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Transportation center eyed in Tennessee valley

By: Dave Flessner
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By: Mike Pare
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GREENVILLE, S.C. — While Tennessee Valley officials were eyeing South Carolina’s innovative auto research campus here last November, Volkswagen made its first contact with Chattanooga about a plant.

Today, with VW building the Chattanooga auto plant, the city and valley can leverage the investment to create a research and technology effort akin to South Carolina’s, said U.S. Rep. Zach Wamp, R-Tenn.

“We have tremendous potential,” he said, adding that the Volunteer State eventually could lead the country in advanced transportation initiatives. The University of Tennessee at Chattanooga already has the Advanced Transportation Technology Institute on its campus, he noted.

“You have an organization to partner with and to develop a partnership that can be meaningful,” Rep. Wamp said.

The institute is a private, nonprofit group that advances clean transportation technologies to promote a healthy environment and energy independence through research, education and technology transfer.

Started after BMW’s arrival in the mid-1990s, the Clemson University International Center for Automotive Research is a campus where academia, industry and government work together.

Located on more than 250 acres near here, the research center has more than $200 million in public and private commitments so far aimed at fueling a knowledge base critical to the automotive industry.

Ben Haskew, the Greater Greenville Chamber of Commerce chief executive, said the research center puts a lot of intellectual capital in one place. Officials want the center to grow into a handful of so-called “research neighborhoods” from its existing one, he said. Others could include automotive sports and trucking, Mr. Haskew said.

BMW Component

BMW is a key component of the research center, officials said. The BMW Information Technology Research Center is housed in an impressive glass structure at the site, located about 10 miles from the manufacturing plant.

Bob Geolas, the research center’s executive director, said BMW officials believed early on that the company was not seeing people who knew how all the pieces came together in automotive manufacturing engineering.

He said while electrical and other types of engineers understand their individual disciplines, BMW officials felt there was a lack of professionals coming out of universities who understood the whole systems integration concept.

BMW assigned job-tax credit money to the state and put up $10 million for an endowed professorships program, Mr. Geolas said. The state matched the amount, other companies put in funding, and now the research center has four professorships endowed with a minimum of $6 million at the Carroll A. Campbell Jr. Graduate Engineering Center.

“Clemson needed to be more a part of the city,” Greenville Mayor Knox White said. The university’s main campus is about 30 miles from Greenville, and the city needed to take better advantage of the university’s expertise, he said.

“They’ve created a world-class graduate program,” Mr. White said, adding the jobs at the research center are “high wage and high skill.”

In addition, automotive supplier Timken Co. has a state-of-the-art research and development facility on the research center’s campus. It employs more than 150 engineers and technicians focused on developing innovative powertrain and friction management solutions.

University of Tennessee President John Petersen headed the chemistry department at Clemson when BMW located in South Carolina. He hopes Volkswagen will replicate BMW’s reliance upon the university and other colleges to train engineers and do research on new vehicle technologies.

In luring VW to Chattanooga, Dr. Petersen said UT officials highlighted the university’s biofuels initiative, the diesel engine research program at Oak Ridge and the computer simulation capabilities at UTC’s SimCenter, along with traditional university training programs.

“We’ve got to educate people for the 21st century and where we can position our graduates for the jobs of the future,” he said.

Dr. Petersen said 10 percent of BMW’s research is done in South Carolina.

“It was the first major research they moved outside of Munich and the first auto company to put a research component in the Southeast. I think that is a good model, and it is exactly what we should be doing here,” Dr. Petersen said.

Rep. Wamp said he believes the type of partnership that emerges in the Tennessee Valley ought to be stimulated through the private sector.

“Government will follow private-sector initiatives,” he said.

Mr. Geolas said all the research center’s space is full, and officials are looking at two new facilities to get under way.

“We believe (the center) provides an R&D hub for our region of the country,” he said.

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