EW 017 – How To Build And Sell A Hydrogen Diesel Engine To Help Decarbonize The Transportation Industry In A Cost-Effective Manner – With COO Rebecca Goldsack from Diesel Tech Industries

Gordon Sheppard (00:01.442)
Rebecca, welcome to the show.

Rebecca Goldsack - DTI (00:04.524)
Thanks for having me.

Gordon Sheppard (00:06.07)
Well, thanks for being here. I know out in networking, you are everywhere. You are an advocate for so many things beyond just your business, but for life and changing the world and doing all those things. I know so many people are gonna be just so lucky to have you, know, telling us a bit of your story here today on the podcast, but a lot of people don't know you. So if you had to describe yourself at a networking event or at a party, what would you say about yourself to let people know about who you are?

Rebecca Goldsack - DTI (00:31.938)
Yeah, so my name is Rebecca Goldsack and I am COO at DieselTech Industries as well as I am chair for Hydrogen Alberta.

Gordon Sheppard (00:41.688)
Chair for hydrogen Alberta. Why would you want to be the chair for hydrogen Alberta? What motivates you to take on that role?

Rebecca Goldsack - DTI (00:48.696)
Well for me it's all about networking. So we, you when I see what's needed in the industry, that is where I love and thrive is getting people in the same room talking about a common goal. And so by being chair, I'm able to help bring those synergies together with different organizations to essentially create a hydrogen ecosystem that just works quicker and.

able to take things from concept to market in a quicker timeline.

Gordon Sheppard (01:21.132)
And why do we need a hydrogen ecosystem?

Rebecca Goldsack - DTI (01:24.258)
You know, when you look at what's happening, I mean, obviously, you know, we look at, you know, fires that are happening and things like that. We need to do our part to, you know, decarbonize, to work towards that common goal. And when we, you know, started in this hydrogen space, we knew that we could make a difference for the hydrogen ecosystem. And hydrogen is really that molecule that makes great sense for heavy duty

mobility. And so we jumped on that bandwagon and it's an exciting one to be a part of the hydrogen ecosystem. Having said that, if you would have told me five, ten years ago that I would be here talking about hydrogen, I probably would have laughed at you. I mean, I'm very much like a lot of people, just no hydrogens on the elemental table, but didn't know much more than that. But I can talk your ear off on it now.

Gordon Sheppard (02:23.438)
I'll bet you can and Chief Operating Officer, it takes maybe more than a few minutes to get to that level in a company. So tell me now a little bit about how did you get into that role? Maybe some of the backstory there and then about DTI as well.

Rebecca Goldsack - DTI (02:37.41)
Yeah, so DieselTech Industries, DieselTech Truck Repair and DieselTech Holdings are all owned and started over 25 years ago. So we actually just celebrated our 25th year in business back in the fall of 2024. So very exciting milestone that we were able to accomplish. We started in the diesel repair business. That is essentially our bread and butter. And then in about 2004,

We decided to start technology for transportation. So we've taken several technologies right from that concept to market. We originally started in the emergency positive air shutdown business. you're like, I don't know what that is. Diesel engines run on compression ignition. So even though you take a key and put it in your pocket, a diesel engine will literally run away until it explodes. So we developed what we call our Guardian E-pass system.

And so that shuts down the engine, it monitors RPMs. And that was really our flagship technology. I always say it's a technology that paid the bills. And then through there we've developed other technologies such as our Guardian e-logs, so electronic logging device. We were actually first in Alberta, second in Canada to become Transport Canada certified, which is a binder this thick that we had to work through. we are no...

strangers to regulations and making sure that we meet certain mandates within that. And then about four years ago, we started on our Guardian HDS, so Hydrogen Diesel Dual Fuel Technology, which as I was saying, we knew technology for transportation. Reading and interpreting engine data is our mainstay. That's what our bread and butter is. And so that's where we took our existing technologies.

and got this from Concept to market quite quickly. And as they say, the rest is history.

