Clemson has eye on future of automobiles
ICAR's Dr. Thomas Keinath speaks to Rotary
By John Temple Ligon
Temple@TheColumbiaStar.com

Dr. Thomas Keinath explains the benefits of the ICAR program at Clemson University.

In worldwide automotive manufacturing, electrical engineering and computer science have become as important as mechanical engineering. Contemporary cars can carry up to 1 million lines of computer code. A new and necessary approach to teaching and training the next generation of leaders in the automotive industry is occurring in South Carolina.

Clemson University's International Center for Automotive Research (ICAR) is under way on 250 acres near Greenville at the intersection of I-85 and Laurens Road. The idea is to teach and train systems integration engineers ready for the world, anywhere in the world automobiles are de-signed or manufactured. Besides dispensing and distributing talent, the ICAR's mission statement includes attracting more talent and manufacturers to the area - clustering, as the economic developers call it.

ICAR's Dr. Thomas Keinath spoke to the Columbia Rotary Club at Monday lunch, August 28. He is dean emeritus attached to the College of Engineering and Science at Clemson, but his current assignment is directly tied to ICAR. Actually, the correct acronym is CUICAR, to include Clemson University in the title, but ICAR is how it's called. There is nothing like ICAR in this part of the world, particularly as an accommodation to foreign manufacturers in the U.S.

The Big Three in Detroit have comparable facilities, but those are mostly in-house as part of corporate headquarters. Foreign automobile manufacturers also have something similar on their home ground, but in the U.S., ICAR is it. Among American universities, Clemson's competition for students in this field includes Michigan, Purdue, and Berkeley, but their programs fall mostly under the departments of mechanical engineering. Clemson's systems integration engineering is what pulls its program ahead of the pack. Even in Germany, the Technical University of Munich has comparable curricula, but that is still under the department of mechanical engineering, not systems integration engineering.