Robert shares his thoughts about the UK’s engineering industry, the challenges, and opportunities it faces and joining Petalite in this podcast by Ferris Aitchison for Techne Connect.
Robert Nash is our highly experienced Chief Technology Officer. His vast engineering knowledge and valuable career experience in the automotive industry will be key as Petalite continues to innovate and commercialise in 2024. Like many of our team, he was born, raised, and educated in our home county, the West Midlands which is rich in automotive heritage.
Within this podcast, Robert talks about his career, including Zytek Automotive and his contribution to the start the EV revolution in Europe. Past successful projects include:
- F1 Kinetic Energy Recovery Systems (KERS) for McLaren launched in 2009, said to be best on the grid at the time with innovative and efficient propulsion technology alongside an impressive reliability record.
- Formula E Powertrain design for the 3-time winner Renault e.DAMS in 2014, 15 and 16.
- Audi R8 e-tron which set a new world-record lap time at the Nürburgring and featured in the film Iron Man 3.
On his move to Petalite he says:
“As I’ve grown up, I’ve always wanted to leave the planet in a better place. So, I worked in electrification for 25 years until I felt that I couldn’t contribute anymore. I decided to move to EV charging because that was the next challenge to open EVs to the masses.”
Robert prides himself as a team player and now leads the Petalite engineering team to solve the problems related to reliability and energy management in EV charging. Listen as he explains his management style and how to encourage the next generation of engineers. He provides a variety of valuable advice for young people taking on a career in this space.
“One of the problems that I think most engineers have is that they like problems. So as soon as they solve a problem, they don’t give themselves credit for solving the problem. They’re on to the next. And sometimes you must stop and say, ‘wow, look how far we’ve come.”
Robert discusses his consideration to the end user experience in EV charging, focusing on reliability for customers to intelligent management systems to support grid balancing He covers how we can supplement EV charging with local energy storage, rather than tagging the load on the grid. These are areas that Robert actively tries to solve at Petalite with an easy solution. He also shares his broader views of the global automotive industry and how quickly it is moving in terms of technical advancement.
“The pace of innovation is breathtaking. If you’d say to somebody ten years ago, everybody would be driving electric cars and they will be the most popular choice, and then we will have autonomous driving, what would they say? If you look at mobile phone ten years ago compared to today, and now and apply that to transport and passenger vehicles, that’s the level of change you’re going to see in the next ten years.”
He believes that the UK is a country that doesn’t champion pioneering engineers enough and discusses how the status of engineering in the UK needs to be improved through education.
“Everything anybody touches has gone through the hands of an engineer. A doctor’s medicine, the accountants, they wouldn’t be able to do their job without engineers. I don’t think people realise that everything they touch has been designed by an engineer.”
This podcast features many more interesting thoughts and perspectives from Robert, from how driver habits are changing to future predictions for the EV sector.
We suggest grabbing a coffee and enjoy this insightful and eye-opening podcast.
