Off Highway Engineering - February 2016 - 30

Looking at mobility

PEOPLE FEATURE

in 2050
Cuneyt L. Oge begins his term as 2016 SAE
International President with a vision about
the future of auto- and aero-mobility.

by Patrick Ponticel

uneyt L. Oge was born in Turkey, spent time in the U.S. as a
young adolescent, graduated high school in Europe, went to
college in the U.S., learned to speak multiple languages,
married a Greek, and traveled the world.
"As my name implies, I'm a bit of a curiosity," allowed incoming
SAE International President Cuneyt Oge (pronounced June-eight
Oh-gay). The veteran management consultant puts no negative spin
on that self-appraisal. Quite the contrary, as he goes on to say: "I
think I qualify as a bona fide citizen of the world."
Which should prove effective in raising SAE's global profile and
making its products and services more relevant in a flattening and
fast-changing world.
"I've worked all around the world," Oge told SAE Update. "I learned
that to be effective in this global world of ours, you have to learn
how to be global personally."
That means, among other things, speaking multiple languages and
learning to have empathy for the unique situations that different
countries and peoples find themselves in. "And you can only learn
that by being on the ground and using all your senses in different
situations," he said. "I've had the privilege of working, literally, in
most of the developed countries of the world in some capacity or the
other-working with engineers, with business people, and having
friends and relationships around the world."
During an orientation day for new 2016 SAE Officers at the Society's
Pittsburgh headquarters on Dec. 9, Oge provided an overview of his
goals as the new SAE President. What follows are his edited remarks:
"Each President tries to put things in motion in hopes that they will
outlast them and actually take root. My focus areas are going to be in
three areas.
Number one is what I call the changing worlds of aero-mobility
and auto-mobility-think of it as auto-mobility 2050 and aero-mobility 2050. The world of auto-mobility is fundamentally going through
a revolution. Think about it: The powertrains that power our vehicles
are changing. We have over 76 alternative-powertrain models in the
U.S. market today. Never been seen before.
How we drive is changing. Autonomous driving was a figment of many
people's imagination only a few years ago. Now we're talking about having it within a few years.
How we own cars is changing. Personal ownership is being displaced with shared vehicles. Many younger-generation owners would
rather have a car on demand than own one.
Think about this fact: By 2050, 85% of the developed world's population will be living in urban centers. In many places in the world
today, you cannot even drive into the city unless you have a specific
30 February 2016

"Many youngergeneration owners
would rather have a car
on demand than own
one," said 2016 SAE
International President
Cuneyt L. Oge.

kind of car or unless it's a certain day of the week. So,
the automotive side of the world is changing.
On the aerospace side, we're seeing similar changes.
By 2050, civil air transport and space transport are
probably going to come together. We're going to have
space travel, we're going to have spaceports. Just imagine that, spaceports alongside airports. So we need to
think these things through and crystalize SAE's involvement and strategy for this changing world. We're very
active in the next-generation cars, we're very involved
with the standards development for things like cybersecurity, for driverless cars, battery charging standards for
electric vehicles, for all types of aerospace developments around the world. So we're well positioned, but
we have to keep being proactive and out front, leading
the industry to move forward successfully.
The second area that I think we need to focus on is our
global network. SAE International has a global network,
but that network has to continue to grow and get stronger. The Brazilian engineer sitting in Brazil should be networked and talking seamlessly with the engineer in the
U.S. or the engineer in India or the engineer in China.
That's how engineers like to work, how they need to
work. And I'm not talking about tools for collaboration.
Those already exist. I'm talking about informal networks:
the knowledge networks that SAE can help feed with its
extraordinary depth of knowledge in specific technical
areas, its intellectual property, and its historical files and
libraries that contain invaluable information.
Third, as we continue to globalize, we have to think in
terms of what I call altruistic capitalism. As we go out to
the world, I think we have to never lose sight of the fact
that SAE is there to provide a value, a service, to society, as well as its members. But at the same time, we
should do it in a way where it can generate revenues to
cover at least the expenses of the value created."
Read the full article in the January 2016 issue of SAE
Update or at http://www.sae.org/membership/news/.
OFF-HIGHWAY ENGINEERING

http://www.sae.org/membership/news/

Off Highway Engineering - February 2016

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Off Highway Engineering - February 2016