Very good. Good afternoon. We'll start the next session here. We'd like to welcome all of you to the Atoms for Climate Pavilion sponsored by the International Atomic Energy Agency. This afternoon's session will focus on hydrogen production for nuclear energy, a pathway to scaling the hydrogen market. And it's an important topic and we're delighted to have nice distinguished guests here to help us dive deep into that topic. Also with some introductions, we'll then have some brief remarks from Elina Teplinsky to set a little bit of the context as well and then we'll dive in into the panel discussion. But first a little bit introducing our panelists. We'll have first here, as I mentioned, Teplinsky. She's a partner at Pillsbury and leader of the energy practice there as well. We have Yves Desbazel, who's a director general of Nuclear Europe. We're glad to have Shannon Raksitin from Idaho National Lab where she's director of Integrated Energy and Storage Systems. And I'm Ingrira, who's the innovation incubation manager at Westinghouse Electric and also on another hat is the chair of the Hydrogen Task Force at Nuclear Europe. So very glad to have. My name is Carlos Leipner. I'm a director of Nuclear Energy, a Clean Air Task Force, Global Environmental NGO. And happy to announce also that Elina and I are co-chairs of the Nuclear Hydrogen Initiative, which is an open platform for different stakeholders who are interested in this space as we promote and debate and discuss how to grow nuclear into this hydrogen ecosystem. So if you have interest, please look us up. But starting a little bit, setting the context and before I pass on to Elina, I think the hydrogen ecosystem has been very dynamic. I think we've seen quite a bit of changes and improvements and progress in the last 12 months and some good and some bad. I think we've seen an incredible number of projects being announced worldwide in general, not just nuclear, but I'm talking about hydrogen projects, over a thousand projects. That's the good side. The bad side is that less than 10% of those have actually reached final investment decision milestones. So there's still a lot of work to be done. There's still this belief that hydrogen will play a very important role in decarbonization, particularly in those industrial segments that are hard to decarbonize or electrify. But we've seen some adjustment in projections too in terms of costs. There's this need to drive costs of hydrogen to a more competitive situation, particularly clean hydrogen. And we've seen some assessments for the levelized costs of hydrogen being adjusted between 30% and 65% actually higher. And some of that driven by higher capex, electrolyzer costs have gone up, some driven to financing, so capital costs have had an impact, and even renewable costs. So we need to figure out where does nuclear fit into all of this. So a lot of expectation on how nuclear can play into this. I think we've seen within the last year quite a number of movements from a policy standpoint, and maybe Alina can touch to that in the panel, but not only in the U.S. with the hydrogen hubs coming into play, as well as the Inflation Abduction Act, the production tax credits, which clearly have had an impact into the sector system. But Europe as well with the clean hydrogen and investment tax credit, also in Canada, sorry, in Canada, also making an impact. And then the renewable energy directive in Europe also being part of this mix. So maybe we can dive into that a little bit. But in terms of nuclear, there's still some questions about how can that be scaled up and low temperature, high temperature, thermochemical, different pathways for nuclear. So I'm excited to dive into the discussion, look at the opportunities, the barriers. And with all four to do, perhaps Alina, take us through that a little bit. Thank you. Thank you so much, Carlos, for this great introduction. I'll just spend a couple of minutes maybe laying the baseline of where we are with hydrogen production, why do we need it, and where can nuclear and where should nuclear play a role. So as Carlos discussed already, hydrogen is really seen as kind of the tool, a multifaceted tool to decarbonize the hard-to-abate sectors. And I've put some of these sectors up on the slide. Transportation is really big, some marine shipping, medium to long-term, long-haul trucking, process heat for various industries. I was at the cement pavilion next door talking about the role of how the hydrogen could play in decarbonized cement production, which is about 7% of emissions today. It's very significant. Steel and iron making, and a district cooling and heating, which mostly uses natural gas today and hydrogen can be substituted for natural gas. Of course, all of this is very significant. So there are various estimates of how much hydrogen we're going to need. One is 660 million metric tons of hydrogen. It's about 22% of final global energy demand. The numbers are all over the board, depending on which study you look at, but the answer is a lot of hydrogen. And even some of the lowest numbers I've seen, we'd need about 600 gigawatts of electricity just to produce this hydrogen by 2030. So quite a big task. So where is hydrogen production today? 98% of hydrogen is produced through a process called SMR. It's not small modular reactors. It's steam method reforming, and it is a very carbon-intensive process. It uses natural gas or coal to produce hydrogen. Through a very proven technology, hydrogens produced today easily through this process, but not a pathway to really decarbonize through a carbon-intensive process. There's also biomass gasification, which if you apply carbon-caption storage could produce low-carbon hydrogen, but doesn't exactly get you to zero-carbon hydrogen. So what are the ways we can produce zero-carbon hydrogen? It's really nuclear and renewables paired with a process called electrolysis. And there are different types of electrolytic processes. There is low-temperature, high-temperature electrolysis, and then there's a process called thermochemical splitting. So nuclear is quite unique in that nuclear can produce both electricity and heat. And currently heat that's produced in nuclear power plants is waste heat. We don't use it for anything. So it is an available product of redirecting steam, for example, or producing steam using electricity that can be fed into this higher efficiency high-temperature electrolysis process. With renewables, because they produce only electricity unless you use concentrated solar, you are basically limited for the most part to low-temperature electrolysis. But given the amount of hydrogen we're going to need, all processes that produce zero-carbon hydrogen are necessary. Nuclear is really unique because of those characteristics. But also, if you look at the energy density of nuclear, that is a very unique feature of nuclear. As all of us who are in the nuclear industry know, already we struggle with land use and renewables just to satisfy power needs. If we also have these industrial decarbonization requirements, and hydrogen is just one of those, we're going to need something that is energy-intensive and that is nuclear. Of course, with small modular reactors and advanced reactors, they offer very unique benefits because they can be sited closer to population centers. They can be excited at or close to industrial sites where the hydrogen is actually needed. One of the issues with hydrogen is that the transportation costs are very high currently unless you convert it into something else like ammonia, which then needs to be reconverted back to hydrogen. So if you can site a reactor close to the industrial production site, that is a good proposition as far as cost efficiency. And then, of course, all the other things with SMRs, they're better suited for industrial uses because they're small and modular. But let's not forget the existing operating reactors. Many nuclear operators today actually have projects to put electrolyzers at or close to their sites to produce hydrogen. And because of the energy density of nuclear, not much electricity and or heat is needed to produce very, very significant amounts of hydrogen. And many of these nuclear power plants are already located close enough to these destinations where the hydrogen is needed for steel production to produce ammonia and other transportation and industry uses. So just one minute on the policy landscape today. Hydrogen is everywhere. I think NHI, the Nuclear Hydrogen Initiative, a release of a report last year that had a map that had less green on it, had about 30 countries that had put forward hydrogen strategies, hydrogen policies and roadmaps. This year, it's already 53 plus the EU. And it's even happening on a local and regional level. We're doing the research to update the paper, which should be out very shortly. There were, for example, 21 Chinese provinces, just provinces themselves that release hydrogen roadmaps. So it's really global. Most of