The SP Show

Why do so many battery gigafactory projects struggle, despite raising billions of dollars and using world-class technology? In this episode of The SP Show , I sit down with Dr Will Jones from Beck & Pollitzer, a company that has helped deliver process equipment installations across 13 battery gigafactories , working with 11 manufacturers in 8 countries . Rather than discussing battery chemistr...

Can India build a globally competitive battery industry, or has China already won the race? In this episode of The SP Show, Vikram Handa, Founder & MD of Epsilon Advanced Materials and Managing Director of Epsilon Carbon, shares an insider's perspective on battery materials, supply chains, manufacturing, and industrial strategy. We discuss China's dominance, India's battery ambitions, the chal...

Hydrogen Lost the Race to Batteries? | Bernard van Dijk For more than a decade, hydrogen was presented as one of the leading solutions for clean transportation. Governments funded it. Automakers invested billions. Industry groups promoted it as the fuel of the future. Yet while battery-electric vehicles have achieved mass adoption, hydrogen mobility remains a niche technology. In this episode of T...

In Part 2 of my conversation with Professor Chennupati Jagadish, we go beyond the titles and explore the real journey behind one of the world's leading scientists. Born in Vallurapalem, a small village in Andhra Pradesh, India, Prof. Jagadish studied under a kerosene lamp, faced academic setbacks, received more than 300 rejection letters , and still went on to become a global leader in semiconduct...

Sanjiv Malhotra, CEO of Sparkz Energy, joins Srinivas Popuri to discuss how the US can build a profitable domestic battery ecosystem through LFP chemistry, localized supply chains, and disciplined manufacturing. This episode explores battery commercialization, startup scaling, energy security, AI, leadership, and investor strategy. A must-listen for battery founders, energy professionals, investor...

Most scientific breakthroughs never make it to market. Not because the science is weak, but because the system around it is. In this episode of The SP Show, I sit down with Professor Chennupati Jagadish to unpack the gap between research and real-world products. We get into the uncomfortable reality behind deep tech: – why great research fails commercially – how public funding shapes what gets bui...

What does it actually take to build a lithium refinery in the US? In this episode of The SP Show, Srinivas Popuri sits down with Roshan Pujari, Founder & CEO of Stardust Power, for a practical conversation on lithium refining, critical minerals, bankability, pricing pressure from China, de-risking, and industrial execution. A strong listen for anyone in batteries, refining, project development...

What does it actually take to build a lithium refinery in the US? In this episode of The SP Show, Srinivas Popuri sits down with Roshan Pujari, Founder & CEO of Stardust Power, for a practical conversation on lithium refining, critical minerals, bankability, pricing pressure from China, de-risking, and industrial execution. A strong listen for anyone in batteries, refining, project development...

In Episode 2 of The SP Show, I sit down with Dr. Stuart Johnson, CEO of Solve Process, to unpack one of the battery industry’s most misunderstood realities: why battery materials take years to qualify, where timelines slip, and what kills scale-up programs in practice. With more than 30 years of experience in process engineering, Stuart breaks down the technical and commercial realities behind bat...

Why do battery materials take years, not months, to qualify? In this trailer, Stuart Johnson explains the hard reality behind battery scale-up: repeated sample iterations, slow cell testing, pilot-line validation, and the brutal gap between lab success and commercial production. Stuart Johnson is a process engineering expert and Founder of Solve Process Ltd, with 32 years of experience delivering...

Why do so many battery projects struggle before construction even begins? In this episode of The SP Show, Srinivas Popuri, Ph. D speaks with Tim Newman, Founder and CEO of Newman Eventus, a specialist consultancy focused on hands-on project management for capital projects in energy and advanced battery materials. With more than 25 years of experience across five continents, Tim has worked on compl...

My guest is Tim Newman, Founder and CEO of Newman Eventus, with more than 25 years of experience delivering complex capital projects across energy, oil and gas, and advanced battery materials. This is not a surface-level battery conversation. We discuss why battery projects fail before they start, what most companies still get wrong about execution, the real bottlenecks behind gigafactory delivery...