Gordon Sheppard (04:36.174)
You're good at bringing technology, like you've got the 25 years behind you. Somewhere in there the company's smart enough, 2004, is to say, wait a second, there's more to life than just, you know, doing the diesel engine repair business. They get into then bringing technology to market, including not easy. Like when you talk about thick regulatory, you had to work through, that doesn't, it takes time. That comes, you know, over years and then your expertise that you develop, the fact that you're deploying, you know, your,

work in the way it's going and then if I looked inside your engine I would see the opportunity to put in both diesel and hydrogen. that correct?

Rebecca Goldsack - DTI (05:09.602)
Exactly, yeah. And that's where, you know, we were able to, you know, develop this technology because we knew engines so well. We, our CEO, Darren Reve, he's a mechanic of 40 plus years. And he's kind of the one that, you know, knew the mechanical side of things, brought in the right team to help with mechanical engineering, electronics engineering, know, web developing and...

That's really what my job is, is to make sure that everyone has the tools that they need to get their job done. So over the years, we've been able to take that multidisciplinary engineering team. We're all in-house. So we're also super proud that we are supporting our local economy in the fact that they're in office, they're touching, they're actually working on these engines. So we don't source out any of our engineering.

But that also allows us, if a customer comes to us and says, hey, I need to do XYZ, we don't have to go through multiple different channels in order to do something. Where I'm able to walk up a set of stairs and talk to that engineer that wrote that code or that engineer that made that bracket and say, hey, can we do this, this, and this. So it's really about teamwork. I wouldn't be in my position if I didn't have the team behind me that really helps.

you know, get this going and moving. It's entirely a team effort and we've been very blessed and lucky to have such a good team. One of my guys, it's been with us 18 years, so they've been with us through everything and anything. So that's a little bit about us.

Gordon Sheppard (06:56.632)
Yeah, that's remarkable. And it's so fun to hear about the different areas that you are participating in. You probably could be the chief operating officer and have a nice life just working in your company. But you're the type of person who's going above and beyond. you're saying words like ecosystem, which means we're kind of all in it together. I've seen you at events where folks are saying, we don't need to be competitive at this stage of hydrogen development in Alberta. We need to pull each other along to grow this ecosystem. You're one of the key players.

I'm certainly aware of being part of that, moving it forward for the right reasons that you identified. As in we are gonna participate in this environmental issue that we existentially face as humanity in a sense, doing our part to get these engines out the door. The application for your engines, you said the heavy haul thing, so you're ahead. I'm gonna say in what you're able to do, I'm gonna say ahead of the battery thing right now, certainly in heavy transport, what I'm hearing on the battery side is it's just not quite there yet for what they're gonna need to pull. But you said, no, we're here right now.

We're ready to go and then you're working towards that deployment that fights through not unlike your thick binder fight. You got to fight through all those layers of what I'm going to say politics support and what it takes to do that. And we could talk for 10 hours I think about your entire portfolio of all the things you do and what you are. But certainly what we want to do here on this is talk about a specific win. So if you had a specific win that you had to name out of all of that in the last couple of years in business, what would that win be and how would you describe it?

Rebecca Goldsack - DTI (08:21.016)
I think the huge win for us is being able to really help the transportation industry decarbonize it in a cost effective now solution. So we have adapted this for motor coaches, transit buses, garbage trucks, class eight trucks, five tons, long haul, short haul. So it's a multi-dimensional technology.

We also just recently announced our project with the Edmonton International Airport for their runway sweepers. So this will be our first off-road application. But there's lots of potential within this. So looking at generators and more stationary equipment as well as other equipment platforms, know, agricultural, farming, all those different applications which obviously have a huge need for decarbonizing. But

you know, when we started out in this industry, I thought long haul class eight, you we did our market analysis and made sure, you know, this is what we wanted to do. And we thought that was gonna be the early adopters. We have since realized that it is, you know, they were about our fourth application that we ended up developing a technology for because they just were not quote unquote, the lowest hanging fruit. It has ended up being more return to home base applications that

adopt the technology a little easier and that's mainly because hydrogen is locally available. The nice thing about dual fuel and the Guardian HDS system is that if hydrogen is not available you run on diesel. So you don't have that operational and logistical you know side of things where you you know go from point A to point B and then you have to go to a different location and there's no hydrogen available. That logistical cost is mitigated with with

The Guardian HGS.