the world is looking at hydrogen. And I'm happy to say that quite a few of these jurisdictions include nuclear in their hydrogen roadmaps. As Carlos mentioned, in the United States, nuclear is really part of hydrogen production strategy. The hydrogen production strategy and roadmaps, they're all technology neutral focused on greenhouse gas emissions. You see something very similar in Canada. A number of the European countries, like France, are adopting a technology neutral stance. There's still some work to be done in some places where hydrogen is still green hydrogen or clean hydrogen is being tied to renewables only. And there's not enough recognition of the role of nuclear, but things are sort of moving in a positive direction. So with that, I will leave about more of the discussion to the panel. Thank you. Thank you so much, Alina, for that. They really set the context for what we're about to get in, and let me just go back to this slide here. And maybe building upon all the changes, particularly in the policy side, let's dive a little bit into that and starting with the Europe. Traditionally, EU politics hadn't really favored nuclear too much, but we've seen a tide of change there, right? So recently, with the taxonomy, with the inclusion of nuclear in the NADZERO Industry Act, can you talk about these developments and how they may impact the hydrogen economy in the EU? Yeah. Thank you for this question, and thank you for organizing this debate. I think it's a very important one. Maybe let me start with maybe three statements first. First of all, clearly, and somehow it was reminded a little bit by Alina, but hydrogen production with electrolyzers needs stability. And if we want to get down the road of cost, CAPEX expenditure, we need to produce it nearly all the way along. And not because I'm saying this because in a lot of people's minds, then you can have electrolyzers sort of compensating the intermentancy of renewables and then turn it on and off all the time. I don't think it's a way forward, to be honest. We need stability and we need to operate electrolyzers during a significant share of the year. This is my first statement. Second statement, there have been a debate in Europe on the question of colors. Hydrogen, pink, blue, gray, whatever, the color, and I think it is a wrong debate. This debate has totally derailed, and we've seen this in the last Renewable Directive discussions with where you have the green hydrogen and the rest of the world, where actually the true matrix should be carbon contained, full stop. And the rest is, blah, blah, I would say, peasant in discussions. So this is my second statement, third statement is the objective the EU has set for itself in 2030, so in seven years from now, are just mind-boggling mind-boggling. If you think about numbers, the objective is to produce 20 million tons of green hydrogen, so we are back to the question of colors, 20 million tons what I think people don't realize exactly what it means. 20 million tons which translated in product, for example, hydrogen coming from nuclear, and it is equivalent of 125 gigawatts of nuclear capacity producing 247. And here I'm talking about new installed capacity, not the existing nuclear because the existing nuclear is already operating for producing power. So those numbers show that the objective are impossible to meet, and they are even more impossible to meet if you see in the policies, EU policies that nuclear produce, hydrogen produced by nuclear is simply disregarded. We cannot consider nuclear in any of the assessment objective, nuclear is not in. So sorry to have this lengthy introduction, but to respond to your question, we've seen indeed some progress, many many files you quoted, but unfortunately on hydrogen, we are simply, I think, never been gone nowhere. There's still a big gap. The last conclusion of the directive on renewables that basically came in 23, basically nuclear hydrogen is not recognized anywhere to put it simply. And we need, there is a battle to be fought, another battle, but for 2030 the battle is lost. Our expectation is that we are going to have another discussion on the 20-40 objective that will be the last, I would say, intermediate objective before net zero 2050. And our belief is that we'll have to come back on this debate because, yeah, for me we are never, we are nowhere today. Thanks for that. It's a good story and a bad story, right? I mean, at the same time, no, it's very interesting. And turning to the US, Shannon, and I want to maybe do a deeper dive on all that's going on in INL in a little bit. But first, if you could talk to, to build upon what you've said, all the momentum in the US with the hydrogen hubs, with the production tax credit, how do you think that has really impacted the market? So thank you very much, Carlos, for the question, for the opportunity to be here. We are doing a lot of work in the United States, and I'll start by just clarifying what Idaho National Lab is because I do see a few unfamiliar faces in the audience. INL is one of 17 Department of Energy National Laboratories in the United States, and we are the lead nuclear energy laboratory. But we do a lot of work in other applications as well, including renewable energy. And with regard to hydrogen, we're the lead laboratory for high-temperature steam electrolysis. So I'll hold on talking about some of what we're doing in the testing and development work there. But there's been a greater realization toward the need for clean energy. I have to say thank you, Eve, for getting the colors discussion out, because I fully agree with you. When we start using these different terminologies, we get confused. So I have to applaud a lot of the language that we've been seeing coming out in the U.S. is it's referring to clean. It's referring to a clean hydrogen standard, clean production tax credits. And that's what we need to do. We need to get rid of some of this. In our bipartisan infrastructure law, 8 billion U.S. dollars was committed to hydrogen hubs. And those are clean hydrogen hubs. Another really remarkable thing with that language was that it required at least one of those hydrogen hubs to utilize natural gas, at least one to be based on renewable energy, and at least one to be based on nuclear energy. So putting that in the language to specify we need all of the above, we need to look at all of these solutions. And some of these are looking at combined solutions between those energy sources. So specifically with regard to those hydrogen hubs, it's been a little over a year now since that request for proposals was put out. And there were about 60 different proposals. So a lot of players in this space that came in in the pre-proposal stage to throw their hat into the ring on these large scale hydrogen production schemes. 30 were asked for full proposals. And just in October, seven were announced for those hydrogen hubs. And I'm really excited to explicitly utilize nuclear as their primary starting point in some of these studies. A third is expected to look at that with regard to their technoeconomic assessments that are a part of phase one. And in fact, six out of those seven hubs have that potential to utilize nuclear in the long run. So they're evaluating that in their technoeconomic assessments. I think that speaks really loudly to the value that nuclear energy brings to this. The need to look beyond just renewables, the need to look beyond just carbon capture with some of these solutions. Each of those hubs is on the order of $1 billion. So I mentioned $8 billion total going into these hubs. And I want to make sure I don't mess up this number. That's mobilized also. So initially $7 billion has been committed. But that's mobilized $40 billion in private investment funding toward these hydrogen hubs because these are cost shared. So these are a lot of companies putting in their own capital to demonstrate these technologies because of the value of that clean hydrogen in all of the things that Alina had up here and that will feed into our agricultural sector, steel manufacturing, chemical production, so many more opportunities. And we could talk a lot more about all of these things. But that's where we're at with these hubs and we're seeing a real commitment, bipartisan commitment in the United States toward these clean solutions. Indeed, indeed. We feel the momentum building on that. That's terrific, Shannon. Thank you for sharing some of that information. So there's some element of government policy. Another piece of the equation is the private sector and companies are engaging that. And I'm representing perhaps the vendors in a way. I know from a technology standpoint, Westinghouse has quite a number of technologies in your portfolio from AP1000, AP300, the Evinchi. I don't know if you could speak to, as we contemplate nuclear hydrogen moving forward, how technologies such as these can actually support that? Well, great. Thanks. First of all, Alina and Carlos for the