Hydrogen power systems in vehicles currently consist of a disjointed collection of components, taken from several industries and often at varying levels of maturity. There is also a lack of standardisation in the industry due to variations in technology, and immature regulatory frameworks. As such, system performance and commercial viability are often compromised.
Viritech aim to bridge the gaps to accelerate the adoption of hydrogen as part of the decarbonisation toolkit. Their hardware and software work with any system elements and the core system architectures and software strategies can be scaled across multiple system sizes and sectors.
In his role as Chief Technology Officer, Simon Willis is concerned with running the engineering team and managing concepts through to delivery. He notes that: “At the micro scale, my role is to smooth the path and remove roadblocks for our small team of talented engineers to allow them to focus on their key engineering tasks”.
Simon recognises that one of his strengths is that he the only full time C-Suite member of the team and the most senior engineer but is concerned that has no prior experience of scaling a company and growing a team of 50+ people. Using the Shott Scale Up Accelerator he hopes to explore this sustainable growth with other mentors and participants to support the next phase of Viritech’s business growth.
He also reflects that; “I have a good network from a variety of industries who I can lean on, but none from a technology background.” This means the opportunity under the Shott Scale Up Accelerator to meet and work with people with relevant experience is very valuable and will undoubtedly support his professional development.
Viritech have created a solid toolkit of enabling technologies. Simon’s vision for the company for the next 12 months is to deploy these into commercially viable systems or applications and find manufacturing partners to collaborate to exploit the technology. Their capability and end-to-end knowledge of hydrogen power systems and engineering services will play a key part in the generation of early revenues. Securing a high value multiyear project is a key objective for the next period.
