 miles per day yeah some days they will do the full 30 miles. That is the range of the vehicle uh.

They never do more than that um some days. They don't have any rides, especially this year, like yeah in this this season they are, they are full, i mean they, they drained the battery all the way down. I was like they didn't. Do that remember not to do that? Oh because they parked you're, saying you're not using the vehicle? No, no.

I mean like in these these holidays. They have so much more really, oh no way. I would think that this this pandemic would keep people from being outside and trying to ride around and stuff. Well uh yeah.

During the pandemic they got shut down. Actually, oh, okay! I guess i didn't realize we're going through that again here, like major major lockdowns happening here in the states right, and so i thought the same thing might have been happening over there. So i thought, like they're, probably hurting right now, but it doesn't seem. Maybe that's the case yeah they are, they are.

They just gave them like a chance during these days, because some people they just want to go out. Yes, we all want to go out. We'll go hang out with to be out there because well you're in a vehicle, it's in the open air, it's open yeah! This is your mask, yeah, sunlight. If the sunlight's there it's killing all those germs, it's not! You know.

It has no windows. There's no windows! There you go: that's not the safest way that you can commute with someone exactly safer than your car. Definitely uh. If you're gon na have any strangers, you know uh next to you, but uh wow.

That's pretty interesting yeah! I never thought about that. But there's definitely yeah, there's gon na be more and more electrification happening in our cities and, of course it has to go even into those things. I think i wonder what they think about the horses, because some of these guys used to own horses right. Do you think they still owe them or the day that they get rid of them? Some of them kept their horses because they love them.

You know, like part of the family, yeah yeah, some of them were able to keep to keep them some of them. Some of the horses got retired like for uh ranch yeah, because that was kind of kind of the deal like the horses were not going to be sacrificed, but they were going to send to some place yeah. They could enjoy uh. Most of them kept their horses because they do like horses but having a horse.

It's complicated. You know because most of these people they live like five ten miles from downtown from the city, so yeah they have to come down like an hour right in the morning. Then an hour he has to commute yeah yeah. They had to commute at night uh and still take care of the horse, so they would spend like three four hours.

Just in that part of the business you know going back and forth and taking her to taking care of the care of the horse, but now with the project uh what they did is there are some new buildings downtown in the city, which is called uh. I can remember the name, but this is like, like a hub for for for digital companies. Okay, like big companies, like i think, even even pixar, was sitting in the small office there, because has a lot of relation with silicon valley actually is called the the latin silicon. Many companies from from the silicon valley have a factory here or something so they have.

These nice buildings downtown, and they have this big parking lot. So the carriages, the the electric carriages are there. So now they don't have to do all this traveling and they don't have to take care of horse and they don't spend on medicines. They don't spend off their on their veterinarian yeah, they can work whenever they want.

So some of them even take turns like the carriage can be out there like 12 15 hours, and they just shift the driver. You cannot do that with a horse. Yeah. The horse needs a break, he needs to go eat, he needs to take a dump.

You know some days, they don't feel like working yeah yeah and they could just drop dead. Also, they do drop dead. I've seen pictures of dead horses in the city streets. You know, because whatever i mean they're like us right heart attack, they get stroke, they freak out for no reason some days uh that has happened.

Yes, yeah yeah, so yeah. No, definitely it's a. I think it's a better way to do. Do that thing.

I think uh also. The other thing that i remember from the horse thing was that they fart a lot. They do meet emissions, lots of them. Yes and uh.

People in the in the back are usually the ones that are uh exposed to those. It's probably not very pleasant, and then they crap all over the place right, and so i think that stays in the streets uh and whatever it's not that it's not the worst thing, but you know, but it's probably kind of unsightly. I guess well there's this. This there's this story, and actually it was in one of in a chapter from this uh series.

Uh silicon valley - i don't know i've seen it no, but people in the 1800s hundreds they were worried uh because they knew the growth cities were taking. Cities like london, like new york, paris, and they they they knew like what's gon na happen in 50 years, we're gon na have so many carriages, and so many horses that the streets are gon na be covered with with manure. You know yes, and that was an issue that was a problem that was a problem. They were facing yeah and then the car came and the problem disappeared and they were everybody was like, oh yeah, so now we don't have the probe.