invitation. Yes, I confirm that Westinghouse does have a large portfolio, let's say of products that can fit with hydrogen production. The existing nuclear power plants like the AP1000, it's something that of course can provide electricity and heat. And actually currently the AP1000 in China is delivering electricity and the heat is actually used to be used for heat district. So that heat can be also in future be used for hydrogen production. And then AP300, which is a micro small modular reactor that can of course be used to produce hydrogen next door to end users, like a heavy hard to abate sectors like steel industry or cement or oil and gas refineries, which at the end will also be a good opportunity to lower the cost because you won't have infrastructure to deliver hydrogen from kind of far location of production and another location of use it. And in the Westinghouse we do have also the micro reactor, which is a 5 megawatt EVINCI reactor, which is I think it can also help of course to deliver electricity and heat, but it will help to be combined and could generate with renewable energy. So it is actually something that many other players are exploring. So SMRs, nuclear power plants to be considered for the hydrogen. And if I add just one last sentence, I mean nuclear will help not only to produce hydrogen, but to produce it massively, which is actually the missing part of the hydrogen market. I mean we hear a lot, you mentioned 1000 projects, only 10% went to financial closing, right? But if you have only one project of nuclear producing hydrogen, that project can really produce massive quantity of hydrogen, which is a requirement from the whole value chain of hydrogen. I mean the hydrogen is not existing in enough quantity that satisfies the demand. And then the price of hydrogen at the pump is kind of very high, so which is a barrier for many sectors to go and invest and deploy, let's say mobility or other use case. So nuclear can contribute to produce low carbon, relatively short term because existing nuclear power plants are there, just need to be leveraged, especially the heat part. And of course high quantity. No, that's terrific. And I think we're going to do a deeper dive later on with the US and many demonstration projects going on. But first, Elina, bringing you back into the discussion here, permeating across the Atlantic here, both sides, is this issue of additionality that's impacting different policies. And not only that, but distribution early matching. Could you speak to how this is impacting different markets and obviously impact on hydrogen market? Yeah, absolutely, Carlos. I think it's the biggest debate in the hydrogen sphere today, these three issues of additionality, distribution and hourly matching. And I mean, I think the most controversial one is additionality. And this comes from some studies and some modeling that has been done by a number of environmental groups that said that, okay, you have grids that are today still fairly heavily fossil based. We don't have fully decarbonized grids in most places. And if you take the existing clean electricity that we already have, and you divert it to hydrogen production, that that means fossils will step in and they'll fill in the gap. So emissions will go up. That's kind of the main concern. The other two things are if you have a grid that's very fossil heavy in one place, but that is cleaner in another place, if you use some energy credits and you kind of trade them, that doesn't really get you to decarbonize hydrogen either. And then the last concern resulted with the idea of hourly matching is that you really should match the electricity using to produce hydrogen as clean around the clock to show that it is in fact clean hydrogen. I think these last two issues, distribution and hourly matching, they're more kind of administrative issues. So I think they haven't resulted in that much controversy because, you know, they're administrative in nature. But additionality is really big. Because today, whether you're talking about nuclear or you're talking about renewables, it is not easy to place additional generation on the grid, right? For multiple reasons. For nuclear, it's because it takes us a while to build the nuclear power plants, can't be done tomorrow at the snap of your fingers. And also you have a market that today doesn't exist, right? You're trying to produce, you're being told to construct a nuclear power plant to produce hydrogen for a market that you don't know is going to be there. We all think it's going to be there, but that's not concrete evidence. And for renewables, of course, it's also an issue because of land use issues, because of transmission, you know, the nimbism around transmission. So for that industry, it's also not easy to just, you know, put all of these new gigawatts of renewables. So for the industry at large, this has been a big issue. One, because of these practical difficulties, right? And incentives are short-term. They're not they're 20 years out. They're there today. So if you can't build today, you can't take advantage of the credits.  So if they can't get the tax credits in order to lower the cost of the hydrogen in order to actually be able to sell it to the market and have offtake agreements, it's really not a business proposition for them. So we've seen various proposals. I mean, in the U, it's already been, you know, adopted at least some level with the additionality in a way because nuclear was not included in all of the targets. Nuclear is not subject to the additionality requirements, which is, you know, it's good and bad for nuclear, right? It'd be great if we were part of the targets. But, you know, grids that are already decarbonized like in France are not subject to these targets because they, you know, it's a nuclear-based grid and you can produce nuclear hydrogen. In the U.S., we're all, you know, awaiting on pins and needles the guidance that's going to be issued by the Department of Treasury, which is going to determine whether additionality needs other two vectors are part of the hydrogen production credit, which is a do or die for the hydrogen industry in the United States. And I'm going to tell you somebody who's in the commercial space and advises many clients. I don't have a single client that said, we're going to move forward with that project if we don't have the hydrogen production tax credit because if there's simply then will not be any off-takers for the hydrogen. So there's been a draft leaked that includes some of these things. We don't think it's a final draft, so we're still waiting and we'll see what happens. Yes, indeed. No, thanks for that. And I want to maybe pull a thread that you mentioned earlier about the rainbow colors, right? You alluded to that and moving that. Could you talk a little bit about how do you differentiate between renewables and low-carbon hydrogen and what can be done, perhaps, to move to a more level playing field? Yeah, so the only, I would say, reference we have today on the, it's not direct reference, I must say, on the nuclear hydrogen is under this RFNBO. So that stands for non-biofuel, non-biological fuel. And the non-biological fuel that is in the directive, which has been adopted for the countries where the grid have a certain level of, beyond, I would say below, a certain threshold of carbon contained. So, namely, basically, France and other countries where you have a significant share of nuclear. Then you can, you have in such a case the possibility to have a lower target for non-biological fuel production. So it's a very indirect support, if I may put it like this, on nuclear. But nuclear is not really mentioned as such. This is the only concession that the nuclear alliance country actually got during the discussion negotiation. As I said, it's not enough. We need to go much further. This will not be within this directive on the renewables, because I think it's a down deal. We are not going to reopen it. But what our expectation, as I was seeing before, is to have, being table at some point of time consideration for low-carbon hydrogen. And we'd have to see during the next commission that we're going to take office N24 if they will find a way to tackle this. Politically speaking, this is a very inflammable topic, because it's nuclear in it. So once again, we are going to have some very tough debate. But today it's clear that nuclear, so only green hydrogen, so-called green hydrogen, will benefit from all the supports, all the schemes that will be provided to support developments on that. So maybe on one thing I would like to mention here. So among the 20 million tonne objective for 2030, so the commission has said, okay, let's produce 10 million tonne and then indigenous hydrogen and then let's import 10 million tonne of green hydrogen from abroad. Here we really have a lot of the meaningfulness of this, because we see some projects from Germany or Belgium or elsewhere, where they want to import hydrogen, for example, green hydrogen, for example, from Namibia. But if you go to Namibia, there is not a list of infrastructure being ports or even a manufacturer. You don't even have fresh water. Also for this hydrogen, you need very fresh and pure water. So I don't know how this is coming to come from. So I believe this is really the policies, in the worst exception you can imagine. Because those 10 million tons come from nowhere. And then then the commission believes that with this objective, they will solve the issue of minus 55% to 2030 that they've said themselves. So it's really building things on some. And I think it's typically the case for Namibia. No, thanks. Very challenging outlook there. Shannon, with all the dynamics in the U.S., we've seen, specifically for nuclear, a lot of support from the Department of Energy in promoting the demonstration projects, and there are various in the U.S. at different levels. Could you speak to that a little bit and elaborate? The hydrogen demonstration projects? Yes. From Prairie Island to Oh, okay. So projects that are actually moving right now. So you mentioned, you know, thousand announcements, but only 10% actually demonstrating. So this is something I'm really excited about because we're doing it now. It's small scale, but we're doing it right now. Today, there's hydrogen being produced by a nuclear plant in the United States. So we're moving that bar. Where did that start? That did start within the national laboratories and working with those companies. Because some of our plants in the United States were challenged economically to stay open, despite the fact that their license still had many, many years left on that because of some of those regions seeing more and more renewables coming online, periods of negative pricing on the grid. That was challenging the economic effectiveness of those plants. And so those plants saw some of the work that we'd been doing, looking at nuclear energy for non-electric applications with a strong focus on hydrogen because of the versatility of hydrogen to go into so many of these hard to abate sectors. So based on some of those early techno economic assessments, we partnered with what is now constellation to look at what that was like in one of their regions, one of their plants that was challenged in considering early closure because of the economic conditions. Based on that work, they are the first to be producing hydrogen at one of their plants. This is the nine-mile point plant in New York. It's a 1.25 megawatt low-temperature electrolysis system as a part of their house load. So connected behind the grid, fairly small scale, but this helps us to get beyond the technical challenges of how you integrate something like this electrically first and have that considered as house load. How then we work with the regulator to co-locate these facilities that hydrogen production plant is right there on site at the nuclear plant and then begin training those operators on how they can switch from meeting grid demand to operating that hydrogen facility. The second demonstration project will be at the energy harbour Davis-Bessie plant. That one, I just recently learned, they may actually go to high-temperature electrolysis. That has been announced to be a low-temperature project, one to two megawatts working with another electrolyser company, so different energy market, different company producing the technology. But now they're looking at, well, could we go to high-temperature electrolysis and use an electric boiler? They'll begin production of hydrogen this coming spring in the March to April timeframe, and they're making some of those final decisions now. They're doing that with some power upgrades to the systems with some new switch gear. It was delayed because they have to install that equipment during an outage. There were some equipment delays, and so they had to wait for the next outage. So otherwise we would have seen this one being in production much sooner. The third one will be hosted at the Excel energy prairie island plant, and this one is the first that will be truly integrated as a high-temperature electrolysis system, small-scale, about 150 kilowatts electric, but this will utilize thermal energy from the existing turbine steam extraction line. So this will be that first demonstration of true thermal and electrical integration of a hydrogen production facility at a nuclear plant. Again, working through all of those perceived hurdles, we've done a lot of work on probabilistic risk assessment to understand if there are additional risks to that co-location, and we don't see anything that can't be overcome at this point in time. In fact, we don't see any challenges, and they're working with the NRC as well as these plants to make sure that that is the case, and these will pave the way for those really large-scale hydrogen hubs that I've mentioned, several of which plan to use nuclear energy. Well, it's very exciting to see real projects actually coming off the ground, so that's terrific. I mean, I guess from a developer standpoint, that's exciting news, and I wonder if you could speak to outside the U.S., Europe, Canada, other places. How do you see that integration of nuclear and hydrogen? Yes, sure. I mean, in Europe, if I might start by Europe, as Eve has explained it very well, I mean, the requirement from the European Commission of the 10 million tons to be imported and 10 million tons to be produced locally. I mean, I think there is a room for nuclear here to be playing, and currently there are some pilot projects. I mean, as also Eve explained it very well, the renewable, the non-biological fuel is opening doors for, yes, it's very complicated to, it's opening doors to some nuclear, some projects for nuclear to be producing hydrogen. However, only a few countries are satisfying those countries, those conditions, and only France, in theory, France and Sweden actually can qualify for these requirements. So this is to say there will be projects, and in France, for example, there will be maybe hopefully a trend to use the electricity, but not the heat, because it's not that easy to go and retrofit nuclear power plant. Today, in France, the legislation is not possible to go and retrofit power plant, but we see the trend happening in UK. UK is actually considering nuclear and hydrogen, and UK is running feasibility studies with EDF to evaluate the project of producing hydrogen from heat and electricity. We also see some nuclear power plants, mother companies, who are having a fleet, who are interested to evaluate the feasibility studies. They are, people are looking into SMRs as maybe the game changer, because maybe that's something that might make projects easy to, you know, to planet from the first day when you are planning the SMR. So I see opportunity for nuclear to be really useful for the hydrogen domestic part of production, because the only way to produce those 10 million tons, I mean there is no enough renewable to produce electricity, and the additionality, as Elena was mentioning, is another barrier for renewable to be used for hydrogen. So the nuclear fleet is there, it's existing, and the heat and electricity is available. In case of France, sometimes we have a nexus of electricity, so we can use it in hydrogen, and of course this might help to make Europe sovereign, because the whole driver of the whole story is to be sovereign, right, to have a class, a local production of hydrogen to be in a better position of sovereignty. So nuclear, because it's belonging to Europe today, can help to make that happen. So honestly there are some signals, we are missing the policy, as Eve was saying, we are really missing clear policy, and I hope, I hope with data and facts, we might have that clear with the coming commission end of 2024. Got it, no, energy security and reliability is clear one there. So a lot of innovation technically, and Elena, I think we foresee a completely different, perhaps, business model to actually make this happen, right. I wonder if you could speak to all that we're seeing, the hubs in the U.S., and this nexus of nuclear vendors, and developers, and end users, off-takers. How do you see how these projects are structured, perhaps new business models that might be out there, maybe you can speak to that a little bit. Yeah, absolutely. I think that Dewey did such a great job in the U.S. with this hydrogen hub program, because in a way it forces people that normally would have completely disparate interest to come together, and to create that something that is truly regional, and could be also fed into a national network. But looking at the regional needs and the regional capabilities, and figuring out how do we produce hydrogen at large scale, and how do we produce it efficiently. And I've had the great opportunity to actually work on some of the hub proposals, and you just have interests that are very different in the same room, right, because you are required to submit some excitement in the