Gordon Sheppard (10:21.208)
I love it. And it's so fun. I'm going to say for my own non-technical mind, I'm going to say you've built a better engine that has two sources of fuel and you are now going through the product market fit realities that it takes to get that out in the world. And you are committed to doing it for all those kind of right reasons in a sense. And you're actually getting it done in all these different places where you're experimenting with who's going to love it and finding out where the low hanging fruit is. My guess is when we talk about the trucking industry, not unlike

talking to some of the people I'm talking to in the building industry on this podcast who are trying to innovate through incumbents, the way things have been done, mentalities that you need to kind of break through with, and you're kind of managing all of that all at once. How fantastic. So we got to this moment where we kind of know what the win is. You're proud of this deployment of your technology out there in the world. I always like to get into what I call the anatomy of a win. When we look at any win, there's always sort of a strategy, a work plan, people, operations, and results.

that give us a chance to kind of break the wind down a little bit. So you've had a couple of technologies you took out to market before you built this engine. What was the strategy behind building the engine? What were the goals, the values, the vision behind making this one happen?

Rebecca Goldsack - DTI (11:34.777)
Well, it's definitely multi-dimensional. So given our past experience of technology, that was a huge stepping stone for us to be able to take and adopt this to this technology. If we had started from scratch, we would still be talking about doing this. And that allowed us to take our system so it will run up to 80 % hydrogen, 20 % diesel and an idle, and 40 to 50 % driving down the highway.

We also are able to reduce our CO2 and NOx emissions by our methodology in which we do that. it is really, a lot of it is just existing knowledge of what we do and how we do it. And then the people, right? I was talking about like, have an amazing team behind me and when we work, have a client that comes to us and says, hey, can you do it for this application? Obviously there's different challenges with.

different applications as to where do you put the tanks and that kind of thing. But our team is very much working collaborative because it's not one person that can take this to the finish line. It's multiple different people working towards that. So I guess the other one is definitely the people, the team that I have working with us to ultimately know that they've...

We've, we've seen it time and time again. you know, we had one of our, it's kind of a subset of our technology, our guardian league detection system. You know, one of our engineers said, well, why don't we just develop this ourselves? and it's, know, an engineer that came up with this as saying, let's do this. So these types of things of making sure that they have the buy-in that, you know, and I very much am on this podcast, you know, saying that, you know, our team.

thought of this idea. It wasn't me coming to it, but it definitely helps garner the overall team effort because it is not one person.

Gordon Sheppard (13:40.408)
So strategically, I'm hearing in the background, you've got the values. You were willing to change from sort of your regular industry into the innovation space. You developed the innovation sort of chops to pull that forward. You had a vision for how you wanted to impact the environment. There's something about profitability in here too that has to be real for business. There must be an element of that is that how did you see that it was gonna be, I'm gonna say financially feasible as well, kind of when you started out? Because technology development takes time. It's a big investment, big risk to a certain degree, but how did you have that part?

balanced out to know that it was worth going for.

Rebecca Goldsack - DTI (14:13.144)
Well, that's a big part of this. When you compare hydrogen fuel cell vehicles that cost three times the cost of what a typical, just gonna give an example, a class eight, a semi truck where you can go down to your local dealership and pay 200,000 for that vehicle, it does not make financial sense for a capital expenditure. We as regular humans cannot afford to have our

know, costs go up three times to move that bread from one location to another or fuel from one location to another. So this is where this technology really helps keep that existing asset on the road, which helps ultimately with that adoption of it. And ultimately this is really mitigating the chicken and egg because obviously you need hydrogen in a location in order to be able to do the retrofit. But you also have a technology where you're keeping that asset on the road.

you know, depending on a fleet, know, the cost of a vehicle, you know, pre-COVID to what it is now is about 50 % or $50,000 more than it would have been. know, fleets are going to keep those assets a little longer than they would have typically because the cost of it's just increasing. And so this just allows, you know, for that capex cost because the system is, you know, you can amortize it over extensive period of time.

So it allows them to keep that asset and ultimately decarbonize it at the same time.

