AVL's Reimagine Mobility Podcast

Testing the Future: Mitch Marks on Mobility Evolution

• AVL, North America

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Join us in an enlightening conversation with Mitch Marks from HBK on the Reimagined Mobility podcast. Mitch shares his deep insights into the electrification of mobility, emphasizing the critical role of testing, innovation, and system-level thinking in pushing the boundaries of electric vehicles (EVs) and mobility solutions. Discover how advancements in electric motors, batteries, and testing methodologies are driving the future of mobility towards more efficient, sustainable, and intelligent systems. Mitch also discusses the challenges and opportunities in reskilling engineers, the importance of data in simulation and testing, and a glimpse into the next wave of mobility innovations. Tune in to explore how we're moving toward an electrified future, one test at a time.

Mitch has worked in electric motor development since 2014 and specializes in the test and measurement of traction motors and drives. He focuses on developing new testing techniques and accelerating the development process through testing. He has been with HBK since 2017 as a member of the electric power testing team. He has an undergraduate and a master’s degree in electrical engineering from the University of Wisconsin – Madison WEMPEC program.

 

HBK (Hottinger, Brüel & Kjær) provides scalable test and validation solutions that enables engineers in transportation, aerospace and defense, and telecom markets to cut time-to-market, drive innovation, and take the lead in a highly competitive global marketplace. HBK offers technology for sensing, data acquisition, data analytics and simulation to cover all aspects of product design, development and deployment. Key applications include electric power train performance calibration, durability testing, and electromechanical analysis. 