panel next door. Maybe it's about hydrogen and nuclear. But you're required to submit a single application, and some of the hubs I've worked on has had 70, 100 different groups. You've got oil and gas, you've got nuclear, you've got agricultural sectors, steel producers, you've got universities and NGOs, and they all have to come together to form an application that is kind of cohesive that shows how you will scale up hydrogen production in the region. And I think that's been really great for nuclear, because nuclear has traditionally operated really only in the power sector, and in this vacuum where it's the nuclear vendors and the nuclear utilities. So I think it's exactly to kind of Shannon's point earlier, where you have hubs that are not necessarily even really nuclear focused today, but because they include a nuclear producer, a nuclear vendor, or somebody that's looking at nuclear, then as part of doing the studies, nuclear kind of becomes part of that. And I'm firmly convinced, Carlos, we've been doing this work with the nuclear hydrogen initiative for two years and having lots of different speakers and inputs. I'm firmly convinced that the hydrogen market cannot scale without nuclear. So I think all of these disparate interests do need to work together for common benefit. And I think it also actually provides a great jump off stage to other types of industrial uses of nuclear beyond just hydrogen, especially with the ability to use high temperature heat. So it's very exciting. Okay. No, thanks for that. And maybe focusing on the economics a little bit, Yves, and you mentioned that just to achieve the 10 metric tons is huge. A lot of efforts there into import 10 metric tons. We don't talk a lot about the, we focus a lot on the cost of generation of hydrogen, but there's cost of generation, storage, transport and all that. Could you speak a little bit on the economics from the European perspective of the economics of hydrogen? To be honest, I'm not really an expert of economics. Maybe I think amen can be a little bit more specific. But what is, what is clearly our opinion at nuclear Europe is on maybe, and I think a lot of also stakeholders is those 10 million tons of imports that are envisaged in the, by the commission in its policy. Usually the question of all the energy you need and all the environmental impact is simply disregarded. You need to build some ships. You need to liquefy. So you need a lot of energy to do that or translate it into nitrogen is another option. But whatever the solution you're using, it's a lot, the question is at the end of the day, very difficult to, it's very difficult to see it as really beneficial in terms of emissions on environmental impact. And this is in my view a question that should have been much better assessed when those ideas on projects are being envisaged. So for me, this is not the end of the story. What I suspect is that we'll see when we'll get closer to 2030. So basically the next commission is going to take office N24. We'll last five years. Five years mean N29. N29 will be, we'll see exactly where we stand. And I'm afraid there will be a lot of disillusion on that. We'll see that most of those ideas which were sort of tabled at some point of time will never materialize because those ideas are unrealistic and also they don't make sense in terms of environmental and climate impact. So I think we'll have a relative check at some point of time and convince that Tunkler will be back in this equation because there is no other way to be honest. Yeah, no, great for that. Shannon, I want to maybe do a deeper dive on the technical aspect a little bit because there's so much excitement that came out of INL, particularly the last, say, 18 months with the high-temperature electrolysis demonstration there, and being able to deliver hydrogen at, I believe, 37 kilowatts per kilogram, which is quite an efficient, much more efficient process than low temperature. And just to clarify, because typically we don't associate, say, light-water reactor with existing reactors with high-temperature electrolysis. We think that's only available through low-temperature electrolysis. Maybe you can speak to high-temperature electrolysis, how that can be leveraged with existing reactors, too. Please. Thank you. Thank you. And it allows me to talk about what we're doing in our laboratory, which is really exciting. So thank you. As we talk about this massive amount of clean hydrogen that we need and the rapid scale-up that we're looking at, we really think about, have to think about how we get there. So alkaline electrolysis is well-proven, it's operational, but relatively low efficiency when we look across the board for electrolysis. And we need to do better than that. Low-temperature PEM electrolysis, my colleagues at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory have been working on that for many years, and that's getting up to much larger-scale systems, tens of megawatt systems available, and even larger. So that's getting there. But if we want to get to these really highly efficient systems, down around that 40 kilowatt hours per kilogram of hydrogen, we have to start developing larger-scale, high-temperature solid-oxide electrolysis systems. So the National Laboratories basically fill a gap between some of that basic early-stage technology readiness level research and commercialization. We have a lot of unique facilities and capabilities, and we can be somewhat of an independent testing organization to work with a number of different industrial companies, private companies, to demonstrate their technologies without bias. So that's exactly what we've been doing. Within our laboratories, we do have some of that early-stage research and some things like proton-conducting membranes, advanced materials, pushing that envelope even to higher-efficiency systems that can operate at lower temperatures, but then working with companies to demonstrate different stacks for solid-oxide electrolysis cells, understanding how those cells perform under varying conditions environmentally, how they perform under a cyclic type of cyclic fashion. Whether intended cycling or unintended cycling, we had somebody accidentally hit an emergency stop button once. We had some visitors in, and so we had some unintended cycling data. Thankfully, it worked out okay. So we can do that and understand how those cells perform separate from a system, but then we can also go to the larger system testing. So the data that Carlos is referring to comes from a test that we've been doing with Bloom Energy on one of their solid-oxide electrolysis systems. 100 kilowatts produces about 60 kilograms of hydrogen per day, and we've tested that for about 6,000 hours under a wide range of conditions. I'm going to use Fahrenheit here, so my apologies for being the American that thinks more in Fahrenheit. That system sits outside. It's operated on 100-degree Fahrenheit days. In last winter, we had a very special few days where we hit negative 30 degrees Fahrenheit, and that system has performed admirably under all of these environmental conditions. So that is extremely valuable data for them to understand their system performance overall. But if we're talking about hundreds of kilowatt systems and we're bringing another unit in from fuel cell energy here at the start of 2024, in January, February timeframe, that will be a little bit larger. But hundreds of kilowatts to the scale that we need for millions of metric tons of clean hydrogen, that's a huge leap. So we're taking that next step now to go to these multi-megawatt systems. Idaho National Lab sits out in the desert, high desert of Idaho. It's on 890 square miles, so it's about the size, almost of the state of Rhode Island, or as somebody said the other day, some European countries. We are very large, and we're taking advantage of that land, that facility, where we are building out what we refer to as our energy technology proving ground. Again, working with industry to give them that ability to scale to that mid-size that's needed to really get to those hundreds of megawatt scales that are necessary. So within the next year, we are prepping our infrastructure to accept up to 10 megawatt electric electrolyzers from these solid oxide electrolysis companies with a vision to then integrate those with micro reactors as those become available as we get further into the decade. So taking advantage of the resources that we have there, we will also incorporate renewables working right alongside that nuclear technology to produce that hydrogen and then begin working on that post-processing. So what do we do with that hydrogen? We need to show how that's being done. We will be installing post-processing equipment at our smaller scale in town laboratory this year so that we can compress hydrogen, store it, and use that for a fuel cell coach, one of about 80 that takes our staff out to our site facilities every day. And then we'll be doing that same thing out