5 THINGS ABOUT TED MCKLVEEN

Favorite season is winter because he loves snowy landscapes and cross-country skiing.

Spent six weeks backpacking in northern Alaska one summer and didn't see anyone outside his group.

Loves exploring new places, especially new ecosystems with unique flora and fauna.

Enjoys endurance athletics, including running, biking and cross-country skiing.

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Started efforts on climate change when he was 14by writing a letter to his congressman.

tank space.

Q

Gov. Newsom said California last month applied for federal funding to become a national hydrogen hub. If granted, how might Verne potentially fit into that effort?

AThe idea of hydrogen hubs is to aggregate hydrogen supply and hydrogen demand. Having more hydrogen produced and available here in California would certainly help stimulate the growth of the hydrogen-powered truck market. The federal funding would also bring down the cost of the hydrogen, making it easier for fleets to transition to a zero-emission hydrogen vehicle. Verne would ride this wave, providing higher-performance vehicles to fleets here in California and further enhance their economics through our high-performance hydrogen storage systems.

ships, trains, planes?

AThe trucking market is massive, with millions of heavyduty trucks on the road in the U.S. alone, so we'd be kept busy just focused on that. But our technology could also provide value in other sectors: off-road vehicles, such as mining trucks, as well as certain types of ships and planes.

Our mission is to reduce carbon emissions, so we want to help as many of these heavy-duty sectors transition to zero-emission operations as possible.

QThere's been a lot of gloom and doom talk around the climate issue. Do you think it can be effectively and economically dealt with in coming years?

AWe have a lot of the technologies we need to make a big impact on emissions and need to accelerate deployment: think solar, wind, and battery electric vehicles. We need more of all them on the market. Many new technologies are being developed rapidly as well, from geothermal to new fertilizer to capturing CO² from the air.

But we need to move even faster. We're already seeing the impacts of climate change here in our California backyard, with all the extreme weather: wildfires, droughts, floods. We can solve this, but it won't happen on its own.