Gordon Sheppard (15:46.83)
So I'm gonna, if I'm gonna pay three more times, three times more for your cool thing to transport my stuff, I'm gonna make, it makes more economic sense because you're saying this is gonna amortize over a longer period of time because the engine lasts longer, is that fair?

Rebecca Goldsack - DTI (16:01.037)
Yeah, so the reason and rationale for that is because a hydrogen fuel cell vehicle, so a complete net zero technology is give or take about $600,000 Canadian to do, whereas a typical diesel one is about $200,000. So the cost of doing that just makes it prohibitive for fleets to be able to do. So this way you add on this kit and then you are

decarbonizing while keeping that existing asset. That's 200,000.

Gordon Sheppard (16:34.478)
So we're going to, we want to really work with companies that are aligned with your values. mean, you're proving that you're taking it out to market. You're finding the clients that are aligned with sort of your environmental goals. They're willing to absorb maybe a higher upfront cost, but they also know then the benefits down the line are going to make financial sense for them kind of in the long run as we kind of get that out. And it's funny, if we got into fully breaking out the costs right now, it's not as simple as three times as much because there's many other factors here that are involved. And I don't mean to.

sort of do the detailed analysis. I'm sure people can get in touch if they want to see how you're going to make it go. And then as we see the price of hydrogen come down on a per unit basis, that's also going to evolve as the hydrogen deploys. But again, you're building up the ecosystem to kind of get there. So it's pioneering to a certain degree. And you're in that sort of zone where you're kind of making it all happen. That's great. So we've got some strategic insights. Along there, there's sort of a timeline or a work plan that we need to make our strategy occur. I've heard some major milestones.

got the whiteboard out right now and I was able to put that timeline up, I'm just gonna say, there was a major innovation in 04, there's another major innovation down a few years later, this one comes a few years later in terms of major moments along the way. Any other major highlights, moments like a big sale, a moment, an adoption moment that's sort of specific that we can help us to know that contributed to the win.

Rebecca Goldsack - DTI (17:54.201)
Well another huge win for me personally was at the Canadian Hydrogen Convention I actually won Canadian Hydrogen Leader of the Year award so it's nice to be recognized for the work that Myself and my team is doing but it's it's nice to get a little Award and have a plaque to be able to put on the wall to kind of quantify all this hard work that We've been doing

Gordon Sheppard (18:20.674)
Congratulations, because when you got to go break eggs in a new field, mean, obviously that reflects then I'm going to say what a decade of work on you said because you said that earlier, it's about a decade you've got in. Is that fair in your own work?

Rebecca Goldsack - DTI (18:32.45)
So we actually only started in hydrogen about the last five years. So we've done other technologies, been in other markets, but this one, the hydrogen specific is about five years worth.

Gordon Sheppard (18:45.9)
One of my favorite consulting questions actually is what happens if we get it right? And you would have imagined that a lot. You're smiling like what happens if we get this right?

Rebecca Goldsack - DTI (18:54.776)
Yeah, that's very much, you we've had mandates come out. So back in 2018, Transport Canada came down with legislation on the emergency positive air shutdown system. And so with that, you know, we had a 600 % increase in sales. We had to, you know, add people to our team, train them on the systems. So we are definitely interested in.

you know, while those days were very stressful, they also allowed us to make sure that we have all the everything, all of our I's dotted and T's crossed in all essence to be able to, you know, work with what we're doing and, you know, make sure that we're meeting the demands of what we're trying to achieve. So then when you take into account this one, you know, we looked at, we actually did a program through Mount Royal University that we actually looked at

you know, growth scale. making sure that we had, you know, different themes within our business to make sure that we could meet the demands as this ever increases. This is a perfect example of our system is actually a kit format. So we are not doing this so that we physically have to install because we have 15 days. We do not have the space to scale to the level that we want to do with this. We have the pilots in our shop, but we have

over 600 dealers within our network for our other technologies that we can then say, hey, are you interested in doing this in this region? Here's the kit, we trained you on it. So making sure that our scalability is definitely built into that. Other parts of that that we've worked on, we actually just in the fall of 2024, we worked with Nate on a micro credential program.

