About 2020, we weren't making any oil and gas. We went into clean energy, clean tech. The CSC facilitated a platform for us to be able to do that. It was allowing us to grow. We're very proud that since we've been there, in the last four years, we've gone from an idea that was, frankly, met with a lot of skepticism, an idea to a proof of concept, a commercial prototype, and we're now in discussions with some of the world's largest companies in our technology. Forward-looking notice. Investment highlights. Now, in the next stage, I'm going to talk about what zero-voltage switching is, but the zero-voltage switching, we're the only ones in the world that we're aware of that have zero-voltage switching, soft switching at this power level. No one else has it.
However, we've broken the code, we've been able to do it, and that's how we've got into these bigger companies. Our near-term commercial catalysts on the grid. Now, our technology is across the electrification spectrum. It can go into traction, which is EV, so on and so forth, or in stationary, as we call it, which is wind, solar, data centers. It is applicable across the spectrum, which is really, really good for us. We're right now developing a 200 kW zero-voltage switching grid power conversion system. That is great because everybody understands data centers, so on and so forth, and it goes in there. We'll be able to talk about that a little bit more. There's 180 billion total addressable market by 2030 on the stationary side. There is a need for this, and it's one of the things that we're most excited about. It's not a fad.
There's a need to keep up, and our technology will help with that. The seven core applications listed their data centers. I'll get into that in a little bit more. Energy storage, remote microgrids, so on and so forth, et cetera. Momentum. We started in 2021 saying that we were going to have this zero-voltage switching, and we're going to do it for the EV market. We aligned ourselves with a German power electronics design house who had been developing inverter technology for 20 years for the German automotive market. At that point in time, EVs were flying off the shelf. We couldn't do anything. We were going to keep up. We had strong, strong interest. Of course, we've seen that the EV, while EVs are growing in sales, the actual market itself has softened a little bit. They were saying they were going to be 100% electric by 2025.
Infrastructure wasn't there. Companies weren't going to be able to do it. But we got into some very, very good rooms by aligning with Systematec as our partner in Germany. We've been tested. We've shown it to the German automotive makers, plus some very high-performance European sports cars. In each and every case, our demonstrations have exceeded their expectations. So we're feeling good about what's come back to us from them. We have announced in May, I believe it was, that one of the world's about a $3 billion tier one suppliers sells product to the EV makers. They wanted to be the first to put zero-voltage switching in their platform, in their inverter platform. So they announced or they worked with us on a two-phase program whereby we would take our firmware and put it into their hardware. That first phase is almost complete.
The second phase will go, takes about four or five months. Once that's done, they're looking to enter into a commercial agreement where they would be the world's first provider of zero-voltage switching inverter platform for the automotive industry. We have been talking to a number of different groups. We're glad that BorgWarner has allowed us to use their name. BorgWarner, again, is a multi-billion dollar company. They are one of the bigger suppliers for the EV and now coming into stationary. They invited us to their pitch day in Munich on September 11th. BorgWarner invites for their C-suite. They bring in companies they have interest in, have been talking to, or have a deal with. We're very, very pleased with the momentum that we've got with BorgWarner and quite happy about how they're treating us.
We just announced yesterday a CAD 3 million strategic investment. We're Canadian-based. This is a Canadian technology with worldwide application. What we've been able to do over the last couple of months is work with First Nations Band out of Saskatchewan, Pasqua First Nations Band, and Apeiron Resources Limited, which is an Indigenous-owned company in Alberta that puts together Indigenous and non-Indigenous groups to be able to work together, thereby accessing federal government funding and giving us a financial foundation. It's been a tough go for the last couple of years, but we think we've crossed that hurdle. Technology advantage, 99% inverter efficiency, which won't mean much to too many people, but that's the highest. We're up to 99.7% efficiency. Compact and lightweight, lower EMI. I'll discuss that in just a minute. Electromagnetic interference is a problem.
