In November 2003, I was still a Junior Lecturer in Control Systems in the Electrical Machines and Drives Research Group at the University of Sheffield. I had the opportunity to join my great friend Professor Zi-Qiang Zhu on a 14 day Royal Society funded lecture tour of University and EV research centres in Taiwan. Qiang and I had known each other since I started working in the Research Group during my undergraduate days.

I travelled out separately and met up with Qiang in Hong Kong…