Ask Universal Hydrogen’s CEO anything via Reddit

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by Yves Le Marquand
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Universal Hydrogen’s (UH2) CEO, Paul Eremenko is conducting a one hour ask me anything (AMA) session via Reddit today. 

The former Boeing CTO will be online from 6-7pm GMT (10-11am PT) and sporadically throughout the day to answer any questions anyone might have, he said. 

In a statement on Reddit, Eremenko said: “I am a first-time entrepreneur, starting UH2 just under 3 years ago, in March 2020. We’ve raised about $100m in financing to date across a Series A and a Series B financing rounds, which has gotten us to a first product demo: a regional airliner (think 40-60 seats) converted to use hydrogen fuel cells and an electric motor, and a modular hydrogen delivery system that requires no new infrastructure at the airport. We anticipate our first test flight this quarter.”

Eremenko said his journey is perhaps different from many other. “I wasn’t thirsting to do a startup. I came to it from a good career in the aerospace and defence industry.” As noted, he was CTO at Airbus and then also United Technologies Corporation. Prior to that he was at Google and the Pentagon’s disruptive innovation agency—DARPA. 

“But I was frustrated over the aviation industry’s lack of progress toward (and, until very recently, lack of acknowledgement of) Paris Agreement CO2 emissions targets. And it seemed that there was a fairly obvious solution—hydrogen is an ideal aviation fuel—but it was no one’s ‘job’ to solve many of the infrastructure, safety certification, and other challenges that come with it. So we created UH2 to do that,” he said.

Ask UH2’s CEO Paul Eremenko a question.

Revolution.Aero asked: “There has been some scepticism about the true potential of the use of a hydrogen propulsion system with today’s technology. Will your test flights use conventional engines too as a safety measure? If so, how long until you will be flying solely on hydrogen?”

Eremenko confirmed UH2’s early flight tests will have one engine on the aircraft converted to a fuel cell-electric powertrain while the other remains a conventional engine for safety of flight. “It’ll be early- to mid-2024 before we fly a fully-converted airplane in its final product configuration,” he said.

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