They never thought that it was a worse problem, probably because the emissions are invisible. They're, they're, harmful they're, killing people they're, giving us illnesses, uh, they're kind of destroying the planet. Yeah, it's uh, but it's invisible! You don't see it. It's like it just floats away right.

I don't know i'd probably say we probably would have been better if the streets were full of manure. We might have been able to find something useful to do with that. You know yeah, it's such a crazy thing, because i know i don't know this happened in mexico too, but here in the states there was a lot of cities that eventually around that time, they transitioned to electric and they had the electric trolleys uh all over the City like in san francisco, you could still go there and they still have those cable systems and the electric trolleys are around, and i know this used to be the thing here in los angeles, too right, but then eventually uh companies. You know people were like, i think it was kind of like a coup they kind of, took over and bought those things, and they they bought some politicians to get legislation into place.

That would change them and then eventually they they wanted. To put you know: uh regular gas, powered or or not gas power, uh diesel power, uh yeah, you know buses into the streets because then there was no cables. No, no! You know. No manure no cables only good stuff right, only fumes, probably all the sun from the thing but yeah, i'm like the the yeah.

I don't know how that transition. We we went from okay to better to to really bad or worse, you know um and then now we have to kind of change that back and go back to where we were at almost at the early in the in the turn of the century. Here there was electric trolleys and electric buses, you know, and we have to go back to that now again yeah and that's the best way to to to have transport in the cities and that's what we were trying to promote here in mexico and and this electrical Chat was gon na uh, be a good project because it would uh put people in close contact with electric vehicles, yeah yeah, so you have plans to expand uh uh outside of your your town and do those and, like i said, there's places almost every major metropolitan Area has those right, yes, uh! Well, we people from from new york from philadelphia from from from many other cities, have come to see the caribbeans wow, okay, uh and we've been in talks. But then the pandemic came yeah kind of put a wrench in the whole thing yeah, so hopefully uh next year is going to be a great year.

For for that point, oh yeah, i think you will be able to find uh how to use how to introduce lithium into those too, because then it's gon na be a much much better system too. That's gon na last forever because imagine you put a you put two of those packs from a tesla. Uh you'll have to figure out how to run on 48 volts 42 volts, but you'll have 10 kilowatt hours. And this and it's going to be so simple to install them.

It's like two blocks. You know some little battery management system and then you're done and then you got like and you got a thousand cycles in there right. So those will be good for the next 25 years or something you know, kind of thing. That would be great yeah and it's going to be possible because now there's more tesla's going down to mexico, so uh every time that one wrecks you got to be there and just to scoop up the batteries.

Yes, grab some seats and now, by the way, and now you can get batteries from china that are not super expensive, uber expensive too. So, there's a lot of there's a lot of choices. I know uh and uh. The lithium-ion phosphate, for example, those that uh they're super safe, super long, lasting and now they're dense too, so you don't have to have a giant battery like they used to.

Before i mean not quite like lead acid, it was between lead acid and you know lithium. Carbon oxide, but now they're, they're, they're, nearing cobalt, nickel, nickel oxide, uh uh, the energy density, so yeah, that's that's you're gon na be able to find some some good and then maybe even for your buses. How's your what's the uh! The next move on the on the bus side of your business and your ventures. Well, um.

It was a complicated project because we were way ahead of the market and then this thing with the election year came. Then we got the structure we did with the carriages garage, which was a great product uh then the the new president came in so so everything is scanning in the past, because companies don't know. What's going to happen, they wait to see how the new leadership is going to take direction. You know uh and then the pandemic came.

So it's been pretty difficult. The the truth is just this. Last september, the first public transport bus went to the city to to to the streets in mexico city. That's how far behind we are.

You know so the first electric all-electric all of that the first oil electric uh, it's a uh. It's an 18 meter bus. This uh 16 000 pounds bus, it's in mexico city. It's a chinese chinese bus, oh okay, yeah they're supposed to bring nine more.

I think this month, or maybe next, but that's that's the yeah. That's just 10 buses. That's a start! In a 25 million people, city, yeah yeah, it's a huge city, i mean you needed, like thousands of them um, but this is star: that's a good good science to come, because that means those are like public transport right. So that means that that means that now the government is investing in renewable uh public transport, which is, i think, it's good because then maybe next thing you know they're getting they're lending or providing grants to other private companies to start developing.

