Clemson joins auto research consortium in Southeast

BYLINE: Rudolph Bell

BUSINESS WRITER

Clemson University has joined with six other universities in the Southeast to form a new consortium for automotive research.

The Automotive Research Alliance is designed to provide research services to automotive manufacturers and suppliers, its members said in a statement.

Besides Clemson, the universities are Auburn, Mississippi State, Alabama, Alabama at Birmingham, Kentucky and Tennessee. All of the schools are located in states with major auto plants.

The National Transportation Research Center Inc. of Knoxville, Tenn., will coordinate the effort. Two other Tennessee organizations -- the Oak Ridge National Laboratory and the Tennessee Valley Authority -- are also involved.

For Clemson, the new network could lead to relationships with automakers in other Southeastern states, said Chris Przirembel, the university's vice president of research and economic development. Those include Nissan, Honda, Hyundai, Mercedes, Kia, Toyota and Saturn.

"As we have developed ties to BMW and Michelin and so on, individual universities have done that with the original equipment manufacturers in their respective states," Przirembel said.

So far, BMW is the only original equipment maker with a presence at the International Center for Automotive Research, Clemson's new research park in Greenville.

The German automaker, whose sole U.S. plant is in Greer, has opened a research center at ICAR focused on information technology.

Przirembel said the alliance would also make the Southeast more competitive in automotive research. "I think we're going to be able to compete with the research and development centers in the Midwest and internationally," he said.

None of the other universities has a graduate school of automotive engineering such as the one Clemson is developing at ICAR or as many professors focused on the field, Przirembel said.