SAE Is All About Safety and Sustainability, Affirms Frank Menchaca, President

A voracious reader, well-known writer, artist, and musician, Frank has interestingly built his professional career revolving around technology and education in automotive and aerospace engineering. Frank is currently spearheading Sustainable Mobility Solutions at SAE which is now officially a start-up under the company. His deep passion for knowledge and its practical usage in the aerospace industry keeps him on his toes. His deep insights are well reflective of the depth of thought that he puts on the job.  

In this enlightening and exclusive interview with Thirty to Net Zero, Frank talks to us about why sustainability and safety are his goals. He talks about how Sustainable Mobility Solutions will work to provide a training ground for engineers, and an incubator for sustainability in the aerospace industry. Frank also talks extensively about the many forms of sustainable propulsion in aerospace and their role in the industry. Finally, Frank talks about how his company is working to assist the Middle East region when it comes to maintenance, repair and overhaul.  

Read on to know more about the versatile Frank Menchaca and his multifarious contribution to the aerospace industry. 

Q:  Could you tell us what went into creating Sustainable Mobility Solutions at SAE? 

A:  For the last 18 months, I have been incubating an effort to really try and understand what SAE’s role in sustainability should be. We've been connected to sustainability for many years in so far as we've been developing standards and other materials that are really all about the development of the electric vehicle. But we didn't have a role specifically in sustainability, which of course, is the much larger ecosystem of the economics, supply chain, scientific research, and infrastructure that are related to the vehicle. So, I began to incubate this effort. And we held well over 100 interviews with stakeholders from around the world, including vehicle manufacturers, suppliers, energy companies, and government academia. And there were a few clear messages: that SAE as the oldest and largest engineering organization really had a role to play in helping to connect, particularly vehicle manufacturers to infrastructure, in terms of batteries and electric vehicle charging, and long-distance transportation.  

So, we've put together a set of strategy councils of major companies, that are all working in each of these areas. And we've begun to now create some new technical reports. And we actually just announced last week that we're organizing these efforts into a startup within SAE, called Sustainable Mobility Solutions. That's how important we believe it is. Hopefully, that gives you a little bit of an idea of where this came from. 

Q:  What role would Sustainable Mobility Solutions like to play in the rapidly evolving ecosystem of sustainable aviation?  

A:  In the sustainable mobility ecosystem, there are many players doing a lot of things within aerospace, you have one of the major manufacturers really doing a lot of work in hydrogen propulsion, and you have another major manufacturer, kind of looking at it from the standpoint of more efficient internal combustion engines, new kinds of fuel and short-distance flight, and you have still others that are doing electric, vertical takeoff and landing vehicles. So, there's a bit of everything going on. What is missing is coordination, not only within the aerospace sector but also within the ground vehicle sector. 

So at least in the United States, there is this massive effort to create an electric vehicle infrastructure, by the Biden administration. Many of the things that we're learning from the ground vehicle side of our business in electric vehicle charging infrastructure are applicable to aerospace.

So, we have a role as the largest and oldest engineering organization to bring technically-informed new knowledge and, and new practices and training, into the aerospace industry. We sit in a very unusual position. We have a deep background in the automotive industry, a deep background in the commercial vehicle industry, and a deep background in aerospace. 

I'll give you another example. Aerospace and the commercial vehicle sector have an intersection in the area of long-distance transportation. Battery electric vehicles are maybe not ideal for long-distance trucking, and certainly, the long-distance flight is still very, very complicated. What we're doing is looking at how we can create best practices and technical information, and then ultimately, as a training organization for professional development, to enable engineers to create this new industry. So, you can think of us as a technically informed center of information that is also a convening organization. 

Q:  Is there anything unique about the challenges that the Middle East regions face and how has SAE been involved in dialogue whether they are international global dialogue or in the Middle East to get the region's players to accept these new protocols, whether that's for sustainable machinery, technology, or infrastructure for that matter, in the Middle East aviation industry, whether that's commercial or then for the defense side of things? 

A:  When I was in Dubai, with my colleague, back in November, we attended the air show, and we were just really impressed by the array of maintenance, repair, and overhaul businesses in the Middle East. There is a tremendous opportunity for the Middle East in terms of maintenance, repair, and overhaul.   Short-distance electric flight, and even things that are closer to realization, like, more fuel-efficient aerospace vehicles—all of these developments need attention from the maintenance, repair, and overhaul area. So, I think there is a great opportunity for SAE to work with partners in the Middle East, to scale up this effort and help train engineers. I remember being in one of the booths at the Dubai air show, and I had a virtual reality headset on.  