They call it a trade-off, but it's the biggest problem in the industry. We have reduced EMI, and that's bringing in more interest than we expected. And then cost savings. We have a robust IP portfolio. Hillcrest owns 100% of the IP. What is an inverter? I'll make this quick because I didn't know four and a half years ago. An inverter simply takes alternating current to direct current. You've got to convert it. So it takes it from DC to AC, AC to DC, so on and so forth. What exists in the world today is called hard switching. Everybody's got a hard switching inverter. If you think about it, I'm a non-technical person. It's like this. Every time there's a switch from 1,000- 40,000 times a second, there's a switch, there's a switching loss. That switching loss costs money, and it causes EMI.
Ours is soft switching, which the world has been trying to do, and it basically comes on and goes flat. It lowers the EMI, higher switching frequencies, it eliminates switching losses. So it makes more money as you go along. That's the biggest, biggest key for it, and you see like in stationary, the solar panel is DC, the grid is AC. In a car, the battery is DC, the motor is AC. It's got to be converted. Everything has an inverter in it that's an electrical, and these are the various markets. We're focusing now on the stationary side. We're well advanced on the EV side. I'll tell you where we're going there in a second, but we're focusing on the stationary side. We're doing a 200 kW continuous power, 1,000 V, and it's ready for demonstration in 2026. We already have the proof of concept.
We're already simulating demonstrations with some very large companies, and we're quite happy about that. Peak efficiency at 99%. Efficiency is everything to everybody. The higher the efficiency, the lower heat. Higher efficiency, it doesn't cause as much heat. So that's a key. So that's one of the things that we have. Smaller filters. Because of our pure signal sine waves that are going through it, the components are actually smaller, so there's cost to the advantage of our inverter. Compact and lightweight, enhanced load protection, scalable architecture. We're using a 200 kW. There's all different. You could go 50 kW, you can go 100 kW, you can go 200 kW, 300 kW, 400 kW, whatever. We're using 200 kW because in all these applications, what they're doing is they're using basically decks. So you're putting in five 200 kW inverters for a thousand for a megawatt.
That allows them surety that if one goes down, you can pull it out, put another one in. They don't have downtime. We're doing a 200 kW. The market is quite big for that. Lower EMI. The EMI for people my age that used to listen to AM radio, it's basically the static. That causes problems. You have to pay to protect against EMI. We've been tested in a certified lab in Germany, and we have EMI that's reduced to a level whereby protective shielding is not required in automobiles. That's a big savings for the automobile. Then when you get into the stationary side, that's a big saving for them too, which then goes to improve system reliability and extended lifespan. Lifespan is everything. The applications. We basically have talked about a little bit. Data centers is the key focus for everybody right now.
Data centers, commercial and industrial, remote communities. In Canada right now, with the Pasqua First Nation, one of the things we're looking forward to doing is having our technology put into remote communities that are basically diesel run at this point in time. You add some electrification to it, make it more reliable. This is a real good project for us. Pasqua First Nation, they're already involved in a 200 MW wind farm. They're quite knowledgeable about the industry, and we're quite happy to be aligned with them. Construction and infrastructure, you can think of mobile units, emergency response, again, mobile units, military forward bases. These all represent about a $180 billion opportunity or industry. Sticking with the data center, as I mentioned, 200 kW per rack. The racks, perfect building block. You can get as many as you want. 1 MW , 2 MW , 3 MW .
The redundancy, this is what I was talking about in the hot swap capability. They're very concerned. As a matter of fact, when you supply equipment to one of these places, if it goes down, you're probably getting charged. So you've got to make sure that you have something that's adaptable. You can pull in and pull out. So if you have five in a rack, one goes down or one is having problems, you can put one in, and they're relatively inexpensive, and the parallel expansion up to four units without a system redesign. This is what I was talking about with the $180 billion. Emergency power systems is a part. Portable mobile power is something that is really going to be key for us. The battery energy. Everybody's talking about batteries. As a matter of fact, some battery companies are putting inverters in their battery packs.
