There’s not much that’s bolted down to the floor of the 40,000-square-foot factory in Seattle’s SoDo district where First Mode plans to build powertrain conversion kits for mining trucks — and that’s by design.
“The factory itself represents the latest in smart manufacturing,” First Mode CEO Julian Soles said during today’s ribbon-cutting ceremony, with Washington Gov. Jay Inslee in attendance. “It’s ‘software-defined’ rather than a hard-point-constrained facility. Nearly every component’s shelf and assembly sequence is digitized for maximum speed and data management.”
If the production requirements change, the floor plan can change accordingly. First Mode is also taking advantage of digital tools for tracking the supply chain.
“Every workstation, every inventory location, every product that moves through the facility is equipped with a bar code and has a digital twin,” Philipp Nonnast, senior global supply manager for First Mode, explained during a factory tour.
Display screens that have been hung above the shop floor track the flow of hardware through the production line, and flag bottlenecks as they arise.
Even the wrenches have gone digital. Bill Huntington, First Mode’s director of manufacturing, showed off a torque wrench that’s programmed to give bolts just the right amount of torque. A computerized database registers the part being tightened, as well as the workstation where the job was done.
First Mode says the SoDo factory — which previously served as a furniture store, and then as a warehouse for COVID-era protective gear — was converted to serve its purposes at a cost of $22 million. The six-year-old company also has other facilities in Seattle; a proving ground in Centralia, Wash.; and additional offices in Australia, Britain, Chile and South Africa.
By the end of the year, First Mode plans to start turning out retrofit kits for heavy mining trucks — including the hardware for diesel-hybrid, battery-electric and hydrogen fuel-cell powertrains. Up to 60 workers at the facility are projected to ramp up production to an initial target of 150 kits annually, and eventually to as many as 300 kits a year.
Those kits will be shipped from the factory to locations around the world, for installation onto ultra-class mining haul trucks that weigh as much as 200 tons and stand as tall as three-story buildings.
“In mining, a typical ultra-class haul truck burns around 1 million liters of diesel per year, and is in operation continuously for nearly 10 to 15 years,” Soles said. “Across our target geography, there’s about 13,000 haul trucks in operation today, and they release nearly 35 million tons of CO2 per year.”
Soles said converting all those trucks to zero carbon emissions would be the clean-tech equivalent of taking 8 million automotive vehicles off the road — which is roughly the number of vehicles registered in Washington state.
Gradual steps to zero carbon emissions
The mining industry is interested in taking First Mode’s “Path to Zero,” but not in one giant leap, according to Soles. That’s why First Mode recently added a hybrid option to its conversion offerings, as part of a strategic pivot that also involved job cuts.
“We’re going to walk the journey with our customers to figure out what is the best solution for them, and when they fit, we figure it out together, whether it’s battery or hydrogen fuel cells,” he said. “We’re then able to adapt those platforms, retrofit them and get into full zero.”
First Mode’s factory is also following a path to net zero. Thanks to the company’s participation in Seattle City Light’s Green Up renewable-energy credit program, “this factory here will have all of its electricity completely offset,” Soles said.
Inslee said First Mode was “perfectly named” to match Washington state’s role in the clean-tech revolution.
“Naming it ‘First Mode’ is the right way to think of this,” he told an audience of employees and VIPs. “We are first with the most aggressive effort to reduce climate change gases in our state. We are first in the development not only of battery manufacturing, but [also first in] integrating companies like this that are focusing not just on batteries, but hydrogen as well. So, to be first out of the gate in any revolution is the place to be.”
Inslee recited a litany of the region’s clean-tech initiatives — including the $1 billion plan to create a hydrogen hub in the Pacific Northwest, next-gen battery ventures such as Group14, the recent opening of a Vicinity Motors factory for building electric trucks and buses, and commercial fusion power ventures such as Helion Energy, Zap Energy and Avalanche.
“In the clean energy revolution, there’s no silver bullet,” he told GeekWire. “There’s no silver hydrogen or silver batteries. There’s just golden buckshot, and we have to do multiple things. Fortunately, we have multiple technologies to move forward with, and they’ll move at a certain pace. Maybe one moves and hits a roadblock, and the other advances. We see that in every revolution.”
Inslee wasn’t bothered by the fact that First Mode has had to shift its clean-tech strategy. “This company, obviously, by the fruits of this development, shows that it’s real. They’re going to do real things,” he said.
On track for new markets
During his talk at the ribbon-cutting ceremony, Inslee referred to an upcoming strategic move at First Mode. He praised the company for focusing on ways to decarbonize “locomotives, giant trucks, large industrial equipment.”
“I just heard a train go by,” he told the crowd. “It was burning diesel. It was putting out smoke. It was doing pollution that’s causing asthma and climate change. One of these days, we’re going to be held up by that whistle blow on a train, and you can think of First Mode, and you can realize you were there at the beginning.”
In response to a question about Inslee’s references to trains and locomotives, Soles acknowledged that First Mode’s hardware might soon be riding the rails.
“Hopefully we should be able to announce in the next month that we’re going to start locomotive projects, starting with a very similar transition, starting with hybrids,” he told GeekWire. “And then, afterwards, later on, we’ll be starting with full battery or hydrogen. That’s pretty much use-case dependent.”
Update for Feb. 22: First Mode has shared a LinkedIn post that features a video from Geoffrey Pyatt, U.S. assistant secretary of state for the Bureau of Energy Resources, in which he discusses how the company is addressing the climate challenge at the intersection of clean energy technology and mining. Here’s the post:
