IN THE DRIVER'S SEAT : ROSEN BROTHERS INVEST REPUTATIONS, $13 MILLION IN LOW-POLLUTION AUTOS.Byline: Gregory J. Wilcox Daily News Staff Writer Harold A. Rosen helped take telecommunications out of this world. His brother, Benjamin, had a hand in making personal computers as ubiquitous in the home as a television set. Harold is 63, and Benjamin is 70. But they aren't the retiring type. They are trying to turn the 110-year-old automobile industry automobile industry, the business of producing and selling self-powered vehicles, including passenger cars, trucks, farm equipment, and other commercial vehicles. on its ear. Their Woodland Hills company is taking a $13 million gamble, building what they envision as the automotive power plant of tomorrow. Featuring hybrid components that use gasoline, electricity and a flywheel, their auto power system promises eye-popping performance to rival European sport sedans and also cruising range halfway across America on one tank of fuel. What's more, the system creates only a minuscule amount of air pollution. ``We're designing (the system) for a wide range of cars, from something as small as the Saturn to something as large as a luxury sports sedan A sports sedan is a descriptive term applied to a sedan or saloon automobile that is designed to look and feel "sporty" - offering the driver more connection with the driving experience. Most vehicles in this category overlap with the compact executive car classification. like a Lexus, Cadillac or Mercedes-Benz,'' said Harold Rosen Harold A. Rosen (born 1926 in New Orleans, Louisiana) is an electrical engineer, known for designing and directing the construction of the first geosynchronous communications satellite, Syncom, for Hughes Aircraft Company. , co-founder of Rosen Motors L.P. The 3-year-old firm is seeking a niche in the market for environmentally friendly Environmentally friendly, also referred to as nature friendly, is a term used to refer to goods and services considered to inflict minimal harm on the environment.[1] vehicles that seems to be just down the road. The California Air Resources Board California Air Resources Board (CARB) is the "clean air agency" of the state of California in the United States. Established originally in 1967, it is a part of the California Environmental Protection Agency, an organization which reports directly to the California has mandated that 10 percent of the cars offered for sale in the state in 2003 be emission free. Right now, electric cars are the only ones certified to meet that standard. In the interim, automakers must participate in research and development programs that will put at least 3,750 electric vehicles on the road between 1998 and 2002. General Motors will start leasing its EV1, an electric two-seater, this fall. Honda plans to market a four-passenger sedan next year. Test drivers nationwide gave the EV1 high marks for styling and performance. But the range - 70 miles in the city and 90 miles on the highway - is still not particularly practical. This is why Harold Rosen, a former aerospace engineer, and his brother Benjamin, a venture capitalist Venture Capitalist An investor who provides capital to either start-up ventures or support small companies who wish to expand but do not have access to public funding. Notes: Venture capitalists usually expect higher returns for the additional risks taken. who funded Compaq Computer in 1982 and today is its chairman, are excited about their automotive project. The Rosens say a vehicle using their power plant will have all of the best characteristics and none the drawbacks of an electric car. ``We think the emissions will be the same or lower than battery power cars on a fully accountable system that includes the emissions from power plants that recharge the batteries. It will be essentially zero,'' Benjamin Rosen said. They hope to sell their units directly to automakers who will then offer them as options to conventional gasoline power plants. Initially, though, they will do conversions. Don't bet against them. Harold Rosen knows his way around a research and development lab. In the early 1960s, while he was a radar engineer at Hughes Aircraft Hughes Aircraft Company was a major aerospace and defense company founded by Howard Hughes. The group was based near Ballona Creek, in Culver City, California, USA, on the Pacific Coast. Hughes Aircraft was acquired by General Motors in 1985. Co., he oversaw the team that built the first communications satellite communications satellite artificial satellite that functions as part of a global radio-communications network. Echo 1, the first communications satellite, launched in 1960, was an instrumented inflatable sphere that passively reflected radio signals back to to remain in orbit over a fixed point on the Earth. That work made today's global communications system In telecommunication, a communications system is a collection of individual communications networks, transmission systems, relay stations, tributary stations, and data terminal equipment (DTE) usually capable of interconnection and interoperation to form an integrated whole. possible. Benjamin