https://www.hbkworld.com/en

If you would like to be a guest on the show contact: namarketing@avl.com

Welcome to the latest edition of the Reimagined Mobility podcast series. I'm here with Mitch Marks. Mitch from HBK. Welcome to the show. We're going to talk a lot about how we and how you clearly. That's the man of the hour here. We want to talk to sees mobility reimagined as the name of the podcast slate. So maybe just start out rich, give us a little bit of a history where you're coming from education, where you work on what you guys are doing. And then let's dive to how we re-imagine mobility together. Yeah. Well, I, I kind of did my whole career in mobility related fields, mostly in the electric, electric automobile. so I started out at, University of Wisconsin. so I take a little offense to your Northwestern there, but that's fine. Yeah, I design everybody's. no. No, I, I dreamed of going there, but, it didn't pan out. but I started University of Wisconsin in their, electric motor program, which is, which is really well renowned, running a dynamometer lab, looking at different control strategies for electric motors. different control strategies for grids to improve the efficiency, you know, improve the performance, cut down on on magnetic materials. and and running that lab there and working with all these projects really led into, my career at HBK, where I've been doing business development for our electrification, portfolio. HBK we make really high end measurement equipment. So that's that's sensors. measurement devices, some analysis software and then, and then simulation tools, including some really cool, driving simulators. I think I think you guys will meet with, Guido at some point. from the driving simulator group. But, what we find is that for, for research and development, testing, you know, pushing mobility people test for a variety of reasons, but I see three big ones, too. to get things working, get in this mobility space. There's a lot of really new novel ideas, like back in the university days, trying to cut back materials, to improve, increase the range or increase the efficiency of, of these electric vehicles. troubleshooting, you know, supplier A and supply to be did not design together. so you need to figure out why why these things aren't talking together or to really do a detailed optimization. so I'm a motor nerd, I guess, to answer your question, I'm a total electric motor nerd. just really excited about where the field is going in either aerospace or, those where I'm at is, you know. Right. Perfect. Well, let's jump right in. You talk about testing. You talked about what? You know, University of Wisconsin, and and the testing and then some of the key areas of or key reasons, really, why people are testing as we reimagine mobility again, as we look to the future. What are what are the three things that people are not for companies? Let's not say people, but companies. One of the things, companies are not doing that. In your opinion, as we look forward into the future. Let's stay for a moment with with where you're where your heart is, which with E motors here. What are they doing when it comes to testing? Yeah. So I think it it always takes like a step back from testing. And, and we have all these really great legacy companies, you know, axle manufacturers, transmissions, gearboxes. We're making a lot of commitments, a lot of moves into electrification. But I don't see them really making the investment in their people as much. Like there's some really good, engineers who, you know, need to be reskill and retrain into this electrification space. So before it even gets to the testing, you know, I think people will hire in new engineers with new expertise. We have a lot of really good technicians around, really good legacy engineers who and need that reskilling but need that vocabulary education. So I think, you know, three things that I think that's number one for me is, is that we have this kind of knowledge gap between like a really good workforce and where we want to go in this new mobility space. so that's probably the first thing I would pick. And when I look at these big organizations, and HBK, you know, we kind of take this niche space where we try to, to bridge some of that gap, at least with the test side for like the technicians, because these guys, they get thrown in way over their heads. and I mean, bridging that knowledge gap is a big thing. So that would be my number one. I think my number two would be, you know, when we're looking at these new mobilities, we have 100 years of knowledge on the internal combustion engine. We have 100 years of knowledge on aircraft. but when we put the, you know, electrified powertrain in, we have to worry about structures in a different way. We have to worry about sound and vibration in a different way. We have to worry about, weight distribution in a different way. It's a complete re-engineer of the vehicle. So from the test side. When people are troubleshooting problems, a lot of times they'll look in their little, you know, isolated world of sound and vibration or their isolated world of powertrain and coming together and starting to look at things as a system. How does that battery, how does that inverter affect the acoustic noise effect, the durability pattern, if you know, how does the the weight distribution of the vehicle affect vehicle control? you know, these are things that we've all been so isolated in our little silos for so long that, from the testing side, I would love to see some departments come together and, and really start putting effort into having test stands that are more inclusive to looking at everything at once. And I think that would actually lead to a lot of cleverness you know, when we test these electric motors, for example, you need to test at a variety of temperatures because they behave differently at cold or hot, you know, tests at different battery voltages. Powertrain behaves differently at low battery versus high battery. Well, we really care about this drive cycle. Not not fixed efficiency points. So there is a world where if we were measuring vibration, acoustics, looking at durability signatures, temperatures and running