It's gone from the inverter beside the motor with the battery packs, so on and so forth. We have people asking if we can do that. Our adaptability is we can provide a full inverter. We can provide the firmware to go into you, the mind. We can do whatever we need to do it. Then the data center, which I've already mentioned, is $50 billion. Traction inverter. Traction. We are the only ones in the world that have the zero-voltage switching, as I mentioned. The zero-voltage switching has huge interest from the automotive and the EV sectors, but the automotive and EV sectors work on cycles. The difference between the automotive and stationary is they work on cycles, and you've got to hit their cycle at the right time. Whereas on the stationary side, they've got to stay ahead.
They've got to have the proper technology to be able to stay ahead of the curve and be able to compete. So efficiencies, they move faster than the automotive. Our technology allows for smaller battery packs. The signal is that you don't need as much battery. DC-link capacitors are smaller. Semiconductors, which I'll get to in just a second, are much, much more reasonable. It improves the range. Again, the lower EMI. We didn't even think of EMI when we started this. It was one of the German automotive companies that said, "Our thing is efficiency is a given. Can you show us you can do lower EMI because we'll save about $400 a car in protective shielding?" It doesn't sound like much, but you do 100,000 cars. That's $40 million.
Now, this is the point where I say our technology, our inverter is equal to or slightly less than the cost of what exists today, but gives you financial benefits. So it's a no-brainer, in my opinion, right? And combined savings. We're talking about $140 million cost savings for 100,000 vehicle run per car. This is where the semiconductor. So we're using silicon carbide. Right now, the industry, the car industry is trying to get to six millimeters squared by 2032 or 2032. They're trying to get to 6 mm sq per kilowatt on silicon carbide. Now, that's a very expensive material. We are already demonstrating at 2.3 mm sq per kilowatt. Now, does it sound like much? At $400-$500 an inverter, it's a lot. It's a lot when you're talking about a $1,500 inverter. So we're already there in 2024 where they're trying to get to 2032.
Automotive commercial priorities. We've changed our model just a little bit where we were trying to get with either OEMs, car manufacturers, or tier one suppliers and seeing if we could get a few of them in place. What we've realized is the car companies are frozen right now. Their budgets are down. Their profits are down. They don't have money to do it. They want the technology. They'd love for us to do it for free. And as I said to one other company, "We can do no more for you." And they asked why we couldn't do any more. I said, "It's easy to say no. I can't afford to say yes.
We don't have the budget to be able to do things for free anymore without a commitment," and so what we've done is we've gone to them and said, "We will give an exclusive licensing arrangement, a limited exclusive licensing arrangement to anyone that wants to control the traction industry." Well, people sat up. The global tier one suppliers are definitely interested in that because they're selling to their clients. They also have a reputation of being able to manufacture. They have a history of being able to manufacture. They're better off in the room than we are, and that has, over the last three months, changed the outlook. Well, we say we're a small company. We'll focus on stationary. We'll license the IP or the technology over here, and those conversations are moving along very, very, very well.
We have the prototype that's been validated by the OEMs and the tier one suppliers. I've already talked about the one tier one that is doing a two-phase program. Phase one is almost complete. Onboard chargers, OBC, something, again, we didn't even think about because the cost of an OBC and the profit of an OBC didn't seem like a lot. We didn't think that they'd be able to put our technology in there for us to benefit from it. But the sheer numbers of onboard chargers are such that it makes a lot of sense. And we've done simulations. We have six different companies that do onboard chargers talking to us about possibly licensing the technology to be put into their onboard charger platform. And joint development opportunities, as I'm talking, we're talking about that is a limited license timeframe where they get exclusive.
They work with all the other car companies and whatnot to be able to exclusively license it. There's a picture of that. That's my partner. Our partner in Germany, Harald Hengstenberger. He's the owner of Systematic GmbH. He's the one that's been doing inverter technology for the German automotive companies for the last 20 years. Now, one of the things in our company that we've done, and it's in the appendix, and I can get this to you, is that we believe to grow, and I love your comment that you said about if you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, work with people. We've brought partners in to be able to move far and fast. He has the networks.
