Photo by Muskegon, MI Chronicle, Merissa Ferguson
Three years ago, while watching his mailman make the neighborhood rounds, Simon Rose was suddenly struck with a remarkable idea: What if mail trucks went hybrid? This question and his generous funding sparked some of RMI’s latest breakthrough ideas on transportation.
THE SQUAT, BOXY TRUCK ROLLED AROUND the corner hugging the curb, and then jerked to a stop. It was just another run-of- the-mill day in South Miami, lush, green, and fragrant. But, for some reason on this particular day in 2005, the vehicle’s awkward movements were oddly mesmerizing. So much so, they captivated Simon Rose’s attention.
Long-time RMI donor Simon Rose |
Suddenly the engine cut out and the ocean breeze swept through the royal palms, returning a sense of peace to the neighborhood. The mail carrier, blue-clad and moving quickly, trotted away from his truck with a small brown box under his arm and a stack of neatly organized envelopes. He stuffed the mailbox full, turned around, and headed back toward the curb. As Rose opened his gate, the sound of the engine revving up interrupted the tranquil afternoon once again and the truck lumbered ahead to the next driveway. The long-time RMI supporter watched intently as his mail carrier, Alfredo, repeated the very same set of motions: he shut off the engine, emerged with a handful of mail, deposited it in the box, climbed back into his seat, cranked up the engine, and the vehicle lumbered ahead.
Before long, the truck slowly sidled up to Rose’s gate and eased to a stop. The two men had developed a friendship over the years and Rose liked to check in and ask Alfredo about his family.
That day, however, Rose’s mind was elsewhere. He recalls asking his mailman, “Why the heck doesn’t the USPS use hybrids? You don’t have to shut it off. You’re going to be on batteries most of the time, and when you’re braking—which you’re doing a lot—these hybrids recharge. It just seems like a perfect application for a hybrid.”
Simon pauses before continuing, “And Alfredo looked me in the eye and said, ‘You know why they don’t do it, Simon? It’s because it makes too much sense!’ ”
Rose thought of RMI “almost instantly,” as he remembers it.
Growing up in Westchester County, New York, Rose learned about the power of individuals taking action—“the Power of One,” as he calls it—from a very young age. Civil rights events, anti-war rallies, protest marches. He remembers his mother taking him to all these and more.
From these experiences, he learned “that most people sit it out on the sidelines, and that the people who are activists can affect change.”
Sideline sitting isn’t Rose’s style. He’s racked-up a lifetime of remarkable adventures since leaving Westchester in the early 1970s. And along the way, he’s effected change and impacted everyday lives in countries around the world and throughout the United States.
These experiences all set the stage for his epiphany about mail trucks going hybrid. “It just got me back to that Power of One,” he recalls. “Unless somebody stands up and says, ‘Why not try this idea?’ It can get overlooked completely.”
All it took was a phone call. Rose approached RMI with an offer to fund research exploring the energy optimization of fleet vehicles, like delivery trucks. John Waters, then head of RMI’s Breakthrough Design Team, thought the idea was spot on and started organizing research efforts.
Two years earlier, the Institute had published Winning the Oil Endgame (another project for which Rose helped obtain essential funding), and now was devising plans to implement various aspects of that strategy. “It was good synergy,” says Marty Pickett, RMI’s Executive Director and interim Vice President of Development. “His idea came at a time when we were focusing in that area generally.”
Rose began by providing foundation funding for a technical assessment of Plug-in Hybrid Electric Vehicles (PHEVs). One of RMI’s senior consultants at the time, Jeff Ronning, had built some of the first such vehicles in the 1990s and was eager to test the feasibility of Rose’s idea. The results were promising.
Shortly thereafter, Rose managed to obtain further foundation funding for yet another study to test the business case for the idea. Michael Brylawski, vice president of RMI’s transportation group, MOVE, led the research once they realized the project was feasible. “If you do it this way,” he says, “[we realized] you could actually make some money… It led us to look at emerging markets for PHEVs.”
With the groundwork laid, RMI set about convening a consortium of industry and non-profit partners, including Google, Alcoa, Johnson Controls, and the Turner Foundation, for an Innovation Design Workshop in Palo Alto, California. The goal was to develop breakthrough approaches to fleet fuel economy, lightweighting, and other design issues. Rose was invited to participate.
Looking back on the event now, he can hardly believe how far his idea has developed and advanced. “It was just a talk with a mailman, and then I’m out at a design conference where you’ve got some incredible minds sitting around the table coming up with all these breakthrough discoveries.”
The groundwork and potential suggested by this collaboration was so compelling that, in early 2008, Waters spun off a for-profit venture to pursue some of the ideas further.
“By merely looking out his window, analyzing a situation, and placing a phone call, Simon Rose was instrumental in RMI assessing the vast inefficiencies of the U.S. Postal Fleet and inspiring us to ‘go fix that problem,’” he wrote in a recent e-mail message. “Without Simon’s involvement and willingness to lead with his funding, there may be no solutions underway to replace 162,000 vehicles averaging 10 miles per gallon.”
Rose is a little more humble about his contribution, giving much credit to RMI and its Development staff. “The fact that RMI is so open—and also so open to really fostering relationships with its donors—is something that enabled things like the plug- in hybrid project,” he says. “Sometimes it takes a person with an idea—and a desire to see it happen. But thanks to an organization like RMI, this idea is up and off and running right now. It never would have gone anywhere if I had pitched it to the government, or maybe another kind of organization. The timing was right and I hope it continues to be that way.”