So now you can go take that program at NAIT that teaches you about hydrogen so that you have the information right from that entity that helps because we are only one person and we can only do so much and I spend a lot of my day educating but providing a 16 hour course, that is their expertise so it was great because we could give them all the data that they needed.

Rebecca Goldsack - DTI (21:18.488)
and they were able to make a program out of it that can be mass used throughout the industry and across other polytechnics and worldwide.

Gordon Sheppard (21:31.758)
when we drop this Rebecca pebble in the pond, there's a lot of waves that go around, right? So again, it's so fun that we started with your win as, we developed this cool engine, but guess what? And you know, right, there's your impact as the chairperson for Hydrogen Alberta. There's the Canadian Hydrogen Association recognition of what you're doing. There's the team that you have internally, which I'd love to talk about next. I know you talked on and on about having these wonderful examples of some of the engineers who are so creative.

within your team. Also, they make you look like a rock star because you get to walk down the hallway and sort of draw on their expertise at a kind of a given moment. Is there any other examples from the team moment? I know there's on the innovation side you mentioned, but any other team highlights that you'd like to point out when you're bragging about what you do?

Rebecca Goldsack - DTI (22:17.976)
I'll give one example. So we had the Canadian Hydrogen Convention last week or two weeks ago here in Edmonton and You know, they I always say that you know You can definitely get very pigeon-holed when you kind of sit at your desk and you know work on your specific project So it was great We actually had everyone from our team at some point throughout the convention come and see kind of the big picture as to what everyone else is doing, you know looking at other technologies and

you know, give them kind of the why as to what we're doing. So that makes it very exciting for them because I think that they just kind of get the big picture and you know, as much as we try to make sure that they're involved with customer conversations and stuff, I think it just helps kind of broaden their horizons for know, Hydrogen and other projects that we're working on.

Gordon Sheppard (23:12.142)
So again, you're taking the time even to send them on field trips to a certain degree, right? Where you're getting a chance to kind of get out there in the world and really dig and dig the why, the why is coming up very consistently with what it is. And I always like to ask people, you know, cause people's that third step in the anatomy of a win. How would you describe your own attitude? I know it's been coming across in spades, but how would you describe your own attitude in, your leadership role in helping to move things forward?

Rebecca Goldsack - DTI (23:17.048)
That's

Rebecca Goldsack - DTI (23:36.985)
I definitely think, you know, I'm a half glass full kind of mentality. Do not get me wrong, there is days where I, you know, I'm like, this is not moving. You know, I always joke that I'm in the hurry up and wait business. You know, I, you know, being from private enterprise with like, you know, a conversation and, you know, things to move along quicker. And, you know, we definitely have setbacks of, you know, different things happening, you know, hydrogen.

You know hydrogen availability when we first started this project versus what we have now You know those those types of things that you know definitely just stall you from you know making the real progress that you you want to make But you know I love that no two days are ever the same at the same time, too But yeah, definitely you know it's It makes those those hard setbacks You know when you do end up getting those wins and getting you know different projects to to the finish line

all that more exciting because you know what the gravity and you know everything that it took to be able to to get to that that milestone so you know when you talk about the first unit that we ever did the diversified motor coach right you know the learnings that we had from that versus what you know how long it took us to to get that unit on the road versus now what we're able to turn around a unit right but it's all that progression of

learning and adapting and it's not a one size fits all for everyone. Some things need to change and adapt, but making sure that we have the ability to point and pivot and have that creativity to know that it's not a one size fits all and that we need to be a little bit creative for that. An example of that was we actually developed what we call our Guardian HD.