And we were really thinking about training in the context of virtual simulations. And I was thinking about all of the really interesting problems that are associated with even short-distance e-flights and how to train people at airports. The other really interesting thing is there is a point of overlap between ground vehicles, sustainable transportation, and electrification of the airport infrastructure. Airports are ecosystems of many kinds of vehicles. There are lots of opportunities in the Middle East to explore and learn from all of these advances in-ground vehicle electrification to the electrification of the airport infrastructure as well as in areas like maintenance, repair and overhaul, airport infrastructure, electrification, and short-distance sea flight in terms of training and technology. 

Q:  What kind of projects is your office currently involved in or thinking about getting involved in the future that is specific to the aviation industry? Are there any specific topics that you're sort of keen to get your teeth into? 

A: We have several, one is coming up in October 2022. We are holding an event at the World Hydrogen Summit that is called, Airports as Energy Hubs. And it examines this whole question of what will the future airport look like? There is a lot of thinking going on to say that the airport of the future is really an energy hub for many kinds of vehicles, particularly with regard to hydrogen propulsion, but also to electric vehicles. So, we're bringing a panel of experts together, to have an open session, to begin identifying technical problems that we can solve at SAE.  

We have a project on the ground vehicle side that is all about the reliability of charging for the vehicle. Many of the things that we're learning about charging reliability reporting, apply also to airports and to short-distance e-flight. So those are the two projects that are underway that I think would have a direct impact. 

Q:  Now hydrogen-propelled aircraft is not new as a concept. We had a visionary designer, Kelly Johnson, who looked at designing aircraft in the 1960s. With SAE being an industry leader working on this kind of technology, where are we realistically with this technology and where do you see the world in terms of acceptance and investment? 

A:  I'll say up front that I'm not a technical expert. I'm a business leader. There are exciting possibilities for hydrogen, but it is a very long way off. I was just reading a very interesting book called How the world really works by Vaclav Smil, who is an emeritus professor at Manitoba. And he was really talking about the feasibility of hydrogen for aerospace and the fact that it has to be stored under certain conditions. And the volatility of having a large load of hydrogen on an airplane is still many decades away.   

We're here to enable industry globally, to make progress toward net-zero emissions. So we're in some ways kind of agnostic on the whole question of the choice of technology. What we try and do is to be the center, where all of these things can be worked out among industry. So that's, that's how I think about hydrogen. But there's a lot of exciting work that's going on. 

Q:  With sustainability, being at the top of everybody's mind, do you see safety being compromised at any point because we're all rushing into this whole sustainability race, and we have to get there by a particular date? 

A: I think you're raising a really important concern. At SAE, we are all about safety and sustainability. We think that these two things have to go hand in hand. If you look at the true definition of sustainability, it's one generation meeting its needs in a way that sustains the resources for the next generation. And people hear that, and they tend to think, well, it's just really about limiting carbon dioxide from the combustion of fossil fuels. That's an important dimension of it. But sustainability is also about equity of access. And it's also about safety and about the quality of life. You can't really reach sustainability if you are putting your quality of life at risk. So, we see those things as being intimately connected. 

Q: With strategies kind of right-brained and sustainability somewhere in the middle, you've also got your pursuit of music and writing and all these creative arts that you do. How do these passions intersect and how do you manage to keep them intersected? 

A: For me, the intersection of technology and business and art and music is all very organic. I tend to think laterally across subject areas. So, sustainability comprehends economics, it comprehends technology, it comprehends business, and science and technology, and it also comprehends design and art. You know, I've been reading a very interesting book by John Fernandez at MIT, talking about sustainable urban metabolism. The idea of a sustainable city is a question not only of architecture, technology, and building, it's also a question of Art and Design.  I tend naturally to see all of those things as being actually integrated and never separate, to begin with.

If you look at the rudiments of music, it goes back to Pythagoras, a mathematician whose first theory was a musical theory. It's really about measuring. It's about mathematics and visual art is all about geometry. I tend to see all of these things as integrated from the beginning.