What is the lesson for a large multi-billion dollar company like yours in this policy gyration?

You know, I think at the end of the day, we still need to make sure that There's a fundamental value in the products that we produce, and we have competitiveness in the, in the way we produce it.

And I think that'll drive how the markets move.

I think some of the, uh, industrial policies are absolutely critical, um, especially in the short run, but I do think the, uh, the fundamentals are still, um, you know, being very competitive and making sure that you're winning in the spaces that, uh, that you compete in.

Now, having said that, of course, um, the changes in policy makes it very difficult for corporations to make investment decisions.

We've, uh, certainly, uh, had to adjust, as I said, in our focus from, uh, EVs to, uh, energy storage systems.

So I think this is more a lessons learned, not only for, uh, us as a company, but really, um, as an industry.

Why are these auto companies moving in a direction that's opposite than what they think will eventually be the winning direction?

What kinds of new technologies and processes do you hope to try? Is it looking at everything from chemistry to the manufacturing process? And how does this plant allow you to test those and try those?

So there are probably three different areas where there's new technologies that need to be developed.

So when it's chemistry, as we go from NMC to different form of LFP, your coding capability and how you calendar and do roll press, those are quite different.

So this was one of the first plants where we were developing that LFP chemistry.

So that's really important.

The second process technology that's important is the form factor.

So most of our plants right now build pouch cells, which was really the popular form factor for most of our automotive OEMs.

Is density as important? Is the chemistry, can that, does that give you more flexibility?

What's the main differences between an indoor storage battery versus an automotive service?

Yeah, so when you talk about batteries in general, you might talk about different types of chemistry and different form factors.

So when we converted from EV batteries to ESS batteries, the biggest conversion was on the chemistry, which went from nickel, manganese, cobalt oxide, NMC chemistry, which is the high energy density chemistry that goes into EVs, From there, we went to lithium iron phosphate.

It's not an oxide.

It's a LFP iron phosphate.

It has less energy density than the oxides, but it has the benefit of being on lower cost and possibly more safer kind of thermal propagation profile.

So we basically had to convert the business into that direction.

Could you serve with LFP from this base that you're now building EV demand?