Predicting The Future Isn’t Good Enough. . . It’s Time To Invent It

By Bert Holtappels, Founder

Tanktwo is a product of the many “DUH, of course, that is what’s going to happen!” moments I had over the past three decades.

As a teenager growing up in an isolated farming community in Belgium during the eighties, I depended on beige computers and screechy modems to connect with (mostly equally nerdy) people halfway across the world. Sitting in a cellar, I realized the internet’s massive potential. And change the world, it did.

In university, my thesis project illustrated how GPS could be used for optimizing traffic flow. It was essentially a sneak peek into Google Maps, years before the technology was in the hands of the public.

After graduation, I moved to Finland and joined Nokia, where the wireless revolution took shape and was set to impact billions globally. I was in the room when the word “smartphone” was invented.

While at Nokia, I developed unique insights that allowed me to connect the dots — the game-changing technologies developed over the past decades in electrification, mobility, and data — and how they’ll (re)define the big picture for the next decades.

Now, we have all the pieces of the puzzle: oil pricing, global warming, regulations, geopolitical instability, carbon emissions quota trading, solar panels, denuclearization, etc., are all happening right under our nose, and it’s time to act on them.

As I have learned, the first to put the different parts together at scale will have a home run in his hands. I don’t want yet another “DUH” moment. I was determined to be driving the bandwagon instead of sitting on the sideline.

I wanted to be at the crossroads where all the global influences converge into a future in which the efficiency and optimization of existing technologies will be exponentially more valuable than the incremental improvement of the discrete pieces.

The seed for Tanktwo was sown in 2009 when electric vehicles (EVs) were just about to become viable, yet the technology could not yet support the requirements of demanding commercial fleets. I started reimagining battery systems for electric fleets and asked what if…

• Assets, such as batteries, will never sit idle. Having an over-dimensioned battery pack “just in case” seemed the inefficient way to go about it. We can optimize their utilization to maximize profits and eliminate waste.

• We can track and manage not only all the vehicles but also each battery that powers them to optimize the potential of every cell.

• No one has to wait for a battery to charge thanks to off-board charging. We can simply run a cell swap for vehicles that need to be on the go without delay. (Imagine calling 911 and hearing, “sorry, our ambulance is for another 20 minutes at the supercharger”… that simply won’t fly!)

• We can redeploy individual batteries to eliminate range anxiety without adding unnecessary weight. (E.g., if an electric bus is assigned to a shorter route, the operator can reallocate $50,000 worth of batteries to power five taxis without impacting the performance of the bus.)