Review of the Research Program of the Partnership for a New Generation of Vehicles (1994)

July 7, 1994

NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES

NATIONAL ACADEMY OF ENGINEERING

NATIONAL RESEARCH COUNCIL

COMMISSION ON ENGINEERING AND TECHNICAL SYSTEMS

&

TRANSPORTATION RESEARCH BOARD

Standing Committee to Review the Research Program of the Partnership for a New Generation of Vehicles

The National Research Council (NRC) through its Commission on Engineering and Technical Systems (CETS) and the Transportation Research Board (TRB), proposes to establish a standing committee to conduct an independent review and advise the government on the research program of the Partnership for the a New Generation of Vehicles (PNGV).¹

The PNGV is a collaborative effort between the U.S. government and the U.S. automotive industry. It has the research goal of developing technologies for a new generation of vehicles that could achieve fuel efficiencies up to three times that of today’s comparable vehicles, while maintaining performance, size, utility, and cost of ownership and operation, and meet or exceed federal safety and emissions requirements. The PNGV research agenda will also include technologies that have potential to (a) substantially improve processes for designing and manufacturing vehicles (b) reduce costs and (c) permit greater flexibility in incorporating new production processes and products critical for achieving commercial success.

The initial research review meeting of the committee is targeted to be held in the summer of 1994, following which the committee will issue a brief report with

recommendations on the PNGV research program. At that time the committee ’s activities for 1995 will be defined in a brief operating plan that will serve as the basis for continued funding.

This proposal to the U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT) requests support for the NRC Standing Committee for the period from July 1, 1994 through December 31, 1997. The project will be conducted in two phases. Phase one is for a six-month duration from July 1, 1994 through December 31, 1994. Phase two is for a 36-month duration from January 1, 1995 through December 31, 1997.

The U.S. government and the U.S. automobile industry have embarked upon a program to bring about a three-fold increase in automotive fuel efficiency in as soon as the next ten years. The program will be managed by an interagency team, consisting of the Departments of Energy, Defense, Commerce, and Transportation, the Environmental Protection Agency, The National Aeronautics and Space Administration, and the National Science Foundation. It is being led by the Under Secretary for Technology Administration, U.S. Department of Commerce. The industry will be represented by USCAR, a consortium of Chrysler, Ford, and General Motors. This initiative, which created the PNGV, was announced by the President, the Vice President, and the leaders of Chrysler, Ford, and General Motors in the Rose Garden of the White House on September 29, 1993.

This initiative has three broad objectives:

1. To develop advanced manufacturing techniques to enable the U.S. automotive industry to get new products into the domestic and global marketplace quickly, thereby enhancing its competitiveness in worldwide automotive markets.

2. To develop technologies that can lead to near-term improvements in automobile fuel efficiency, safety, and emissions.

3. To conduct research that could lead to production prototypes of vehicles capable of up to three times greater fuel efficiency than today’s new vehicles.

If successful, the initiative is expected to move the government and automobile industry from confrontation to cooperation, and move the agencies of the federal government from piecemeal to coordinated regulation of automobile safety, efficiency, and emissions. It is even possible that the initiative could result in breakthroughs that would make some of the current regulatory interventions largely irrelevant.

The Partnership is described in much greater detail in a document titled “Partnership for a New Generation of Vehicles: A Declaration of Intent.” A major section of this document is headed “Next Steps.” Step 8 is quoted below:

“An unbiased organization acceptable to both the industry and the government, such as the National Academy of Sciences, will be asked to set up a peer review process to comment on the technologies selected for research and on progress made.”

The CETS and TRB, in consultation with other NRC units as appropriate, will establish a standing committee of about 15 individuals to conduct an independent review of the PNGV research program. The committee slate will reflect expertise pertinent to such areas as conventional and unconventional vehicle propulsion, vehicle structures, materials and aerodynamics, transmissions and drive trains, energy storage and recovery, vehicle power and control electronics, vehicle crash worthiness, emissions and emissions controls, other vehicle subsystems, design and simulation, manufacturing, materials fabrication, production technologies, and so forth.

It is our intent to establish a committee that has a substantial number of NAE and NAS members and that includes outstanding young engineers and scientists working at the cutting edge of conventional and unconventional automotive systems and technologies. The committee will, in accordance with usual NRC practices, be configured to be free of conflicts-of-interest and balanced in such a way as to ensure its impartiality. The committee will be supported with sufficient experienced staff to assure effective and timely performance. The project and its standing committee will be managed by the CETS.