at the site but at much larger scale for synthetic fuel production, hydrogen fueling for fuel cell vehicles, and hopefully some other applications as well. That's exciting news and looking forward to bigger things coming out in 2024. That's exciting Shannon, thank you. But obviously there's some technical challenges and maybe you could speak to a little bit of what are some of the technical perhaps regulatory challenges that nuclear energy faces to you know couple that with hydrogen production? Yes, let's say that some of the technical challenges is of course how to retrofit if you talk about an existing nuclear power plant how to go and extract the heat. So this is everybody that's the one million question one million dollar question. So I mean companies are working on how to do that and people are doing their let's say the private sector we as an industry we are doing our homework we are doing our evaluation our conceptual designs and some you know some some some evaluations and comparison and we are actually collaborating with INL as an independent I mean partner to challenge us as well and and this is one of the challenges where to position the electrolyzers if you are talking about heat extraction are you close enough is it safe enough how far you can go so the licensing then will be you know part of the discussions and and the authority are today evaluating this and then if you go further if you go further within the value chain then you will see evaluate you know the electrolyzers technology you mentioned alkaline PEM and SOEC I mean PEM it's physical it's it's it's it is it has a good fit with renewable energy because it brings flexibility but PEM is using raw materials that is rare so at the end it's it's not again it's a frame problem I mean sovereignty it's again a problem because a PEM will rely on rare materials so it doesn't make sense actually to build the whole strategy of hydrogen only on PEM and renewable and then you go to SOEC the challenge is the maturity is not there yet so the cost is kind of high and and and people to invest of course they need to imagine at scale what would be the cost which is not coming for the moment but it has a big potential to you know to to for higher efficiency with less quantity of kilowatt with only 40 I think with only 40 kilowatt you would produce 20 or 25 percent more than than than other technologies so then if you move for again within the value chain you will have challenges with the infrastructures yeah today people are saying okay I mean we can use the existing piping piping to deliver hydrogen and that problem is not only for the nuclear but it's for the whole hydrogen market that existing piping maybe it's not that trivial to use the existing as it is to deliver and then at the end you will have also cost and challenges with the stations so honestly there are challenges and it's our role as a private sector to invest in R&D and investigate however it's also the role of policymakers and and some governments to support the R&D to be accelerated achieving the 2030 targets if we don't do the things now I mean we will never achieve it I'm still seeing the full the cups full helpful yes but they still need to act now to accelerate the R&D that's the part of the end of the authorities okay very good please I forgot to answer one part of your question that was really important for a high-temperature electrolysis system do you need a high-temperature reactor and the answer is no because we're demonstrating it right now using 150 degrees steam from a steam generator that demonstrates very clearly that that even though that SOEC cell is at 800 degrees Celsius we can start with a lower temperature steam source from an existing reactor or an AP 1000 we can upgrade that and we can take advantage then of a lot of recuperated heat within the system to keep that operating so that's one myth that I just want to make sure is is gone it's a game changer yes absolutely it's absolutely it's a definition of game changer yeah it's a typical additional thing because we were talking about because it's today this is energy which is not used absolutely that's something that could be leveraged now that's right that's our additional we are coming to the end we have perhaps room for one question here from the our audience go ahead please so we were originally motivated in this by looking at that ability to flex this is a mode of flexibility for nuclear plants that yes we know that nuclear plants can be flexible we see that in France specifically and in many other locations as well but rather than turning back power from that it makes a lot more sense economically to redirect some of the pressures that we saw in the US it varies by region some of it is due to the renewable variability and it's also a competitive point on very low-cost natural gas in the United States so it's a combination but when we start thinking about that and how quickly you can switch it's going to depend on how you integrate it and how you bring that in our analyses we've been looking at one-hour markets to see how we can switch between that now we need to do the engineering to make sure we can actually do that in practice not just in our analyses so there is great opportunity for that but then the next question comes well what about that hydrogen market don't they want assurance that they can also have hydrogen when they need it so part of the optimization that we do is based on that regional implementation the regional energy market regional pricing how large should a hydrogen storage facility be that's coupled to that so that we can we can say that yes we can meet the electricity market and we can meet the hydrogen market when it is needed and and thus meet all of those customers appropriately and have contractual relationships that can be upheld fantastic no thank you thank you very much uh Shannon and please uh help me thank the panelists for the very vigorous discussion and thank you for for being here and for sharing your insights thank you everyone have a good afternoon


What is up, you guys? We'll go back to another one. If you're new to this channel, I am bullpounding out doing new car truck, SUV reviews on YouTube. And today, we are in the brand new 2023 Mercedes-Benz E450 Coupe, courtesy of Mercedes-Benz at Hagerstown in Hagerstown. Marilyn, for more information on their inventory, please feel free to check out the link in the description box below. So today we are in this one because this is an absolutely gorgeous coupe right now. This is an amazing looking vehicle and metallic paints are now standard for the 2023 model year. So that's essentially what's new for this year, but this one did just arrive. So ultimately we will be testing out and going over everything about this one from acceleration to braking, steering feel, ride quality, sound system, exhaust clip, all that fun stuff. So having said all of that, what do you guys say? Let's just go ahead and jump right into it. And as always, let's start with pricing. So essentially there are two different configurations for the E450. You got the rear wheel drive configuration starting at $69,750. Then you got the four-matic all-wheel drive, which is the one we have today, starting at $72,250. But regardless of the configuration that you go with, the power plant is going to be the same. Powering Abyss is a three-liter turbocharged inline six cylinder. That's pretty cool. 362 horsepower at 5,500 RPM, 369 pound-feet of torque, coming in at 1,600 RPM. That power sent to the rear wheels are all wheels through a nine-speed automatic with paddle shifters, zero to 60-time coming in at approximately 5.2 seconds for the rear wheel drive, 4.9 seconds for the all-wheel drive with MPG numbers coming in at 23 city, 30 on the highway for the rear wheel drive, 21 in the city, still 30 on the highway though for the all-wheel drive, taking premium on lead and fuel. And so before we do any kind of fun acceleration or paddle shifter test here in our E450 Coupe, wanted to mention to you guys the drive modes. There's a button labeled Dynamic. It stands for Dynamic Select. It's kind of a toggle switch located just to the left of the touchpad controller. When you hit that, you can adjust between Eco, Comfort, Sport, Sport Plus and Individual, adjusting things like the shift points, the throttle response, steering sensitivity, and the air suspension, which doesn't come standard, but it is optional on the E450 Coupe. So I wanted to mention that, but now I've got all of that out of the way. What do you guys say? Let's go ahead and find straight away. Let's put the paddle shifters at acceleration here to the test. Let's see how quickly the paddle shifters are gonna react for us and let's see how quickly we can get our new 2023 E450 Coupe here up to speed. All right. Second gear. All right, let's go. Whoa. This thing's quick. This thing is fun. This thing is fun, man. Paddle shifters are pretty darn quick as well, but that acceleration, that's what