FDL system, so that's our fleet data logger. And what we found was we went out to a lot of fleets and municipalities and they they're like, well, we want to do this, but we also need to build a business case and have the data to back up why we're why we're doing this. So we decided to develop this subset of the FDL where we install a black box and it's got GSM so that we actually take that information. We can say based on this duty cycle for this particular application,

Rebecca Goldsack - DTI (26:01.559)
this is how many hours you're running a day, this is how much time you're idling, this is what your RPMs are, all that data that then we can take and build that business case as to, this is what your, ultimately what your GHG is expected to be an impact of, and this is what the kit cost is. So we've had a few fleets that have done it that they've ended up, I had one fleet that was buying one, it was called the Cummins X15 for years.

during COVID they couldn't get that engine. So they were, they bought, buying the MX 13, which is another manufacturer. And they also use that same data to look at, okay, going forward, which engine are we gonna, are we gonna go with? So there's a lot of business cases where this can be, you know, adapted and used for. So those, you know, that was a point in pivot of, okay, we can do this. Let's, let's work and retool ourselves so that we can meet this.

this working for what we have. you know, those are some of those times.

Gordon Sheppard (27:05.08)
Well, and I can sure hear the glass half full because what's, you know, the machine gun fire of great stories that come quickly from you. You can hear that every conversation that you're in, whether you're educating those students, I'm gonna say at the post-secondaries or you're, I'm sure, client facing or whether you're dealing with your staff, it sounds well earned when you're winning these awards and accolades. It makes a ton of sense. And again, when we look at pioneers in an industry, folks like you are the folks that kind of are a piece of that puzzle.

that kind of make things go. We've heard a little bit about the strategy. We've talked about some of the work plan moments along the way. Heard droves of people opportunities around expertise and again, the glass half full. Operationally is a big part of the win. We need operational highlights along the way. And I've heard a few of them. One, we've made pivots as needed. have the ability with this, I'm gonna say, we earn knowledge along the way. We didn't just start cold out of nowhere.

We've understood the regulatory environment, this kind of thing. If you had to pick out sort of operational highlights to get you this win, is there one or two that you can kind of focus on to let us know?

Rebecca Goldsack - DTI (28:13.782)
gosh, that's a difficult question. think operationally, a big thing for us is just having in-house team. You know, we have the facility here that we can, you know, a heavy duty technician can, you know, take, you know, a part off for a mechanical engineer to configure something. So it's really that hands on, you know, we have the facility here.

where they can actually look and touch and see and feel. And then you've got our overall system. So when we develop things, we're not just doing it from an engineer's perspective because in the real world, when that heavy duty technician is working on that vehicle, if some part is in the wrong spot, they're gonna swear it up and down because why did an engineer do it this way? But if you have that, which we have, that...

heavy duty technician perspective on how do you make this work in the real world. there's several things that when we're developing this that you're not just having one perspective and it's that operational side of like how do you actually implement this. So this is that kit format making it as simple as we possibly can so that the adaptation makes it easier. I always talk about

one of our first technologies when I was talking about our Guardian e-logs, the electronic logging device or our Guardian e-pass, we make sure to include all the hoses, all the clamps, because as an industry, our heavy duty technicians, they used to get annoyed all the time when they get a component in and they are not, they're missing something, a fuse for it, and so then they have to go back to the office, ask for that part.

So it's just making sure that we're keeping everything in in that kit or even things like you know It you know save some costs on a clamp by buying a cheaper Cheaper version of that but the end of the day when that thing when it blows off because it's crap You know, we're the ones that get the phone call back. We're the ones that have to wear that warranty So put a better quality clamp in you don't have warranties. You have an overall happier customer

Rebecca Goldsack - DTI (30:33.872)
And it's a win-win all around for that customer that doesn't have to call you for an issue. But those are kind of things that we've learned. And just from what we've done operationally, making sure that we have all over. And I mean, we are not perfect, but we definitely have lots of experience and lots of learnings.

Gordon Sheppard (30:59.574)
And you can really hear that you're on the iterative side of things in terms, and then I love the perspective of the CEO with his own 40 years of hands-on experience, right? He understands that. And you can hear the integration that you've done. And it's a big deal to vertically integrate things, right? Because the temptation I'm sure is there. You could go into a multi-supplier model where you sort of moving things around when you're manufacturing. But in this case, you've chosen to have the in-house expertise on the engineering side meets

the heavy duty mechanic side meets the customer iterative get it right side. Like how wonderful to pull all that together and funny we were talking about operations, but we could be talking about strategy because that's very intentional, but that doesn't happen overnight in terms of what you're doing. It really is an iterative process to kind of get you there. What a great operational highlight to point out. And again, how satisfied, satisfying it must be for the people producing on your end, as well as your customers at the backend as well. That's another deep, deep rabbit hole. We could go down a little bit more. The fifth step.

in the anatomy of wind for this conversation is finally the results. So if you had to look at this wind and talk about, know, what are some of the qualitative and quantitative results that you can measure for this wind that you can let us know about?

