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Thomas Healy, founder and CEO of Hyliion, discussed the company's $41.7 million Navy contract to develop multi-megawatt Carno power generators for maritime vessels and military bases, noting Hyliion will power the Navy's new autonomous ship, the USX-1 Defiant. He highlighted the technology's advantages over diesel: lower maintenance, higher efficiency, and fuel flexibility. Healy then addressed growing demand from data centers facing grid constraints, particularly in Virginia and Ireland, where customers need on-site power for hundreds of megawatts to gigawatts. He explained Carno is a new heat engine based on Stirling technology, manufactured with metal 3D printers, capable of running on natural gas, diesel, hydrogen, or propane. He cited efficiency targets of 50% fuel-to-electric versus the 36% US grid average, and a cost of 17 cents per kilowatt hour versus 22 cents from the grid in a New York retail study. He outlined a scaling plan involving 3D printers, costing about $1.5 million per megawatt of annual capacity, generating $2.5-3 million revenue per year, with production ramping in Texas.
Key takeaways
Hyliion secured a $41.7 million Navy contract to develop multi-megawatt Carno generators for ships and military bases, including powering the USX-1 Defiant.
Carno is a Stirling-based heat engine using metal 3D printing, targeting 50% fuel-to-electric efficiency versus the 36% US grid average.
In a New York retail study, Carno offered electricity at 17 cents per kWh versus 22 cents from the grid.
For every megawatt of annual production capacity, Hyliion invests about $1.5 million in 3D printers, generating $2.5-3 million in yearly revenue.
Hyliion aims to scale production in its Texas plant to hundreds of megawatts annually, with commercial deployments starting in 2026.
0:00So what are the specific performance as well as maintenance requirements for these systems and what is the timeline here?
4:51So for the layperson out there who may not be as familiar, could you walk us through the efficiency as well as cost and even maintenance when you're comparing Carno to say established fuel cell systems that are currently on the market?
6:18... Thomas, finally before I let you go, you've highlighted the competitive advantages here, but what are some of the manufacturing as well as operational challenges that Hyliion actually faces as you move towards more commercial deployment?
Hyliion recently announced a $41.7 million contract with the US Navy to develop multi-megawatt versions of its Carno power generator for maritime vessels. Now this does represent the company's largest defense contract to date and at the same time the organization is attempting to leverage its modular power architecture for commercial use cases. We're here to discuss the Navy contract as well as the commercial roadmap with Thomas Healy, founder and CEO of Hyliion. Well, good morning. Thank you so much for joining us. I do want to start out with that contract that was awarded to Hyliion. So what are the specific performance as well as maintenance requirements for these systems and what is the timeline here?
Good morning. So this contract is not only to focus on ships and powering ships for the military, but it's also looking at powering military bases. And so the military needs a new source of power generation, right? They've been reliant on diesel engines for many, many years. But there's problems with diesel engines. They're loud. They require a lot of maintenance. They're not as efficient. And so those are areas that our Carno power module are able to solve. And that's where they're seeing this as a future technology for them, even to the point where a brand new fully unmanned autonomous ship that the Navy is producing, the USX-1 Defiant, we are going to be the power plant on that because we don't require the same level of maintenance that a normal diesel would. And so that's one of the opportunities. You mentioned timeline. This is something that we are already building the unit for that unmanned ship I mentioned. And then over the next couple of years, we'll be delivering towards that $42 million contract.
Yeah, and Thomas, while I have you here, I would like to get your perspective on what we're seeing, especially given the demands of artificial intelligence. And as you highlighted, capacity constraints on the electric grid have increasingly driven interest in on-site power generation for AI data centers. So, give us your take on to what extent power as well as efficiency requirements of these commercial hyperscalers actually align with the modules that you are building.
Maybe just to start with, to give your viewers a sense of like what's happening in the data center space. So if you go to areas like Virginia, which is where most of the data centers are in the US, or if you go to Ireland, the utility, the grid is already saying we do not have enough power available. You have to go with this model of bring your own electricity. You can't plug into the grid anymore. And so that now forces the data centers down a road map where they're looking at, all right, what technology can I use on site that can make clean, efficient, reliable, and ultimately low noise as well electricity, and ideally do it for cheaper or less than what you could buy from the grid. And those are all the value propositions that this Carno power module that we're producing really enables. And so we are seeing a tremendous amount of demand out of the data center space. And right now we're working on how do we actually scale up in order to meet that demand because these data centers are talking not about tens of megawatts, they're talking about hundreds of megawatts to even gigawatts of power that they need.
Yeah. And while we're talking about the Carno system, for our viewers who may not be as familiar, tell us how this system actually runs and in terms of fuel flexibility, how does it actually impact capex as well as operational costs for commercial adopters.
This is truly a new form of power generation. So if you think about technologies of the past, you have turbines, which is, you know, big power plants are powered off turbines. You've got internal combustion engines, fuel cells. We are a new category of a heat engine based off of Stirling technology. Now, this isn't new. It's been around for 200 years, a Stirling engine, but the problem has been it's been extremely difficult to manufacture. So, this is one of our key things. Just behind me here, you can see 3D printers, metal 3D printers. And we're actually using these machines to make parts that could never have been made before. And that's what's enabling us to bring this 200-year-old tech to life. And the benefits of it are extremely high efficiency, low maintenance, and you mentioned fuel flexibility. So, since our generator is powered by heat, we can use natural gas, we could use diesel, hydrogen, propane in order to make that heat that then runs the system. So this gives whether it's data centers or the military a pretty unmatched advantage because now you have one asset that can run on all these various fuels.
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Healy, T. (2026, August 18). @Hyliion CEO Thomas Healy On FIntech TV talking about #Karno and new Military contract [Interview transcript]. Healy On. CEOInterviews.AI. https://ceointerviews.ai/interview/1227436/
MLA
Thomas Healy. "@Hyliion CEO Thomas Healy On FIntech TV talking about #Karno and new Military contract." Healy On, 18 Aug. 2026. Transcript, CEOInterviews.AI, https://ceointerviews.ai/interview/1227436/.
BibTeX
@misc{healy2026_1227436,
author = {Thomas Healy},
title = {@Hyliion CEO Thomas Healy On FIntech TV talking about #Karno and new Military contract},
howpublished = {Interview transcript, Healy On. CEOInterviews.AI},
year = {2026},
month = {aug},
url = {https://ceointerviews.ai/interview/1227436/},
note = {Speaker-attributed transcript with timestamps}
}
