Welcome

Inductive is thrilled about the upcoming meeting with Wabtec. I've prepared this material to give you clearer insight into Josh Sweere's professional journey and the key areas where Inductive, LLC excels. As a consultancy, Inductive believes in building strong partnerships, and this information is designed to spark ideas for collaboration which can be discussed at the June 13th meeting. My objective for Friday is to jointly identify pathways for impactful collaboration between Wabtec and Inductive.


About Josh

An insightful leader known for transforming complex challenges into strategic opportunities. With a profound ability to bridge technology and business objectives, Josh consistently drives innovation and delivers impactful results across diverse environments such as space exploration, mining, and clean-tech. 


• A technical background in Electrical Engineering:

Design and test of integrated circuits | semiconductors, power electronics, and modeling

• Strategic Product mindset:

Developed First Mode’s Clean-tech line of business and supported product diversification through market analysis, techno-economic modeling, and alignment to business goals

• Data driven:

Leveraging AI tools and programming to accelerate feasibility studies through the compilation and analysis of large amounts of data


Interests

  • Camping with the family
  • Skiing
  • Biking
  • Brewing the best cup of coffee
  • Global economics


LinkedIn Profile

Past Work

Hydrogen fuel-cell haul truck

Goal:  develop a fuel-cell–battery hybrid retrofit system to replace existing diesel-alternator gensets on Ultra-class haul trucks.

Actions:

  • Led multi-disciplinary team in feasibility study for both all battery-electric haul truck and fuel cell - hybrid haul truck
  • Collaborated on electrical architecture; generated single-line diagram
  • Drafted fuel cell architecture
  • Development of discrete event simulator - estimator for range, utilization, tonnes moved
  • Develop business case for commercial FCEV haul truck (product-market fit, R&D plan and requirements, pricing strategy, infrastructure dependencies)

Rail Decarbonization

Goal: generate a concept and study the feasibility to reduce emissions for heavy haul locomotives operating in a large consist.

Actions:

  • Rapid concept generation (< 5 weeks)
  • Identify concept bottlenecks and assign risk assessment with mitigations
  • Electrical conductor market survey - needed high voltage connections between tender and locomotive
  • Simplified energy balance simulation - used to compute fuel and emission savings
  • Cursory thermal analysis

Scaled SCADA (IOT for small industrial)

Goal:  develop a low cost way to supervise small-scale anaerobic digesters deployed in the field. Use the data to engage customers an investors. Use trends to support field operations.

Actions:

  • Generated a system architecture, illustrating IoT Sensor to cloud
  • Description of intended database structure
  • Detailed feature-set with capability deployment timeline

Ferry Decarbonization Presentation

Goal: assess the WSF’s proposed decarbonization strategy to go forward with battery-diesel hybrids. Shift regional conversation around thinking bigger.

Actions:

  • Presented contrarian decarbonization strategy at conference
  • Emissions analysis
  • Familiarization with charge infrastructure and high-speed inductive charging

Inductive, LLC.

Mission

Inductive is an engineering consulting firm established to provide transformative engineering solutions for our clients in heavy industry dealing with electrification projects. Capturing opportunity and value for our clients through the appropriate development and application of hardware and predictive modeling.


Based in Seattle Washington. Inductive has a built a network of peers to cover areas of expertise beyond electrical engineering and product strategy. Areas like materials, mechanical engineering, software security, power electronics,  and more.


Inductive is focused on the following key areas

  • Power electronics and electrical infrastructure
  • Electrification of heavy-industry mobile equipment
  • Remote data collection and data analysis pipeline to support things like asset health monitoring, predictive maintenance, and maximization of asset utilization
Follow Inductive on LinkedIn

Questions for Wabtec

1. What has Advanced Technology team been working on?

Describe any projects and areas you’re looking for assistance

2. What has adoption of hybrid been like?

I can share some of my experience with a diesel-hybrid battery product for ultra-class haul trucks.

3. Have customers been coming to Wabtec with concerns about supporting electrical infrastructure?

This is likely an area I can help given my power electronics experience and work with mines and hydrogen production infrastructure.

4. What is the feeling toward Hydrogen fuel-cell locos? Hydrogen ICE?

Having spent the past six years trying to bring about hydrogen equipment and associated infrastructure, I have opinions on the future prospects of hydrogen, but I’m always curious to hear what folks in industry are thinking.

5. How closely do the various innovation teams within Wabtec work together?

I’m curious if projects have team members from groups spanning fuel efficiency to digital intelligence, for example.