By Liz Segrist
lsegrist@scbiznews.com
Published Aug. 9, 2011

Clemson University will soon test new vehicle technologies on a runway at the S.C. Technology and Aviation Center, or SCTAC, that has been dormant for 45 years, the two parties announced today.

The 5,000-feet-long runway sits on 300 acres of SCTAC’s property near the Clemson University International Center for Automotive Research, or CU-ICAR, said Jody Bryson, SCTAC president and CEO. The test bed will be developed for new vehicle and infrastructure technologies.

CU-ICAR will engage in types of next-generation transportation technology, which could include testing for electric vehicles or alternative fuel vehicles, such as natural gas or hydrogen. It could also focus on charging-in motion and high-bandwidth wireless networks.

Bryson said SCTAC hopes for testing to begin by 2012, although it depends on the research components.

“By reaching out to CU-ICAR and pulling our economic development efforts, we uncovered an opportunity where they were looking for a place to do real-world testing coming out of the CU-ICAR program,” Bryson said. “They had everything, except places to do testing under real-life conditions in a test-bed infrastructure.”

The partnership aims to further research of sustainable mobility and connected, clean transportation systems.

The next generation vehicles will be electric- or biofuel-powered. They will require an energy supply, on-board information technology and bi-directional communication between the road, said CU-ICAR research professor Joachim Taiber.

“Batteries can be made smaller and lighter, thereby greatly increasing the efficiency of power transfer, and more importantly, the consumer can worry less about range-related issues,” Taiber said in a news release.