just a ton of drive cycles, we could eke out so much more information. so a lot of words to say, really thinking at a system level and trying to, you know, be more efficient with how we test, look at more things at once. and my third I think there's a there's a third point, there's starting to think about, you know, the from testing standpoint. And this leads into the, you're thinking of a system model is starting to plan for how do smart and connected things affect test? you know, smart and connected, we can use a lot of cleverness to push efficiency. But from the testing standpoint, you know, testing more things, taking more data, understanding more points, you know, having that more system level thinking once these real brilliant people start coming up with these algorithms, it makes it so much easier to take the historic data we have and trying to figure out and play games and match to the the on road data from the laboratory. So, yeah, reskilling, looking at the system and and thinking through how can we help the future. Because test is so reactive that being more proactive and thinking about what the future holds will will help us because we're moving quickly there. I mean, again, I think in your last point, this is at least the way I understand you here is the ability to take this data that we have, which is rich, so that we can always be richer, but is rich maybe used when everybody right now is jumping into and using AI to then come to the correlation to the real world even closer, which then allows us to update our simulation tools to then constantly start the cycle of reinventing or improving. Maybe if that's, or reimproving the simulation tool to get even closer to, what we're testing in, in, in physics. Right. So you're shaking your hand. So with that point, we're dealing with a lot of OEMs and suppliers as well, obviously. And you testing just like you, but also heavily on the on the technology development engineering side and productionization side, so to speak. And a lot of people, a lot of companies are working more and more at the possibility to get rid of any physical type testing and go digital. Digital twins simulated whatever you want to call it, called digital 100%. You guys are in the business. You are in the business. You do an X in school of testing. What's real here? We had a path podcast several one other episodes ago that talked about this as well. And it's a to me, a very intriguing area because you, you hear some that say we'll never happen, we may get up to 50%, but the other 50%, we still got to do physical testing. And then you really have the other camp there, like, it's possible we're going to go to 100% and we're going to do this in the next two years. Right. So interested in from your experience and more you guys are working in what do you see. Right. Again, we reimagine mobility. So what do you see in the next 5 or 10 years. Right. I love this question. because honestly, I want the simulation guys to be right, I do. I hope our tools get that good. I don't want a job, but but the harsh, harsh reality of it, is that, you know, one of my first points we only test in some really specific areas. You know, modeling is so good. Simulations are so good. But when things aren't working, you need test. When when you want to eke out that really last little bit of efficiency, you need to go to test. Because the model fidelity is only so good. and when you're, so already covered, troubleshooting a covered, optimization, just getting things working, working in that really novel, like new space where we don't have modeling tools, you know, as we push innovation. it's impossible to model the cutting edge because we just haven't built up the math. We haven't built up the knowledge base. We haven't done the testing to make the models. so I see that. Is that. Sorry to interrupt, but is it that or is it then, a matter of time until we get to that level, I think. Yeah. But people need to stop innovating for that to happen. get that just to go. Yeah. If you look at inverter switching, you know, we're pushing these silicon carbide, gallium nitride switches up to these really high frequencies. And we see a lot of the phenomena we saw with microwave technology 30 years ago where everybody said, oh, modeling is going to ruin it all. And then we push the frequencies up and things got weird as things go faster, as they get smaller material science. I mean, I think one of the big issues that automotive companies are having right now is that the quality of steel or quality of magnets living in that unknown, living in that, you know, the area of modeling, we have to say, my material property is this well, it's probably non-uniform and and depending on where supply is coming from or new suppliers, quality changes, that's an area for test. And then the other one, we look at the aerospace world. Nobody's going to let you put a plane in the world without validating. And and frankly, I won't be getting in one. You know, if the car go if you do a car with simulation in the car dies on the road, whatever. I mean, there's a whole battery safety thing that I don't think we should simulate that. That's the safety aspect. But I get what you're saying. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. So it's. Just. I would love to see a day where we don't need to exist. but I think it'll be a lot less fun of a world and a lot less safe. And. And I'd be afraid that people would stop being creative. so we're I always swear the I. I have nothing but mean words for the modeling people because they only test with. They can't be modeled. yeah, but that's the point. Yeah. So then, so when when you didn't look at your customers again, you're a global organization of which ones are are pushing some of the things we've already talked about. Right. The reskilling of people, the more system level testing, the more integration of data usage, the data, the really improves testing, not just to accumulate or make your data lake even even bigger or deeper, who are pushing the boundaries, but also doing it the right way. Can you give us an idea? Here is is you see China doing this more? Do you see the US being more deleted that East Europe or is it, let's