You know yes yeah, so this is accelerating the interest. You know because also people people they. You know they are afraid to everything that is new and different. So so, with the conversion, you have the electric thing and the conversion thing.

So, actually, you have to convince them that both can work and even though we have the the prototype and it runs and and we have been doing all these drama demonstrations and we can show that the video later, where uh it's a small bus, uh pulling this. This huge trailer and stimulating the 16 000 pounds, those simulations and demonstrations, but people are afraid of putting their money and these bosses are not cheap. You know yeah, so i think this this that just happened in exclusive that this big company invested in bringing it's an energy company like a utility company that is like financing the bus to the operator. So i think this is just going to accelerate the transition, because people are going to see all the benefits because there aren't only benefits.

You know yeah so yeah, so so this is going to accelerate and hopefully we we can also start this these wow. Well, that's pretty good we're rooting for you. I i wan na see more of that happening in mexico and i got ta go check it out. I never been to mexico city uh.

I never been to alajana, you know as soon as they they have more over there. Then i have a reason to go. I mean not that i don't have reason now, but you know it's like now. I can uh it could be leisure trip, but also a business trip, because if i make a video, then you know that's kind of a thing to to promote around and we have some tequilas there.

You go tequila, no tequila tequila, that's right there. It's just overpriced, overpriced, yes, shots! You! Don't you don't do shots with tequila? Oh you don't do shots. No! No! That's the worst way! Oh well! You sip it right. Exactly you sip it.

You sip it and it's uh. You know i i used to. I used to be into tequila a little bit um. I did buy some last time i was in there.

I don't know i went to masatlan. Maybe i think i think that's where i bought some um yeah and uh yeah yeah. I i enjoyed some tequila every once in a while. The good kind.

Do you remember, do you remember the taxis in mazatlan? No? Well, i didn't see. I know that there used to be those those those things right. The bw things yeah they're called pulmonas. Yes, i would love to have seen one real there, but we didn't that time.

You know we went on a cruise and so you're only there for a few hours. You know for the day you get and they dump you on that. It's an ugly port by the way they dump you in this really trashy place in town and it stinks and then yeah you kind of go through the old part city, and you can see how maybe that part of the city used to be uh great back. In the days, maybe in the 60s now it's all run down and stuff, but uh i yeah.

Definitely i would have loved to see in one of those in in. Are they still around anything or those are all gone kind of thing? Yeah they're still there we're pushing we're we're trying to convert all those. Yes, those are super easy to convert and they're iconic, and i you know even people like me that i wasn't so much into them now. I'm i'm like these things are amazing.

They're great, that shape is, you know, cool and you could take the top off and you know i think some of them even have the windshield. Where you can fold it forward uh, you could take the doors off. It's like a great little vehicle to explore. Uh the jungles, and you know whatever the city, the beach or whatever you wherever you want to go.

Go to that! That's another option, though, for for coming yeah yeah i'd say you go! For that i mean those are so simple to convert, and now we we have the batteries that last yeah same thing about five of those tesla model s modules fit on those great and they give you over 100 miles of range um, and you could do it Now well, yeah they're still we're we're gon na get there we're gon na we're gon na be somewhere around the the sub 10 000 uh conversion. You know kit, yes, that you can bolt on we're we're there almost. I think there are battery options now that we can get, but it's just we need something that is like a lot right, like even these scooter batteries that we have right now, there's about 10 000 of them, but then once those are gone, they're gone right and And then you can't really plan like a huge project with them, because you know because you they have to buy all the batteries right now that you need for the project, because if you wait, you know in six months, they're begun, like people are buying them they're. Using we're put we're doing all kinds of things with them: put them in our houses.

Show us a powerball. You know diy powerholes we're gon na do probably a bunch of e-bikes a bunch of like little vehicles. You know um motorcycles. You could do all kinds of things with these things um, so it's gon na be great and i'm sure down the line.

There's gon na be other versions, but that's the thing that it's always by batches they come in, and so that's the challenge that we we get batches of these and they're good and they're great. But then once they're gone, they're gone and now then there's a different model and then there's different version, sometimes different configurations, sometimes different voltages. You know that sort of stuff and um, but you know it's a thing. It's all fun, trying to figure out how to stuff keep it out of trash and figure out how to use it and stuff those are real: fun, parades, yeah and yeah.

