interview > heywood > heywood 16

Heywood 16 (2:22)
Topic(s): Auto Industry / Future Transport
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Video Transcript

What motivates my own efforts and those of my colleagues and students in our lab to work hard on these issues? It is because we feel technology has got a vital role in this—not the only role, but a vital role - and we need everything that technology can give us to make our energy use in transportation, and in other areas, sort of more efficient and more effective - use energy better.

What many people don't realize is that in engineering, with technical products, the more you know, the better you can do things. So part of what we do is we understand what's going– what's going on inside engines. Why can't we make them more efficient? What are the limits? Because if we understand those limits in a basic way, that'll prompt our thinking of ways around these limits; it'll enable us to push those limits further out. So, first of all, if we understand what's going on, we can do something about these constraints, but also realize that there are some opportunities and then we'll explore those opportunities. We'll try and make them real. What would we have to do to make them real?

So it's a combination of understanding, feeding that information out into the technical community, in the industry, the technical community more broadly, and then it's about: can we think of some good ideas that the practical side of the business could pick up and develop, that would move us all in the same direction? And it isn't just a better product. A cheaper product that's good means it will use– it'll be used more rapidly and more often. So all of these things matter.

And then we are also training and educating young people who are fascinated by this technology; that they're interested in transportation—they love engines. So they're going to go out and work on the next generation and the next generation of engines. And the more they know, and they more intensely they can channel their energy and knowledge into making things better, the faster we'll progress.

So that's what drives us here. We think we can make a contribution to knowledge, generate some good new ideas, and provide a really, sort of, creative and motivated engineering force, workforce, that can go out there and have an impact.