Don Currie is not calling a German automotive maker and saying, "I want to come see you on Tuesday and then let me in there," but if they know the person, they're definitely listening to him, so we've aligned ourselves with some very, very competent people that have opened up the doors, and Borg Warner, like I said, that was just a month ago. We just announced yesterday the strategic partnership for the zero-voltage switching commercialization. Pasqua First Nations is a First Nation we were introduced to three or four months ago. They're out of Saskatchewan. They're a well-financed, very business-oriented First Nation, and we talked about they have a manufacturing facility, actually, on their property, and they're in the business. As I said, they're in a 200 MW wind farm. They've got some other businesses that are going along. Very, very, very good to go with.
Now, in Canada, if you're going to be looking for government funding, indigenous involvement is a very, very good thing. So we've got Pasqua First Nations. We have Apeiron, Resources Apeiron is the company that puts together indigenous and non-indigenous groups. They have solar farms. They have solar opportunities. They have construction opportunities. They were part of the G7 security. So they also have been very, very good at accessing government funding. We applied in July. We already put in an application to the federal government of Canada for CAD 10 million worth of funding backing for our technology. And the sales are great because the sales pitch is great. It's Canadian-developed, worldwide application with indigenous partnership. So we checked the boxes. An indigenous partnership that's in the industry. So much so that we have accelerated that to the point where the application has gone in.
During this month, we will be in Ottawa as guests of some high-ranking senior officials to take the formal application to the next step. Pasqua, ourselves, Apeiron are attending Ottawa with some high-ranking officials. The government of Saskatchewan, where Pasqua is, has also been told that we intend to come to them for some joint funding to back it. They've already opened the doors and said this is exactly what they're looking for. They're looking for employment and technology applications that have a value worldwide. This isn't just local. IP portfolio. We have very strong strategic advisors. McMillan is our firm in Canada. They have a very strong IP division. They've been guiding us through. You can see that we've got the IP, total IP assets, patent applications. Trade secrets will never be patented because that's our algorithm. We don't need to put that out. It's protection.
We're very well advised with McMillan as our group. We also have a legal firm in the U.S. that is working with our strategy for us that has litigated both for and against protected patents, gone against patents. They've been very good for us and helped us along as we build this. This just kind of gives you an idea of the innovation development pipeline from foundation software to where we are today. We've moved very, very fast with a very small company. We've got about nine people in Hillcrest in Canada. If you take systems engineers that are working with us, another five or six, and we have a software firmware person in Melbourne, Australia. We're a small group. So to be able to do this in as fast a time as we've done, we're quite proud of. Global protection investment value. We've got a defensive moat. Licensing revenue.
We're small enough that we can look and talk to and say, "What is the want of the potential customer?" So I had a call with one of the tier ones on Friday, and they said, "What do you want?" I said, "I've found that it's not applicable for me to tell you what I want. What is your procedure? What are you looking for? Are you looking for majority? Are you looking to license? What are you looking for?" And so we're adaptable and small enough to be able to get into those discussions. Market leadership, first mover advantage. When I talk about it, if I send you this package in the appendix, we've got some of the advisors that are on. We have Dan Coker. He built two $1 billion companies in the automotive component. We have Dr. Burghoff, who is 20 years senior manager of Daimler Chrysler.
We have Nad Karim, who is Silicon Valley in data centers, so we're being advised by people that are all retained on a success basis. They bring something to the table. They get rewarded very, very well, and I think it's costing us about $1,000 a month per person for their expenses, so I think we've aligned ourselves very, very well. Regulatory advantages. We're a public company. We're small in scope. We're about a $10 million market cap today. We hope to see that increase dramatically. We are primarily a retail group, but that's changing. Now we have family offices that are starting to talk to us. We have some of the investment parts of the groups we're talking to about the exclusive licensing starting to talk to us.
So we're looking to change the dynamic of our registered shareholder from retail to more of a family office or institutional base. 99 million shares. We see the convertible debentures. We just announced yesterday that a large portion of those are converting. So we've got about 150 million shares when it's all said and done, a $10 million market cap. And like I say, we expect to see that, we hope through accomplishment and execution to see that grow substantially. We have still got some time. At that point, hopefully that gave you a quick explanation of who we are. If you're looking for first mover, no one else has it. We've got customer base that we're talking to. We've got now a foundation of backing with the First Nations. I don't know how we'd appreciate it if you took a look at the company and any questions you have.
