Meet Harold Rosen, a slight, gentle-mannered 70-year-old Cal Tech Ph.D. who predates the space age by a dog's age. Yet every time you watch a live-television feed from distant parts of the earth, chances are the signal has bounced off one of the satellites he helped design for Hughes Aircraft in his 37-year career. "He is uncommonly brilliant," says his biggest fan, younger brother Ben, 63. "He's a national treasure."
Actually, a lot of people would say that about Ben. He has a way with numbers. As a five-year-old he could calculate complex mathematical progressions, and as a grownup he figured out that raw computing power was growing and the price dropping so quickly that one day every office and home in America would have a computer. With his partner L.J. Sevin, he helped launch Silicon Valley legends such as Lotus Development, Cypress Semiconductor, Borland International and an outfit called Compaq, the world's largest personal-computer maker. He's still chairman. "My brother has done pretty well for himself," says Harold with a smile. Little brother is worth about $100 million.
Logically speaking, if these two guys profess a view of something's being big in the future, it might be smart to pay attention. They do. That something is a newfangled, high-power, high-mileage, nonpolluting automobile engine that their company, Rosen Motors, plans to build and sell to automakers. "We see Rosen Motors as the capstone of our careers, the crowning achievement," says Ben.
The Rosen engine design, announced last week, draws its power from two very different sources. The first is a high-powered turbine--a mini-jet engine if you will--that will keep your car purring along on the freeway with just a spit of gas every now and then. For quick acceleration and hill climbing, the turbine is linked to a flywheel, an energy-producing and energy-storing contraption that is at least as old as the first potter's wheel--a stone that had to be heavy enough to continue turning between kicks from someone's foot. Flywheels were a prominent feature of the Industrial Revolution, delivering a smooth flow of power over the bumps and jerks made by an engine's piston strokes, and small flywheels perform that function in every car today.
Most of the auto companies and academics who have heard of this design think the Rosens are spinning their wheels. Of course, the auto companies thought the Japanese didn't have a clue either, but they've also invested billions of dollars in flywheel technology without coming up with much. Says Harold: "Detroit never took hybrids seriously. They weren't thinking broadly enough." Chrysler tried, and failed, to field a race car with a turbo-flywheel power train (the engine and transmission) a couple of years ago.
Yet every auto company in the world is desperately seeking an engine to replace the internal-combustion machine that has been powering cars, consuming oceans of fossil fuel and polluting the universe for about 100 years. GM, in fact, will begin selling a battery-powered electric car in California this year. California, locked in a perpetual automotive smog, requires that by 2003, 10% of the cars offered for sale in the state produce zero emissions; many states are expected to follow suit.