Auto industry / Science & invention
Ferenc Pavlics
1928–2024
· mechanical engineer, developer of the Apollo Lunar Roving Vehicle
A 1956 refugee who began his American career in GM's off-road vehicle lab in Detroit and went on to develop the wheels and drive of the Apollo moon buggy.
- Born
Balozsameggyes, Hungary (today part of Meggyeskovácsi)- Died
Santa Barbara, California
aged 96- Birth name
- Pavlics Ferenc
- Also known as
- Pavlics Ferenc · Frank Pavlics
- Detroit years
- 1957–1960
01 / The Detroit story
The Detroit story
Pavlics grew up in a village in Vas County, graduated in mechanical engineering in Budapest in 1950 and designed factory machinery until the 1956 revolution. He fled with his future wife through Austria and, days after reaching the Camp Kilmer refugee camp in New Jersey, was hired for General Motors by the vehicle-mobility scientist M. G. Bekker, together with four other Hungarian engineers. His American career began in Detroit, first at the drawing board and then studying how soil, wheels and tracks interact, in a small lab where Hungarians were the majority. Around 1960 GM moved the lab to Santa Barbara, California, where it turned to vehicles for the Moon. There Pavlics developed the woven wire-mesh wheel, patented in his name, and with program manager Samuel Romano led GM's work on the Lunar Roving Vehicle's wheels, motors and suspension. The rover first rolled on the Moon on July 31, 1971.
Highlights
- Hired by General Motors in Detroit in 1957 after fleeing Hungary
- Studied vehicle–soil mechanics in GM's Detroit lab, 1957–1960
- US Patent 3,568,748 for the rover's resilient wire wheel, 1971
- Led GM's mobility-system work on the Apollo Lunar Roving Vehicle
- Hungarian Order of Merit, Middle Cross, 2008