Finding solutions for Sustainable Mobility

SAE created its SMS team to help industry rethink itself as part of the new industrial revolution and the EV transition within it.

SAE International has established a new, dedicated practice aimed at helping the transportation industry become truly sustainable, as OEMs and suppliers in automotive, aerospace and commercial vehicles work to meet net-zero climate goals. And the 118-year-old organization created its new group, SAE Sustainable Mobility Solutions (SMS), in a radical way.

“I resigned from my previous job - gave up my duties - then hired on as first employee of the new group,” explained SMS president Frank Menchaca, formerly SAE's chief growth officer. An unconventional thinker with MIT training in sustainability and free-jazz guitarist and composer, Menchaca defines sustainability as “the convergence of many different systems - the vehicle, the entire manufacturing process, materials, the infrastructure, communications and regulations. We have to look at the constituent units of the entire industry in order to make it sustainable. And that goes beyond the electric vehicle.”