First Hydrogen, Volkswagen, Amazon - The green future begins in Canada

First Hydrogen: Providing Québec with hydrogen solutions

Alliances allow companies in the mobility industry to exchange ideas at eye level in order to face the challenges of the energy transition jointly. The Canadian hydrogen company First Hydrogen has now joined the alliance "Hydrogène Québec". The alliance aims to motivate stakeholders to invest in hydrogen and to shape the future of mobility and infrastructure in order to recognize and exploit economic opportunities.

Famous players such as Toyota, Air Liquide and Hyundai are among the partners. First Hydrogen is stepping up to accelerate decarbonization. The Company offers fleet operators a competitive, cost-effective solution for a smooth transition to zero-emission propulsion systems using clean, green energy.

First Hydrogen's holistic model is based on three key components:

1. green mobility, i.e. the vehicle itself as a next-generation high-tech vehicle.
2. green hydrogen, i.e. the fuel that goes into the vehicle.
3. the green powertrain, i.e. an advanced powertrain with a fuel cell electric drive system that powers the entire vehicle and is targeted at the light commercial vehicle market.

The aim is to keep operating costs as low as possible to enable its use in the mobility sector.

In the Hydrogène Québec Alliance, First Hydrogen plans to produce green hydrogen for targeted use in the Montreal-Québec City corridor. This will be used in the Company's hydrogen-powered vehicles and other applications. The vehicles will be assembled in the Canadian city Shawinigan and offered throughout North America. The assembly plant has a capacity of 25,000 vehicles per year, creating green technology jobs in the region.

A recent presentation by First Hydrogen took place last week as part of the newly launched 1st Hydrogen Day. The video is available to investors on YouTube and here.

Volkswagen - New technology promises groundbreaking efficiency in battery production in Germany

PowerCo SE, a battery company belonging to the Volkswagen Group, is pushing ahead with the industrialization of the innovative dry coating process. And it is doing so at its site in Salzgitter, Germany. Together with the printing press manufacturer Koenig & Bauer, both companies are working on the joint development of an industrial roller system for the powder coating of electrodes in large quantities. According to PowerCo calculations, this process has the potential to save around 30% energy, 15% factory space and thus hundreds of millions of euros in manufacturing costs annually.

PowerCo's dry coating process enables the powdered base ingredients to be applied directly to the film, similar to the printing process. This eliminates two out of four process steps in electrode production. The powdered material is applied extremely thinly and evenly without solvents, resulting in a thickness layer comparable to a human hair. These thin layers ensure a high surface energy density and improved properties such as long service life and fast battery cell charging.

CEO Frank Blome explains: "The dry coating is to our production what the solid-state cell is to our product - a real game changer. If successfully scaled, it will enable us to achieve a unique positioning and clear competitive advantage in mass production.".

The plan is to start mass production of the roller plant in 2026/2027. According to Sebastian Wolf, PowerCo's Chief Production Officer, their standard factories are easily and quickly adaptable. They have already taken into account about 30 future product and production innovations and can easily convert the factories to new processes as soon as they are ready for the market.

Amazon: AWS Revolutionizes the banking sector

Banco Bilbao Vizcaya Argentaria, SA (BBVA), a leading global banking company, will use AWS to deliver advanced analytics and data services in the cloud. The bank aims to become a data and AI-driven company as part of its digital transformation. To this end, BBVA will use AWS tools to leverage analytics and machine learning. This will improve internal processes, including risk management, and offer new solutions for customers with AI support.

BBVA will use AWS to create a new global data platform. This platform will serve as a secure repository for business and customer data. It provides automated business and market intelligence to drive operational efficiencies and attract new customers. AWS Lake Formation and Amazon DataZone enable the platform to be built, managed and used securely, fostering collaboration and information sharing across key business areas. The platform provides BBVA's business units with a unified view of their data and enables efficient data processing and analysis.

Similar to competitors Palantir or NVIDIA Omniverse, this creates heatmaps and virtual twins of production processes, enabling experts to identify new business areas and optimize existing ones. "This collaboration with AWS and the building of our new data platform is an important milestone for BBVA", said Ricardo Oliver, Global Head of Data Engineering at BBVA. "By leveraging the power of AWS for our data strategy, we are improving our data management capabilities, making data available to all and leveraging the analytical capabilities of AWS to increase the impact of our data projects."

The green future begins in Canada. Thanks to the alliance of renowned partners, the innovative company First Hydrogen is on an equal footing with major automotive manufacturers such as Hyundai and Toyota. Together, these renowned companies are working hard to make the Canadian city of Québec fit for hydrogen propulsion. The news from PowerCO, a subsidiary of Volkswagen, reads quite differently. The novel process for coating fuel cells is not expected to be ready until 2027. By then, Québec will have long since made progress with the construction of an infrastructure for hydrogen drives. Further development is also a key focus for BBVA. The globally positioned bank uses the cloud and AI services of Amazon AWS to develop new products and solutions for its customers and to optimize its processes.