Articles
Chris Brace, professor of automotive propulsion and deputy director of the Powertrain and Vehicle Research Centre, University of Bath
We are living through a vehicle telematics revolution. Many of us won’t really have noticed, but there are far-reaching consequences for us all. GPS navigation is becoming ubiquitous, and is the most tangible manifestation of the ‘connected vehicle’. Fleet managers can access tools that help their drivers to achieve safer and more fuel-efficient operation. Telematics is becoming a mature technology.
New drivers have seen the rise of auto insurance telematics devices. The latest products incorporate ideas from social media and gaming, and use our smartphones to encourage us to drive efficiently. Estimates suggest there will be more than 18 million such devices worldwide by 2018, but this could easily be an underestimate.
All of these devices will become more widespread, but there is the potential for far more wide-reaching telematics systems, as city infrastructure and national datasets become accessible to individual vehicles.
As a powertrain systems researcher, my interest in telematics is to consider how greater access to data and connectivity can influence powertrain efficiency and tailpipe emissions. The attention now being given to air quality has somewhat overshadowed the drive for lower carbon dioxide, but both goals remain important and they are strongly linked.
To take one topical example, what can be done to improve the NOx output of older diesel vehicles that are not equipped with NOx aftertreatment? The fuel use and NOx emissions of such vehicles can be reduced by driving in a more relaxed manner, using less power. Devices to encourage and monitor such driving behaviour already exist.
A simple next step – in technology terms – would be to make such devices context-aware by linking them with city infrastructure. In this way, the driver could be incentivised to drive in a less polluting manner in areas with poor air quality. Driver acceptance may be a challenge, but the technology is not complicated. The value comes from the connectivity between the city and the vehicle.
Future developments will be much more ambitious as connectivity and computational power increase, and will affect our choices over basic powertrain architecture. The ultimate expression of these developments would be a fully autonomous vehicle.
There is no requirement for a powerful, fun-to-drive powertrain in a vehicle that seldom leaves the city and is never driven by a human. Even so, there will continue to be a place for human-guided vehicles, and telematics offers powertrain engineers the tools to maximise the benefit to the individual, in balance with a responsibility to the wider community.
Telematics can help us balance these requirements by combining almost infinite computational power with comprehensive real time information, and bringing this wisdom to the vehicle, adjusting its operation to suit local conditions.
These challenges are the subject of research in our Centre for Low-Emission Vehicle Research, where we bring the real-world environment – including driver behaviour – into the laboratory to study whole-vehicle performance in a precise and repeatable setting. This research allows us to demonstrate innovative, connected powertrains in collaboration with our industry partners.