I think that that is going to happen in mexico, so you got to be ready for that yeah. You got to figure out how to maximize. I think your designs to use some of those, because i think that's that that checks a lot of good marks right like it keeps e-waste from going to landfills. It maximizes the the value of these things, because you know these things.

If you send to recycler, they recycle them, they're worth the raw material right they're worth like you know three dollars a pound of copper or whatever it is, but like these batteries are batteries. They're already made a lot of energy, went into making these and they're ready to to be used so yeah they can still last for a long time. Yeah. If you find the right application, they they have a long long time and it's good for the environment to keep them as batteries for the longest until they're completely dead right.

They should be batteries before you melt them to get to get the raw materials out of them, so you can make more batteries right. That's a good thing that needs to happen also right, but yes, but not not too soon, not before they're they're completely done. So that's what we're doing here and yeah! I think you're gon na be able to benefit that from down there. So keep an eye out for that, because i know that that is already starting in mexico.

Uh, there's a large industry that they're using lithium batteries that are going to for one reason or another, we're so wasteful at societies right just because they have the wrong. You know, literally because they have the wrong uh label. They have the wrong. You know branding they're like nope, send it to the recycler, get credible brand new.

I'm like right now. I made a video earlier today. Brand new product never use just because they have the wrong color scheme, the wrong logo on it. Santa recycler yeah just giving us a good chance, you know yeah a second life yeah.

We need to say we need to repurpose those, you know, use them differently, and so that's that's that's what i do here every day and uh. I think you guys are gon na see that quite a bit that in mexico, so it's been great talking to you, do you wan na uh. Do you have like social media channels that you wan na plug in, so that people go and see? I know that you have probably a video of the your bus and a video of the carriage and stuff, and so what people want yeah. Well, we basically have the the web page, which is apbmx.com and then a facebook page and and basically that that's it.

We're not that into media, we should move more there. We have a small youtube channel where you can see the videos. Okay and yes, i mean uh price - is - is the main thing here uh to make this happen, especially here in mexico uh. I can tell you the the quick story when i talked to elon musk about or tried to talk to him.

Oh okay, you try to pitch something to them batteries. Well, the thing is uh. When, when we were building the the bus, we were installing the lithium batteries uh, i heard he was coming to walhara. He was coming to the international uh aeronautics congress, something like that.

That's right yeah! He does the rocket stuff yeah yeah. He came to talk about this basics, but i thought okay. This is gon na, be a great chance to talk to him because he just uh talked that tesla was going into heavy duty vehicles, so i thought okay, maybe he'll, be interested to see one. You know it's here already, so i did try to talk with him.

I did i i wanted to to to ask to have access to cheap batteries, because you know tesla is the cheapest manufacturer yeah. So i went to the q a section of the conference and tried to talk to him in front of everybody, but i just i just couldn't, but i mean i tried. You tried yeah it's kind of uh, it's kind of intimidating, because everybody's trying to get its attention, probably right, yeah and then he doesn't like to talk deviate too much on the subject. So if he was talking about rockets, you'd have been like.

No, i'm only answering questions about rockets right now. That's exactly what they said: yeah yeah! I know i've seen that him do that quite a bit, because people will try to ask him about rockets. You know when he's doing something about tesla and then he's like. No, i'm only talking about cars today, i'm not talking about or the the boring company, because he's got so many things going on that people just want to talk to him about all kinds of things right and so yeah yeah, that's that's cool.

I mean you never know, i don't know if you yeah, i think he's he's got really big fish to fry right. He's, got a lot of cars to make and so he's using all the batteries that he that he's got. I know that there's other accounts of people trying to pitch stuff to him and he's like no, i got ta, i got ta use all these batteries. You know it's like for myself.

I know like he like, even tesla power walls. You know he wasn't delivering them because he didn't have enough cells, so he's kind of yeah he's the biggest consumer of uh lithium sales right now and now there are many options now you know: yeah prices are coming down way fast, so this is gon na. This is just gon na going to get better every day, yeah we're really excited of this year yeah! Well, we can't wait to see what else you do we'll have you back again when you have uh another breakthrough on your on your either one side right.