puts a smile on your face. It's a lot quicker than I thought it was gonna be. So definitely a lot of respect for the acceleration in the E-Coupe here. So wonderful. Anyways, to go along with that acceleration as always, braking is equally important. So as expected, you will find a performance oriented braking system perforated front disc with six piston front calipers, including that Mercedes-Benz lettering, of course, that looks so dang good. As far as the six easier stopping distance goes, actually comes in at 127 feet, which on paper is not the best, quite honestly, I expected better, but let me go ahead and hit the brakes just to test it. Braking feel is fine. It is a little bit on the softer side of things, I will say that, but the braking feel is fine. I certainly personally wouldn't have any issues with the brakes on this thing. Then touching on suspension and handling up front, you gotta get an independent four-link front axle in the back, independent five arm multi-link rear suspension front and rear stabilizer bars, but you also get an adaptive damping suspension. And this is one I always like to recommend when it doesn't come standard release, which it does on the E-Coupe because essentially monitors each shock absorber individually, not only adjusting to the road of perfection, giving you a smoother ride, but it also tightens up that suspension during heavy cornering, really giving you the best of both worlds. So for that reason, ride quality has been perfectly fine. I'm on a short little test drive here today, definitely not having any issues there, but I did want to mention, there is an optional air suspension. Like I mentioned at the beginning of the video there, they're just for $1,900 by the way, but that is really ultimately gonna give you the very best ride quality. So that is what you want if you want the best ride quality. As far as steering feel goes, it's fine. It's definitely weighted on the heavier side of things, not too heavy. It's honestly just perfect or just right for the E-Coupe. So no issues there. As far as cabin noise goes, we're going five miles per hour right now and there isn't a whole lot of wind noise coming in. I'm just kidding you guys. Honestly, the Cab Noise at 55 is dang good as well. It's definitely a very serene cabin as you would come to expect from Mercedes-Benz, of course, and touching our rear visibility, it's perfectly fine. Honestly, some coupes, you do have issues with rear visibility, but that's not the case in the E-450 Coupe. So definitely no issues there either. And if you wanted a head-up display, projecting your speed, speed, limited safety features up onto your windshield, that is available for $1,100 if you wanted to go that route. But as we are sitting in construction right now that pretty much rounds out the performance segment of this review, guys, let's now go ahead and take a look at the exterior of our brand new 2023 Mercedes-Benz E-450 Coupe. All right, so here she is, you guys, the new 2023 Mercedes-Benz E-450 Coupe finished in manufacturer Moonlight White Metallic, which is a $1,750 paint option. I do like it though. If you get up close, you definitely see the metallic flake in it. So definitely a very nice look. But again, metallic paint is now standard on the E-Coupe, whereas it was not in the previous model year. So I do want to emphasize that. But as always, let's go ahead and start with where this one is made. Taking a look at the VIN first character is the letter W, indicating that the E-Coupe is built and assembled in Germany. So that is pretty cool. So starting up front here, diamond block front grille will come standard. That comes with a dark finish. It's going to be the standard setup. However, there is a chrome diamond block front grille that you guys are currently looking at. That comes standard with the AMG line packages. There are two of them and that definitely adds a more aggressive front fascia, which you guys are looking at right now as well. So satin chrome front lip will come standard on this one to the side's LED headlights with LED daytime running lights. Also get the automatic feature, meaning when it starts to get dark in at night, these headlights will turn on automatically for you there. But also to go along with that, automatic high beams. So if you have your high beams on at night, then since it's a vehicle coming in the opposite direction, it's going to automatically dim them back to low beams. Then when that vehicle is gone, it's going to automatically then bounce it back up to high beams for you. So definitely a very nice convenience feature there as well, but overall very nice looking front end as always. But now let's go and make our way to my favorite part, which is the side of the E-450 Coupe. All right, so we've been now making our way to the side of this one. Chrome windows surrounds will come standard, but one of the coolest parts, frameless door glass for the front and rear windows, meaning they will go down completely. So that is a pretty cool look. That's something Mercedes-Benz does and has done in the past. And I've always liked the look of that. But anyways, body color, power adjustable side mirrors will come standard that will be heated with LED integrated turn signals. And they will also be power folding as you would expect for Mercedes-Benz, of course. We do also have some chrome accenting found on the door handles to tie together with chrome accenting found around the windows around there. And then take a look down at the wheel setup, 18 inch twin five spoke alloys will come standard, 19 inch AMG specific alloys are gonna come with the AMG line packages. And I love the look of AMG wheels. They're always so unique, but that is what you guys are looking at, of course. And then of course there are 19 and 20 inch wheel designs available to really make this one your own. But anyways, that pretty much rounds out the side profile. Let's now go ahead and make our way to the back. All right, so now since you are around to the back, first thing I always typically mention is a shark fin antenna. However, in typical Mercedes fashion, there is none of that. So a very clean look up top on the roof of the E-Class here, definitely like that. But rear spoiler is going to be available. You guys are looking at that. That goes for $350 if you wanted that option. There is a center high mount stop lamp as well. There are LED tail lights. So little added illumination at night there like that. And just below it all, you're gonna find integrated dual exhaust outlets with satin chrome tips. And yes, I love that they're integrated into the rear bumper.  But having said that, I do believe you guys know what we have to do next. As always here is that exhaust clip. All right, so now since we are around to the back of the E-Class Coupe here, when it comes to opening that rear trunk, there's several different ways to go ahead and do that. There's of course a button on the key fob. There's a button on the driver's side door. But my favorite way is the hidden way where you press in on the upper portion of the Mercedes logo in the back there.  But once opened up, cargo capacity comes in at 10 cubic feet even. If that was not enough space, there are some levers back there. You can fold the rear seats down. There's a 40, 20, 40 split. Meaning that's a ton of extra space then if you needed it. There is some cargo lighting back there. There are cargo tie down anchors as well. Little bit of netted storage to the sides.  So you got kind of places to hang your groceries on both sides there. Then if you were to lift up underneath of that cargo floor, you will find a little bit of in-floor storage, maybe enough for an ice scraper or something like that. But anyways, then making our way up to the rear legroom that comes in at 35.9 inches. So for reference, I'm an even six feet tall. This is how much space I had back there. And quite honestly, 35.9 inches for a two plus two is dang impressive if I'm being honest. That is a good bit of space for a two door coupe. So well done Mercedes for pulling that off. But there is some cup holders back there. Of course there's rear ventilation and a couple of phone charging ports back there then as well. But then making our way up to the front seats, power adjustable front seats with four way power lumbar does come standard. Memory settings for both the driver and passenger come standard as well. It's pretty cold leather seating coming standard, heated front seats coming standard. If you want ventilated front seats though that goes to $450. And another option you might want to check out is multi contour front seats with the massage function. So yes, you can get a massage in this thing for an additional $950 if you wanted to go that route. But overall seating was plenty comfortable for me. I love the vertical seams as well. That's something I always gripe on in other reviews that I do when you got the horizontal seams, you got awkward pressure points. But with vertical seams, it's