Michael Kinstle

Experience

• 

  Honda of America Mfg., Inc.

  May 1992 - Oct 1996

  Engineering Coordinator - Chassis Group, Market Quality Department

  • Suspension component, vehicle handling, and tire wear warranty analyst• Root cause analysis and counter-measure implementation within manufacturing, supplier, and design• Created vehicle drift / pull simulation to better understand phenomena and analytically develop counter-measure options

• 

  Honda of America Race Team (HART)

  Oct 1992 - Oct 1996

  Race Engineer

  • Honda of America Manufacturing (HAM) funds a volunteer race team fielding production based racecars in semi-professional series• Responsible for chassis setup of IMSA Firehawk Prelude / Accord and NATCC Super Touring Accord• Created vehicle dynamics analysis tools to develop the chassis. Tools started off as simple Excel spreadsheets and evolved to a quasi-static simulation (qss) lap simulation• Purchased Pi Research data acquisition system to assist with model validation and objective data analysis.• ’94 & ’95 IMSA Firehawk Sports Class National Champions (Honda Prelude)• ’95 IMSA Firehawk Compact Class National Champion (Honda Accord)• ’96 NATCC Super Touring - 4 Victories (Honda Accord) Show less

• 

  Honda R&D Americas, Inc

  Oct 1996 - Dec 1999

  Group Leader - Suspension/Handling Test Group, Senior Engineer I

  • Supervised suspension & tire development, simulation & test rig support• Project Leader for Kinematics & Compliance Rig installation• Chassis Project Leader for the ’01 Acura CL: Responsible for suspension, steering, and brake settings. Initiated new analytical tire development with a tire supplier

• 

  Honda Racing F1

  Feb 2000 - Nov 2003

  Group Leader - Vehicle Dynamics, Senior Vehicle Dynamicist

  • Embedded Vehicle Dynamics Engineer – British American Racing (BAR)• Created Honda’s Vehicle Dynamics Group based at BAR F1 Team to support development of the Formula One race car with analytical tools and methods• Created simple Excel based viewing tools for component and system level characteristics (suspension geometry, tire F&M, damper characteristics) and coded simple analysis tools to consider first principles• Created analytical methodology with vehicle characterization, simulation & analysis, and trackside application.• Improved simulation model creation flow by integrating MBS model with existing QSS simulation database• Developed objective handling & ride metrics that were applied to test rig data (7-Post), simulation, and logged car data. Calculations performed in Matlab, results presented to Race Engineers in Excel viewing workbooks Show less

• 

  Honda R&D Americas, Inc

  Nov 2003 - May 2007

  • Vehicle Dynamics expert for platform engineering strategy creation • Created a Vehicle Dynamics Group to support passenger car development with chassis analytical tools and methods.• Chassis Test Project Leader for ’09 Acura TL pre-development. Supplemented ‘trial & error’ method with a new analytical approach. Set targets for Normal Handling including inertial, suspension geometry/setting, tire, aerodynamic, and steering properties• Research – Project Leader to develop a Driver-In-Loop (DIL) steering feeling simulator

  • Technical Specialist - Advanced Planning Division, Principal Engineer

    Jul 2006 - May 2007

  • Group Leader - Vehicle Dynamics Group, Senior Engineer II

    Nov 2003 - Jul 2006
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  Honda Performance Development

  May 2007 - Dec 2014

  • Created new Performance Engineering Department & established analytical development methodology integrating vehicle characterization, simulation & analysis, and trackside application• Set overall vehicle performance engineering targets, cascaded down to system requirements• Purchased simulation tools that provided maximum collaboration capability within HPD (integrating engine, chassis, dyno, controls) and with Honda R&D (Americas & Japan)• Setup and managed remote office, HPD-I, with a Driver-In-the-Loop (DIL) Simulator Facility, Brownsburg IN Show less

  • Performance Engineering Manager, Principal Engineer

    Jan 2012 - Dec 2014

  • Large Project Leader, Principal Engineer

    Nov 2009 - Dec 2011

  • Vehicle Dynamics Engineer, Principal Engineer

    May 2007 - Oct 2009
• 

  Tesla Motors

  Jan 2015 - Jan 2019

  Vehicle Dynamics Engineer, Engineering Staff

  • Responsible for parametric simulation model creation, validation, and application• Vehicle Dynamic Target Setting

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  BLUE ORIGIN

  Jan 2019 - now

  Senior Manager of the New Glenn simulation team New Glenn modeling and simulation engineer

  • Senior Manager

    Oct 2021 - now

  • Senior Aerospace Engineer

    Jan 2019 - Oct 2021