Akshat Jiwan Sharma

28 Jan 2026 I thank the society of automotive engineers for organising a 2 day power packed conference on current status and the future of  EV charging in North America.  As many of the presenters noted, EV charging is now being viewed as an infrastructure problem, not a niche technology that needs to be proven. The focus is on scaling charging ubiquity, grid-integrated vehicles and commercial viability.  Some hard problems like megawatt-scale thermal limits, urban curbside access, and standards interoperability still need to be solved but it's almost certain that they will be in due time. If we look at the history of US innovation it's clear that the country has become very good at building new technological infrastructure. Credit cards ,ATMs,internet and many more examples prove this point.  It was quite clear after listening to the speakers that US policy makers are going to go all in on EV technology. Critics often point out some notable blind spots in the policy...

29 Jan 2026 President Von Der Leyen, Vice President Teresa Ribera , Director General Linsey McCallum and other dignitaries gathered together in Brussels to outline a clean, just and competitive vision for sustainable growth of the European economy. Europe is one of the leaders when it comes to research on cutting edge technologies however transformation of that research into a marketable product doesn't always happen in the EU as most EU organisations prefer to set up business in the USA due to favorable policies and tolerance for failure. It's a problem because the EU is not able to profit from its own research investment.  Since the establishment of the European single market in 1993, 27 EU nations have enjoyed free movement of goods,services and people. Despite this challenges remain in the form of slow bureaucratic processes and complex legislations. To make Europe competitive it will be essential to simplify the laws.  Legal costs have become so high that many upstarts ca...

I thank the Bengal Chamber of Commerce and industry for organising a discussion on the future of India’s metals and mining sector. While the development of new processes for extraction and emergence of new applications have raised the value of metals like Lithium and Neodymium, steel remains dominant. Much of the discussion was centred around securing supplies for iron ore and scaling India's steel production.  Although there is no shortage of Iron ore in India, steel producers have often imported high iron content ore and depending upon the market conditions exported ore from India too. To scale India's steel production manufacturers will need to build factories that can process more ore and cut down on exports. But for that to happen energy needs to be scaled proportionally.  This issue is complicated as calls for sustainability grow louder. Hydrogen has proved itself a capable fuel/reducing agent for green steel production. Another method is molten iron ore elec...

ABSTRACT  The ontological status of energy and work is examined through a historical and philosophical lens, tracing the concept from Aristotle's energeia (actuality or being-at-work) and dynamis (potentiality) to modern physics. While classical and contemporary physics treat energy as a conserved, relational, frame-dependent scalar quantity—a bookkeeping device tied to time-translation symmetry (Noether's theorem) rather than a substantive entity—work emerges as a more concrete, measurable process of energy transfer and change. Drawing on Aristotle's distinction between potentiality and actuality, Joule's disproof of caloric theory, Feynman's emphasis on energy as a numerical invariant, and quantum field theory's vacuum fluctuations, we argue that energy remains abstract and derived, lacking independent ontological standing. In contrast, work—as ceaseless activity, transformation, and actualization—claims greater ontological primacy: it is the observable, causa...

19 Jan 2026 I thank the Sustainable Aviation fuel association for organising an online dialogue to discuss challenges and opportunities in India SAF market as the nation moves towards a formal policy to achieve net zero emissions by 2070.  The current strategy is to focus on waste oil (to produce HEFA, Hydroprocessed Esters and Fatty Acids) agricultural waste (available in such huge quantity that it's easily capable of satisfying fuel needs for aviation ,currently at 9.9MMT) and other renewable feedstocks such as alcohol derived from food waste.  In the short to mid term focussing on heterogenous feedstock could accelerate the SAF production and adoption but there are a couple of challenges. Aviation consumes a small percentage of total fuel use. Using agricultural and food waste as feed stock could meet the demand of aviation but not of the entire transport sector (~230 MMT). The risk is that if industries are dependent upon these feedstocks it will be difficult to scale it t...

14 Jan 2026 I thank the Society of Automotive Engineers for organising an international showcase at the start of 2026 ahead of their scheduled meeting with policy makers in Washington DC between January 20-22.  The showcase was successful in highlighting SAE’s initiatives in Sustainable Mobility ,Connectivity, Digital Transformation ,Automated & Autonomous Systems, Power & Propulsion ,Advanced Materials and Workforce Development. The Automotive industry is  cross-disciplinary that relies on several distinct domains working together to build a vehicle. SAE has done well to unite them in a single platform.  The challenges that the automotive industry faces today are much different from the challenges it faced when SAE was instituted more than a 100 years ago.  Sustainability is a key issue. Henry Ford ,an illustrious member of SAE,understood this and tried to manufacture a hemp based car. That did not work out well due to a combination of materials limitations ...