Rosen has exhibited a knack for picking high-tech winners. His venture capital firm, Sevin Rosen, also invested in the high-tech firms Borland International, Cyrix, Lotus Development, Silicon Graphics and Quarterdeck Office Systems Quarterdeck Office Systems, later Quarterdeck Corporation, was an American computer software company. It was incorporated in 1982. Their offices were initially located in Santa Monica, California and later in Marina Del Rey, California. at the start-up stage. In 1992, Computerworld magazine named Benjamin Rosen one of 25 computer-industry people who changed the world. So trying to stretch the limits of technology doesn't faze the Rosen brothers, although the latest task is proving to be formidable. Their 60-employee company has had some setbacks. The Rosens' system was installed in a Saturn that had been gutted of its internal combustion engine Internal combustion engine A prime mover, the fuel for which is burned within the engine, as contrasted to a steam engine, for example, in which fuel is burned in a separate furnace. parts and trucked to Willow Springs Raceway Willow Springs International Motorsports Park is located near Rosamond and Lancaster, California, and is about an hour north of Los Angeles. It is a historic race track, in existence more than fifty years, with the first race in 1953. The main track is a challenging 2. near Palmdale for some road testing in early August. The car never moved under its own power. Back at Rosen Motors' Independence Avenue facility a few weeks later, on the night before another road test, the power plant ran smoothly for three hours. Then the flywheel spun off its axis. Additional research and development is under way, and technicians are installing the power train in a Mercedes. Harold Rosen won't say when a future road test is planned. ``We were trying too hard to get it done by a particular calendar date instead of waiting until the equipment was thoroughly checked out,'' he noted. ``In retrospect, we should have done what we're doing now, which is improving the basic components.'' On the surface, the parts seem relatively simple. A small turbine engine churns out up to 40 horsepower and produces electric power for the motors that drive the wheels. That's just enough juice to keep a car up to speed on flat stretches of highway. They plan to up the turbine's power to 60 horsepower. The turbo is connected to a flywheel, which produces surge power for acceleration. It also stores energy. And a sophisticated electronic controller keeps all the systems working together. The gas turbine, developed by Capstone Turbine Capstone Turbine Corporation NASDAQ: CPST, incorporated in 1988, is a California based gas turbine manufacturer that specializes in microturbine power and heat cogeneration systems. Capstone has sold and shipped more than 3,000 of these one-moving-part systems worldwide. Corp. in Tarzana, is just over 3 feet long and makes less racket than an internal combustion engine. It uses a catalytic combustor com·bus·tor n. A combustion chamber and its igniters, injectors, and other related apparatus in a jet engine or gas turbine. A name generally assigned to the combination of flame holder or stabilizer, igniter, combustion chamber, and to burn a lean fuel mixture at a temperature below that at which nitrogen oxides, a component of pollution, are produced. But the key to the system, and the biggest technological hurdle, is the flywheel. It is constructed of reinforced composite materials and spins at astonishingly a·ston·ish tr.v. as·ton·ished, as·ton·ish·ing, as·ton·ish·es To fill with sudden wonder or amazement. See Synonyms at surprise. high speeds inside a vacuum chamber. Revving at 55,000 revolutions per minute, it is fast enough to get the outside edge whirring whir v. whirred, whir·ring, whirs v.intr. To move so as to produce a vibrating or buzzing sound. v.tr. To cause to make a vibratory sound. n. 1. 2,000 mph. The challenge is to make the containment vessel strong and light enough to prevent catastrophic damage should a flywheel break. ``I think we've got a pretty good one,'' Harold Rosen said of the containment chamber. ``We're not finished yet, we're continuing to improve it.'' Richard F. Post, a senior scientist at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory: see Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. (body) Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory - (LLNL) A research organaisatin operated by the University of California under a contract with the US Department of Energy. in Livermore, Calif., is one of the nation's top flywheel authorities and sees lots of potential in the Rosen system. A flywheel with a rotor about 10 inches high and 8 inches in diameter can generate nearly 150 horsepower. ``We did have success in getting very high power out of the units here in the lab,'' Post said. He says that designing a containment vessel might be the breakthrough technology. ``We have had some successful containment tests but there is a lot more to learn about that. It's not an unsolvable problem,'' Post said. State officials also are impressed with