say outside of a outside of China, rest of Asia, Japan, South Korea, some of the I would say the hotbeds of automotive innovation. Can you give us an idea here who was maybe the lead as it relates to these, let's call it maybe I'll call it all this system, this complete holistic perspective of how to test who is leading this from what you are seeing. I, I wish I had a really like concrete answer for you, and I'm fortunate enough I get to spend a lot of time in all of those markets. you know, specifically right now, Asia and, you know, the Chinese companies, they're they're innovating so quickly and they're doing so much. And, you know, for them, I see it really is a focus on getting a vehicle. People want, you know, between the outsourcing and powertrains, you know, so in China I think it's more about just getting this vehicle people want. So I think they're kind of leading in the connected and the connected space. You know, I don't know if they've made that that gap to like starting to think, okay, we have autonomous now. How do we connect it to, you know, the the Google Leaf. You know the more efficient paths and things like that. And feathering brakes, I don't know if they've made that jump. I look at the U.S. and, you know, I see I think people are really starting to think about how to make those connections. You know, I know Southwest Research Institute, public private public partnership. They've got some really cool work going on in that kind of connected big data space. in Europe. I know they're thinking about it, but they almost seem to get really tied up in the optimization. which is great because once you've done that optimization homework, you're ready for that next piece. So I see it happening in little bits everywhere. But I haven't seen somebody who's really, I think, you know, running ahead and paving that way because that to me at least, it seems like there's a lot of people just trying to get product to market. Product people want product that's that's affordable enough, which is great. It's a different part of the development cycle. But there are glimmers of hope in the national labs. There's glimmers of hope in, in some research institutes. And that's where I'm seeing more of this right now. I wish I had a better answer for you. You know, I see these little pockets, this little pockets here and there, but. But not a big, tied together space where I do see it a little more is in the, the eVTOL. And I think that's just out of necessity, looking at things as a collective, you know, kind of aerospace, needing to understand the whole system. I do see it a little more on the eVTOL, starting to look at how we think more intelligently and that problem simpler because you're in the sky. Traffic. And you, you you see it there. Maybe because I mean automotive or on the ground. Ground vehicles are different countries, different regions have different regulations and mandates. But clearly every region has even more stringent requirements for anything that's flying. Right. You see that. Is that the reason why any tolls are doing that? Is that the reason that eVTOLs in many cases, those startups come from people that are sort of coming from the maybe data or connected or nontraditional automotive or even aerospace field, and they they sort of bring that mindset. Or what do you see as, as, as you make that common? I would agree with you. I think some of those trends as well, they're right. I see a couple of reasons for it. And one of them, I think, is really that they don't have the confines of like the existing road structure, but they're starting from more of a blank slate. So the problem is less overwhelming. You know, thinking about being connected with with a helipad that has, you know, right now, no flights a day. But in the near future, maybe ten flights a day is a lot more simple than a stoplight that has, you know, 20,000 cars a day. the unknown of the certification path also, you know, it seems like people just want to take as much data as possible, do as much modeling, do as much simulation, because the FAA and EASA haven't necessarily made things clear. and yeah, it's just like the bigger there's not the pressure of high volume production right now, there's there's the pressure of getting something that works and is safe. And I think that, yeah, I'm gonna I'm going to go with that. I'm going to go with, you know, I think the simplicity compared to the existing automotive infrastructure. Yeah, I think that's good. Let's let's shift. Yeah. Discussion a little bit here. What do you see happening in in the mobility space. You know, specifically around what what you are doing with what the company is doing. What do you see happening over the next five years? What's what do you see happening and what's the most exciting part of that? What's happening? And you talked about the, you know, you talked about the testing, you talked about the sensors and all the different things you guys can already do. But what do you see in the industry that you are in that's going to change over the next five years that you're super excited about? All right. So the thing I'm most excited about is actually like it's it's exciting because it's like a really difficult problem. And it's it's production. How you know I think there's can be so many people going to production with these really, really cool new novel products and starting to figure out from a test side like, you know, these, these really high end steels for motors, a little change in the tolerance on them can make a big difference in how they act, seem to be said with the magnets or as we remove magnetic material. So from from my perspective with test, people are going to have to do a lot of tests to understand how to tune the motor controller to handle these tolerances. How do we raise that durable? How do we raise that, reliability given kind of the the woes of production? So I see a really cool space where we're trying to figure out how to make these things at mass and make them really high quality. And I think some really cool innovation comes out of that. that and, and, the push towards, you know, these really, really high efficiency motors, I mean, these things are getting so