interview
>
heywood
> heywood 16
Heywood 16 (2:22)
Topic(s): Auto Industry / Future Transport
User Comments
© WGBH Educational Foundation
Please watch the clip first. If you plan to use it, review
the Rules of Use, then click on the download button.
This clip is licenced under a Creative Commons Attribution
Noncommercial 3.0 Unported License.
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.