The main event each year will be a critical review of the research program of the PNGV. The research review will be scheduled to take as much time as necessary, and might last as long as a week. This event will be followed with a short report from the committee, reviewed in accordance with NRC procedures, and delivered within several weeks of the research review meeting.

The committee will meet two or three times between each annual review. These meetings could serve any of several purposes. More narrowly focused, more detailed reviews could be carried out on a specific research topic. A meeting could be configured as a workshop to inform committee members and the PNGV of scientific and technological developments in the United States and elsewhere and to interact with experts who might otherwise not be brought to bear on issues facing the PNGV. Short reports from the standing committee could, optionally, result from such events, depending on their nature.

The Phase 1 activities will be as follows:

• --Committee Orientation meeting: This meeting will take the committee through the orientation steps required of all NRC committees, introduce the committee to the research program of the PNGV, clarify expectations of the sponsors and the NRC of the committee’s work, discuss committee balance and composition; discuss and concur on the scope and process for the research review meeting and the project’s plan and schedule; and make committee and staff assignments, as appropriate, in preparation for that meeting.

• --Research Review Meeting: This meeting, to be conducted in tandem with the committee’s orientation meeting, if possible, or soon thereafter, will be held at a

• location convenient to the PNGV researchers, probably in the Detroit area. The review process will follow the plan and schedule worked out by the committee at its orientation meeting after discussions with the PNGV. It is anticipated that the research review meeting will be conducted in an open manner and that individual committee members will interact intensively with PNGV personnel and others. However, no advice or recommendations in any form--oral or written--will be delivered by the committee to the PNGV prior to NRC review and approval of a written report presenting such advise and recommendations.

• --First Report: Immediately upon completion of the research review meeting, the committee will deliberate on its findings and recommendations, and with the support of the NRC staff, prepare a short report for NRC review. An NRC approved first report is targeted to be delivered to the PNGV in late October 1994, assuming that the research review meeting occurred no later than mid-August 1994.

• --Annual Operating Plan: Following the committee’s orientation and research review meetings, an operating plan for 1995 will be prepared by the NRC staff and the committee, in coordination with the PNGV, and submitted to the DOT as a formal NRC proposal for funding the (Phase 2) activities of the committee in FY 1995. (In subsequent years, the operating plan will be prepared earlier, on a schedule consistent with the DOT’s budgeting and procurement cycle.)

The study will result in Phase 1 and a Phase 2 reports to the PNGV. All reports of the committee will be subject to NRC review procedures and will be made available to the public without restriction.

Presidential Executive Order 12832 of January 19, 1993, amends Executive Order 2859, which established the NRC, reaffirming and clarifying the NRC’s relationship with the U.S. Government. Of particular relevance to this proposal, the Executive Order directs the NRC to disseminate to duly accredited persons and the public the scientific and technical information it gathers and collects. Further, the actual expense of such reports shall be paid to the Academy through grants-in-aid and contracts by executive departments and agencies. The Academy ’s acceptance of an award by a department or agency of the U.S. Government is conditioned upon adherence to the letter and spirit of the Executive Order which provides the framework within which the NRC and the Government are expected to interact. The Government printing and binding regulations intend that contractors do not become prime or substantial sources of printing for departments or agencies. The Executive Order requirement that the NRC disseminate its reports is interpreted as not being primarily or substantially for the purpose of having such findings printed for the use of a department or agency and therefore outside the limitations of the printing and binding regulations. Accordingly, included in the attached estimate of costs is an amount projected to cover the cost of reproducing reports for this activity.

Endnote:

October 5, 1994

A formal request for an independent review of the PNGV program was received by the NRC from Dr. Mary Good, Under Secretary for Technology, U.S. Department of Commerce, acting on behalf of the PNGV. The project was contractually handled through the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), U.S. Department of Transportation. The document presented in this appendix is the project proposal that was submitted by the NRC to NHTSA. It outlines a broad charge for the committee ’s initial review of the PNGV program and represents the statement of task accepted by NHTSA and the PNGV for the project.

The NRC project was finalized on July 7, 1994, about five weeks later than originally anticipated. The schedule for the NRC’s first independent review of the PNGV R&D program was, however, not changed and began with briefings the week of August 22, 1994, in Dearborn, Michigan. Given the tight schedule, the NRC undertook an initial review that was broad in its coverage and perspective. To conduct this initial review expeditiously, the NRC appointed a small committee consisting of a core group of eight experts. In subsequent reviews, the NRC will expand the committee’s membership to enable more in-depth examination of the program’s technical content and progress.