small, so power dense. Testing them becomes extremely difficult, actually, because there's nowhere to get measurements. They're so compact. The smaller the more complex. Yeah. Yep. But, again, out of that falls the thermal, the vibration. These things are all so tightly wound. that again, it comes back to that testing, understanding the motor control, doing cool things with making these small compact packages really, really, really effective in the field. Yep, yep. So related question what you talked to people that do emote or that you talk to people that do batteries and you talk to people and understand you, but we all of us, and you have conversations with people that work on the BMS and the algorithms in the BMS. Talk to people on inverters. And I would say the last one, at least in the electrification space. We stayed up for a moment. And you talked about chargers right? And every single one more or less as a passion. And one of those 4 or 5 fields says, for the next five years in my field is going to be the biggest innovation happening and the biggest advancement of technologies. Turning this around and giving this to you, this question to you, where do you see this? And specifically, again, from what you guys are getting in, like us, you provide test equipment to enable these companies to test out their sometimes crazy way out their ideas and sometimes very solid and maybe more conservative ideas in this space. With the hat on off the test equipment supplier, you see the most innovation happen over the next five years. Great, great. Great question. you know, I think the motors we've done a ton with motors over the last five years and inverters, we're damn near 99% efficiency. It doesn't get much better than that. So I'm going to kind of chop those two off. I unfortunately, I love motors, but I don't think that's for the innovation. The next five years is we've got so much cool stuff. you know, I look at the batteries and dynos, you know, chargers, they need to upgrade reliability, but they're kind of dependent on the batteries. So I would say fuel source more than anything. especially the General Motors new announcements for hybrid and everybody making investments in hydrogen and solid state batteries. And that seems like the Wild West still. So that's really exciting. that doesn't quite answer your question. I also think there's a lot of, per my previous answers, innovation in the controls and the vehicle control. and looking at how do we manage blowers and air conditioners and heated seats, along with the powertrain? so I think it's in the fuel source as well as, in the control of the system. And. Yeah, related to that second to last question, everyone, we're talking about AI coming in right? In years ago when it was much more hands on, when it comes to software and controls, the statement we always made was, or if I really makes it into a control module fitting for here, how the heck are we going to test this thing? Because it's I change my test. And so question to you is that one of the biggest challenges? You guys look at us. Well, I mean I'm not from the equipment necessarily, but from how your customer will be challenged, maybe less some of the equipment, you know, saying image. You know, I don't need more sensors. I got it all. But you have a solution to deal with. How the heck am I testing to make sure this this works because there is AI in here. The thanks to the changes. Okay. Yeah. so I, I've listened to some really, really interesting talks from the FAA and EASA and again back to the aerospace. But you know, having a machine learning based or an AI based controller for aerospace certification, it's like you have input stimulus. You can follow exactly what happens and you get output control. And that's how we've certified forever. And now with some of these machine learnings you have input you the path is not the same, but the output might be. So it comes down to, I think, a really good design, experiment because for FAA certification, that's, that's planes falling out of the sky. That's lives. That's different than the automotive space. So I think we have to be really, really, you know, prescriptive on the outcome. I'm running this test. Here's my desired outcome. Can I consistently do that? So I think we run into more of a statistics based testing where where we need to do more tests to get a good, you know, distribution on. I did this ten times, but I did achieve the output I wanted ten times. So I can call that safe or I can call it reliable or I can call it, predictable because we run into the space of the path between point A to point B is. Anywhere. so it's a really cool space. And from the test side, you know, I could babble down some rabbit holes of, you know, needing to have multiple points in between and needing to understand it. But I think the the design of experiment and knowing what is our pass fail criteria and what we're looking for, you know, taking a step back and thinking rather rather than just doing what we're told, taking a step back and thinking, what is the result? I want? Am I consistently hitting it? Yep. that's a good point. Yes. That's, you know, at the end of the day, that's good for your company and for my company because testing and testing is needed. So it's all good. Yeah, it's all good. That doesn't go anywhere. That's right, that's right. I would agree one way or the other. One last question for you. What's going to be the next car you're going to buy and why. So so I'm in Japan right now. so I'm going to have at least one more year without a car after wonderful Tokyo Metro system. but when I come back to the United States, I had a mustang Mach-E before. I loved that car. I'm very compelled by the F-150 lightning. I really like the front of the Cadillac Lyriq. I really dislike the back. So my answer right now is a mustang Mach-E. Unless I decide I need a truck or there's something really cool that comes out. All right. Perfect. So much. Thank you so much. Great insight, very great perspectives. Again, this is what we want to hear from you. Reimagine mobility different perspectives. appreciate the input. Thanks for getting up for us here. It's evening. Eric's morning. Have a great day.