ROSEN BROTHERS GIVING UP BID TO CREATE FLYWHEEL-DRIVEN CAR.Byline: Ben Sullivan Daily News Staff Writer After a quixotic quix·ot·ic also quix·ot·i·cal adj. 1. Caught up in the romance of noble deeds and the pursuit of unreachable goals; idealistic without regard to practicality. 2. , four-year effort to make the flywheel-powered passenger car a reality, Benjamin and 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. announced Tuesday they are pulling the plug on Woodland Hills-based Rosen Motors L.P. ``Our goal was, by the end of the year, to have a major auto manufacturer invest in our company and commit to helping develop our powertrain. That has not materialized,'' Chairman Benjamin Rosen, who is also chairman of Compaq Computer Corp., said in a written statement Tuesday. Rosen Motors' 70 employees were told of the closure Monday and will receive a ``fair and very generous'' severance package A severance package is pay and benefits an employee receives when they leave employment at a company. In addition to the employee's remaining regular pay, it may include some of the following:
News of the closure took the clubby club·by adj. club·bi·er, club·bi·est 1. Typical of a club or club members. 2. Friendly; sociable. 3. Clannish; exclusive. but competitive flywheel industry by surprise. ``I just can't believe it; I'm floored,'' said Jack Bitterly, founder and chief scientist of Newbury Park-based U.S. Flywheel Systems Inc., which develops flywheels for the commercial satellite industry. ``I'm saddened.'' The Rosen brothers spent $24 million developing an 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] , flywheel-based powertrain that could be incorporated in mass-production passenger cars. The company said it successfully tested such a system in January. The design uses a small gas-turbine engine to create electricity that drives motors attached to the axle axle Pin or shaft on or with which wheels revolve; with fixed wheels, one of the basic simple machines for amplifying force. Combined with the wheel, in its earliest form it was probably used for raising weights or water buckets from wells. of a car. A flywheel recovers energy when the car brakes, energy that can then be used to accelerate the car. But the Rosens could not convince a major automaker to invest the millions of dollars necessary to take the system from prototype to mass-production level, Castleman said. He said the company has a strong intellectual property portfolio accrued over the five years that it will consider licensing or selling to a third party. |
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