by Cameron M. Burns
Scott Badenoch, a Michigan-based automotive systems designer and engineer, will help RMI transform the auto industry through the use of advanced design and materials in both military and civilian transportation applications.
“What I do is take something from a concept and get it into some kind of real demonstration,” Scott said. “I get my group to get it through their fingertips into something real. What I hope to be doing with RMI is building some radically light vehicles.”
After an engineering career at General Motors and Delphi, Scott “retired” and joined the faculty at Georgia Tech. There, he was tapped by the Department of Defense, specifically the Office of Naval Research, for whom he designed a Humvee-sized vehicle that included a 1.1-megawatt generator as well as a very lightweight molded armor. The Navy later asked Scott to focus solely on the armor and he built a second concept vehicle, the Ultra AP (“Armored Patrol” vehicle, pictured). Built within a couple of months and using a conventional Ford engine and transmission, the armored vehicle weighed 8,900 pounds and had a fuel economy that was about six times better than a Humvee.
“My big thing is to do systems engineering to reduce weight,” Scott said. “The way the military designs vehicles is very additive. They come up with a basic design, and they add something on, and they add something on, and then they add some armor, and we’re getting to the point where the Humvee is now approaching 15,000 pounds with armor.”
Scott doesn’t build his vehicles so he can sell them to the military.
“I work on the side of the Department of Defense and the branches of the service to create requirements that they can then put out to bid with prime contractors,” he said. “My job is to identify different ways to do things.”
Scott works with a core group of current and former automotive engineers in his own workshop/lab in Michigan. But their efforts aren’t just limited to lightweighting vehicles.
One of his current projects, dubbed Symbiotic Total Environment (STE), centers on a device — which includes a porta-potty, a microbial fuel cell, and a diesel engine among other components — that can treat human waste, generate electricity, produce potable water, and air condition and heat a ten-man tent.
He’s also working with a group of highprofile investors who are evaluating new types of alternative energy. “We’re building a lab here to test some new theories about creating, storing, and releasing energy,” he explained. “We think that sustainability is an advantage across all sectors.”
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