the company's concept and the credentials of the four principal players. In addition to the Rosens, the management team includes William Grayer, executive vice president and chief operating officer Chief Operating Officer (COO) The officer of a firm responsible for day-to-day management, usually the president or an executive vice-president. . He is the former vice president of Hughes Communications Hughes Communications is a publicly traded company under the stock symbol of NASDAQ: HUGH since September 2006. Hughes Communications is wholly owned by Apollo Management. The principal business of Hughes Communications, Inc. International. Deborah R. Castleman is vice president for marketing. She is the former deputy assistant secretary of defense for command, control and communications. Engineers from the California Air Resources Board checked out the Rosens' operation this summer. ``Our staff felt that they did have some potential,'' said Air Resources Board spokesman Jerry Martin
Jerry Lindsey Martin (born May 11, 1949 in Columbia, South Carolina, U.S.) is a former player in Major League Baseball. He is the son of major league pitcher Barney Martin. . ``There are clearly some engineering hurdles that they have to overcome. But these people are pretty sharp and good engineers.'' Other companies are also developing flywheel technology. Trinity Flywheel Batteries Inc. of San Francisco San Francisco (săn frănsĭs`kō), city (1990 pop. 723,959), coextensive with San Francisco co., W Calif., on the tip of a peninsula between the Pacific Ocean and San Francisco Bay, which are connected by the strait known as the Golden and Northrop Grumman Northrop Grumman Corporation (NYSE: NOC) is an aerospace and defense conglomerate that is the result of the 1994 purchase of Grumman by Northrop. The company is the third largest defense contractor for the U.S. - members of Burbank-based Calstart, the advanced transportation consortium - are working on a quick charger for electric vehicles that uses a flywheel to store its energy. The system would allow fast battery charging with less drain on the electrical power grid supply. Newbury Park-based U.S. Flywheel Systems, owned by actor Kevin Costner and his brother Dan, has developed an energy storage module for TRW TRW The Real World (TV reality show) TRW The Right Way TRW Tactical Reconnaissance Wing TRW The Retriever Weekly (University of Maryland, Baltimore, MD) TRW Thompson Ramo Wooldridge Inc Space and Electronics Group. TRW is buying the flywheels for testing under a contract with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's Lewis Research Center. The flywheel systems could be used as an alternative to chemical batteries that currently store and provide power aboard orbiting satellites. Some programs, like Calstart's, receive government funds. But Rosen Motors is privately financed and not seeking any government help. Harold Rosen says this enables the company to advance at a faster clip. He says it is too soon to discuss consumer prices or a timetable for bringing the power train to market. ``It's going to be a long evolution, and the initial sales will probably be for a very limited market,'' he said. ``The units will be relatively high priced, but there is nothing intrinsic in the concept that would keep it high priced forever.'' Benjamin Rosen says the brothers will pour an additional $10 million to $15 million into the project next year. Then they will seek at least $100 million more to fund production if their plans pan out. ``We have to go a long way toward reducing investor risk. We hope by that time we have customer interest, and I think it will be possible to receive substantial outside funding for this,'' Benjamin Rosen says. Inspiration comes from his experience with Compaq at the start-up stage. He remembers people believing that computer giant IBM (International Business Machines Corporation, Armonk, NY, www.ibm.com) The world's largest computer company. IBM's product lines include the S/390 mainframes (zSeries), AS/400 midrange business systems (iSeries), RS/6000 workstations and servers (pSeries), Intel-based servers (xSeries) had a lock on the market. Two years ago, Compaq passed IBM and Apple to become the world's biggest maker of personal computers. ``This is just the most incredible opportunity in a lot of ways,'' Benjamin Rosen said of the flywheel project. ``There are not many chances in your life to change the world. And while it's a grandiose and conceited idea on paper, we'd hate to know it's possible and not have tried it.'' CAPTION(S): 4 Photos, Drawing, Box Photo:(1--Color) Benjamin Rosen Also found ed Compaq (2--Color) Harold A. Rosen Ex-aerospace engineer (3) William Grayer Heads operations (4) Deborah R. Castleman Handles marketing Drawing: (Color) In the driver's seat Spinning the wheels Rosen Motors Co. is building an electric-gas hybrid car that doesn't use batteries for power. It hopes a gasoline-powered turbine and a rapidly spinning flywheel may produce a car that goes from zero to 60 in 6 seconds. Len De Groot/Daily News Box: ROSEN MOTORS L.P. |
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