When you write to the company, you're going to get me answering them. So thank you very much for your time.
For those out there, Joe Bernetto with Water Tower Research. Also with Mike, I'm director of our Horizons division. So just to kick it off here with Don here, any questions for the audience?
The question was, what's the duration of the design cycle?
Yeah, that's a separate thing to what we're doing. So the zero-voltage switching part that the firmware is done. So we've got the zero-voltage switching, and now it's about applying that to the hardware that a customer might have or into our own hardware. So we've already shown that it works on that we have our traction inverter. We take that. We give it to companies to be able to test that. So that's that.
The one you're talking about, the tier one supplier, that's about an eight-month-long test, four months per phases. The first phase has taken about six months. So we say it's eight months. They shut down in August, the European shutdown, and then there were some supply issues that they had. So we're a little bit behind in phase one. But if you wanted to test it, depending on what the milestones are, I would say four to eight months is what would be if we're putting our firmware into their platform. Our platform's already done. I'm just wondering what the revenue profile is or your expectations on the ramp-up. Well, we are just in the process right now of redoing our expectation on that, our confidential information memorandum. We are pre-revenue at this point in time. We will be revenue early in 2026, small revenue.
Government grants, of course, is non-dilutive revenue that we're expecting to come in. As far as the customer base, it really all depends. Are we selling a full inverter? Are we selling the firmware part of it, all our things? So what I can say is within about the next month, because we've been asked for it, we'll have a more exact ramp-up on revenue. Our last, which has changed dramatically, showed about a two-year ramp-up, and it's hockey stick. Once you get the customers, it's hockey stick.
Maybe being specific about what's your best guess on your first contract in terms of size?
Well, I'm not trying to be evasive, but that's how long is a piece of string. Are we selling to OBCs, the onboard chargers? Are we selling to the exclusively licensing to the traction?
Or, are we providing an inverter to them? We won't even have the prototype ready for Q1 in 2026 for the stationary side. So, I'm not trying to be evasive, but if it was a car company, 50-100,000 units per year, if it was a car company, right? If it's on the grid or data center side, really all depends on how big they are. So, I'd like to be more definitive, but that's being defined as we are. Now, since the First Nations have got involved with us and we put the foundation base on, we have to have all that in place when we're going to Ottawa to be able to talk to them. So, it's almost done.
Got about two minutes left. I think we have time for maybe one or two more questions. So, maybe one for me. Can you talk a little bit about the competition for ZBS?
Yeah. There is no competition. There's no one out there that's been able to crack the code. So for whatever reason, we've got a competitive advantage to be able to move forward, and that's where people are looking at it. When I said we were met with skepticism at the very beginning, people have tried, and so we don't know of anyone that we're aware of, and we're hearing that from customers, and that's why people are coming to us, that zero-voltage switching is not available from anybody else.
Perfect. If we have time for one last one, can you tell us a little bit more about the traction versus stationary sectors?
Yeah. Look, we'd love to be in both. We're a company that needs to now focus on it. I'll put it simply. We can't wait for the car companies to come around to our time frame. We had a group that told us a year ago, July, that they were ready to sign a deal. I have that same deal on my desk right now because they're run by sales and budgets and where they are in the market. That's a problem. The stationary, we're very excited about because if we had that certified product today, we couldn't keep it on the shelves. What we're being approached by now is companies asking us, "How do we help you? How do we get involved?" We want them to do that with us protecting our IP and keeping our advantage. You'll see Hillcrest, the narrative is that we're very, very confident in automotive. We hope to exclusively license that to someone. But from the traction side, the world is our oyster there, and we're very excited about where we're going to be.
Awesome. Awesome. Great stuff. That brings us to time here. So that's it for us. But if you have any extra questions, definitely direct them to Don. Thank you.