Rebecca Goldsack - DTI (32:10.68)
Yeah, I guess for us, it really comes down to, we're a small team of 40, so depending on who you're talking to, whether we're a small or medium business. But it's really that grassroots that you don't need to be a huge corporation that has multi-million dollar R &D departments to develop technology. You can really be an Edmonton Alberta.

Canadian based organization that is actually going to you know pave the way for you know hydrogen adoption Within the Canadian and worldwide market, but then also to the fact that you know we we we have a history of doing it we have the ability to do this and you know ultimately that's that's where you know the success of of what we're doing and you can't put a you can't put a

blessing on what we've been able to do and I think that for us is a huge win. We want to have our technology, there's a million registered vehicles in Canada alone, 40 times that in the US. So having our technology adopted by a good chunk of fleets is that that's ultimately where we see this going and our ability to have that.

that technology adoption for industry because I think that, you know, well, you know, our net zero targets are an amazing concept. You know, we definitely need to do a walk before you run. You're not going to have success without, you know, making those strategic steps towards the decarbonization. And I think that, you know, what we've seen within governments especially,

is less of a focus on net zero and more a focus on decarbonization and providing that pathway towards that and that's ultimately where our technology fits in. 2030 I always say is only really four years away, which has a 30 % reduction and that 2050 net zero, how are we actually going to

Rebecca Goldsack - DTI (34:31.69)
achieve these targets. This is one of those solutions that is definitely going to be able to get us there. So, you know, I want the Guardian HDS as a mainstay kit to go on to multiple different applications and chassis.

Gordon Sheppard (34:50.158)
Well, thank you for my kids, You know, you can hear again your values kind of screaming through and it's so fun for me meeting the leaders on this show. I don't think anybody said money. There's always a reason. There's always the team. There's always this sort of, you know, incrementally kind of making things better in this kind of thing. I always like to ask just to hear at the end, if you had sort of advice for other leaders, because this podcast is for leaders to learn from leaders like yourself, any suggestions?

brief suggestions about what sort of things you would pass along in the context of what we've been talking about today.

Rebecca Goldsack - DTI (35:26.744)
My biggest thing is network, network, network. Get out there, get your name out. Talk to, get uncomfortable, go strike up a conversation with a random person that you don't know. Get into these, there's lots of networking events that are out there, depending on whatever discipline that you're in. But it's that connecting the dots that can lead to...

these interesting organic conversations. I've had this happen time and time again. went to an event in Saskatchewan. It was an AGM and I was like, my God, this is not. There wasn't more than 50 people there and I was like, gosh. We ended up finding a great client that has been a huge leader in the Saskatchewan.

region for for hydrogen and we never would have met him had I not Decided to drive those eight hours to Regina to you know go to that meeting to you know have that conversation so you just never know when when the Our paths are gonna cross But all too often you know I'll get an email from someone saying hey, I don't know so-and-so or I'm looking for XYZ Can you put me in the direction you know that that is ultimately what?

You know, it's just knowing someone of, I've had a conversation with whatever, and just putting those conversations together. So I always say network, network, network. doesn't matter what industry you're in. It is definitely a key to our success, for sure.

Gordon Sheppard (37:13.518)
Great closing advice. Funny enough, the podcast, someone has described as facilitated networking, because I'm starting now, I've met enough people, and I'm like, that's interesting. you need somebody on the VC side. Well, why don't you meet Petros from episode eight, and he'd be a good, like all these kinds of things are coming up. That's really just terrific. Obviously, we could talk for hours and hours and hours. I appreciate your half, I'd say the glass is full from talking to you here today. Really appreciate that you took the time to share your story. Thank you so much for being on the show.

Rebecca Goldsack - DTI (37:43.33)
Thanks for having me.