a lot comfier comparatively speaking to the horizontal seams. I'm just saying, so no issues there. Then take a look at the steering wheel. It is tilt and telescoping. It is gonna be leather wrapped coming standard. I like the perforation on the left and right hand side. It's a flat bottom, which I love as well. And the 10 to two grips are definitely bolstered on the thicker side. So I definitely love that as well. If you wanted the heated steering wheel, it goes for $250. But then make your way to the startup. Let me start by showing you guys the key here. Essentially all of your buttons are located on one side of the key. Got your Mercedes logo front and center, but lock on top, unlock at the bottom and that button to pop the rear trunk as well. But it is all keyless entry with a push button start. So all I'm going to do here is simply put my foot on the brake and press that silver engine start button located just to the left of the air vents there. And so once started up, 12.3 inch digital gauge cluster does come standard on this thing. I love that. One of the best parts about the gauges though is if you go all the way to the right, you got a designs and display section where you can choose different loadouts, completely changing the look of the gauges, including classic sport progressive and understated. Understate is kind of funny because it's literally like nothing up on the gauge. It's just the digital readout basically, which is pretty cool. But anyways, if you wanted to completely change the look of your gauges, that's why digital gauges are so important in today's stage because you can do it, so why not do it? That's my theory. I absolutely love it. Of course it gives you outside temperature, how many miles you'll have left until you hit empty. Radio information, when you need your next service and so on. So pretty much absolutely everything you could possibly want on the gauges of course. But now let's go ahead and make our way to overall interior quality. A Panorama Roof does come standard on the E-Coupe. Love that. Home light controls also coming standard and that's for up to three different garage doors. Found just below the rear view mirror there. Dual zoom climate control coming standard along with 64 colors of ambient lighting. And in typical Mercedes fashion it's done so incredibly well and that can be adjusted through the infotainment screen. And we'll check that out in a second here. But several Ashwood trim colors are available as well. There's like a light beachwood color. There's this dark mahogany color that we have in this thing. And I always say whatever Mercedes puts wood trim finishes in their vehicles when you first get into these things it doesn't smell like a new car. It smells like a new home as if you were just building it from scratch. So I absolutely love this smell of this thing. I gotta say I like the design of the air vents as well and how they're actually built into the wood trim. I like the color contrast that we have on this one. Like the kind of saddle brown with the dark black as well the leather finishes everywhere.  There's a phone charging port, 12 volt power outlet. Of course your cup holders themselves. And within the center armrest there's a little bit of storage there and you got a couple more phone charging ports within that as well. So overall definitely no issues with interior quality and you wouldn't expect any when it comes to Mercedes Benz. You do have an overhead sunglass holder as well in case you're curious. But anyways, now let's go ahead and make our way to the infotainment screen. As you would imagine to match the gauges the infotainment screen is also a 12.3 inch color touchscreen display. And so like I said it is touchscreen. You also have this touch pad controller and buttons located just behind your cup holders. That's another way. And you got the awesome functionality by simply saying, hey Mercedes. How can I help? Turn on the radio and it's on. I just gotta turn it up. So I'm just gonna turn it up here. Yeah, that's proof. Anyway, so that's pretty darn convenient. I will say that. Anyways, Bluetooth and audio streaming do come standard Android Auto, Apple CarPlay as well. Again, you can check out your ambient lighting settings and all of your different colors up on that screen as well. You got climate control settings up there. And you got a cool theme section. If you go back to the home screen and then you kind of swipe up from the bottom you got trip experience, efficiency and lounge. And what those themes essentially do is change just about everything. It changes the ambient lighting colors. It can open and close the panorama roof up top here. So it does adjust quite a bit actually, dependent upon the different theme setting that you put it on. You don't have to play around with that, but it's there for you if you want it. But you can also of course check out your radio information up there. So when it comes to the standard sound system that is going to be a 13 speaker Bermester surround sound system. 590 watts and nine channel digital amplifier and a subwoofer. And the speaker covers of course are finished in aluminum. So very high end. So I love that as well. So having said that, I do believe you guys know what we have to do next. Let's go ahead and turn on the radio. Let's see what we got playing this morning. And let's test out the clarity of this one. I must say something with this sound system that I don't traditionally say in my other reviews is this one specifically sounded like you were at a concert. It really was coming at you at all ends. The clarity I believe in this sound system sounds amazing. Decent amount of bass, not the very most I've heard, but the clarity was 100% on point. That's the part that will blow you away with this particular sound system that we have here. But anyways, last thing I want to mention to you guys on that infotainment screen is when you do put the E-Class in reverse, you will find a rear view camera coming standard across the board. But not just that, you're also going to get that panoramic view monitor, the 360 degree view all the way to the left there. That also comes standard on the E-Cube. So you got to love that, but as always that is going to lead us into safety. And so to start, I will say that sedan is an IIHS top safety pick plus. The Coupe has not been tested with the IIHS. I would imagine it would be the same thing, but don't quote me on that because it hasn't been tested. But traditionally, Mercedes does make a very safe vehicle, but front side, side curtain airbags do come standard. Driver's knee airbag up front as well. On the back, you're going to have latch, AKA lower anchors to tether to children for the rear car seats, tire pressure monitoring system, but also coming standard. Mercedes Benz emergency call service. So if it senses the airbags go off because somebody hits you or something like that, the car is going to automatically call you and ask if you need an ambulance or police or anything like that. So that's pretty cool. Active brake assist, blind spot assist, attention assist, crosswind assist, which is a pretty cool feature as well. Park tronic with active parking assist, rear cross traffic alert and adaptive braking technology as well, which I actually got to test out there during the construction. When I went off road to go around the cones, it actually almost stopped for me because I was going off the road, which is kind of cold. Anyways, when it comes to my final thoughts here of the E-Coupe, great looking design. I definitely think Mercedes makes a heck of a good looking coupe without a doubt. Plenty of power in this thing as well. You guys probably remember that acceleration test. That was pretty nuts. Amazing interior quality, amazing ambient lighting. I always say Mercedes Benz does ambient lighting better than any other manufacturer that I've tested. So that is pretty darn good as well. Very comfortable ride, very serene cabin. That's one of the things that I even noticed even more after I went over that portion of the review initially. So very serene cabin in this thing. The only room for improvement, I guess if you're buying a Mercedes, maybe it doesn't matter as much to you, but this thing does come with quite a bit of options. Therefore it can get pricey pretty darn quick. So a lot of options allow you more customization, but it also jacks up the price pretty quick. But anyways, let me know what you guys think of the E-450 Coupe in the comments section below and that is about it for this one you guys. Thank you so much for watching. If you're free to follow me on social media at the bottom of the screen, if you wanted to see what's coming next on the channel before it gets to YouTube, be sure to hit the subscribe and the bell notification button if you're in the new car reviews because that is what we do here on this channel after all. Do appreciate you guys watching more than you know and I will see you guys all in the next video. Stay Gold.