Dr Ken Washington Ford’s head of research and advanced engineering
In the next five years, we plan to bring up to 13 new electrified vehicles to the market by investing more than $4.5 billion by the year 2020 into new electrified platforms.
What we’re focused on at Ford is the development of new technologies: transmissions, high-voltage battery systems, and battery-electric control modules. These will allow us to accelerate development of the 13 vehicles that we plan to bring to the market.
Another part of our strategy is partnering with key universities and other technology providers. We sponsored the battery fabrication and characterisation laboratory at the University of Michigan. This important facility enables experimentation that includes the entire process from cell electrode mixing, coding and drying to compression and assembly. And in this facility researchers can produce both prismatic and round cells with performance capable of being put into automotive-scale cells.
We’re also researching next-generation fuels and fuel cells. Fuel cells continue to advance and develop, and our strategy is to partner with our collaborators in the Automotive Fuel Cell Cooperation.
We are exploring recycling carbon dioxide and creating a very near zero particulate emission diesel vehicle that uses oxymethylene ether. This would be the first passenger vehicle to use this innovative fuel. We’re leading a three-year, €3.5 million project to investigate this new sustainable fuel option.
Our connectivity strategy begins with SYNC. SYNC is on board in 15 million vehicles worldwide today, and by 2020 it will be on more than 45 million vehicles. This is important for sustainability because by connecting our vehicles to the Internet of Things it will open up new modalities for mobility, not only for Ford vehicles but for others.
We have chosen to open-source the app link technology on SYNC and we call it SmartDeviceLink. It will allow technology developers all over the world to bring applications to our vehicles. Toyota has already embraced this technology and we are in discussions with four other OEMs too. This is good news for the industry and good news for our customers, because they can then access their digital devices, and have access to new mobility options in vehicles.
John Fuerst, Delphi’s president of powertrain systems
The word compliance is often perceived as challenging, even threatening, depending on when and how we use it. But I think that compliance should be an everyday word, a commonplace word, one that informs our entire approach to business, a driver of our behaviours, in technology development through to product delivery and support.
Compliance is about meeting expectations. Compare consumers’ expectations of fuel economy compliance with those of regulated toxic emissions. Consumers know that their fuel economy will differ from the vehicle specification by perhaps only a small amount. Further, consumers can measure their consumption at every refuelling event, and the driver knows that their driving style significantly impacts their consumption.
What about toxic emissions? Consumers’ ability to measure compliance today is zero. But there’s a lot of effort going into developing systems to provide them with an answer. Finally, consumers’ comprehension of the impact of their own driving style on toxic emissions is non-existent in my estimation.
We as an industry are working on a complex method for cleansing real-world data, so that it’s representative of a reasonably driven real-world cycle. That means we’re moving emissions data points, taken when the vehicle was driven in a style significantly different from our expectation of real-world driving. But will the public accept that?
People know that aggressive driving hurts fuel economy. But do they know that erratic driving, even within the speed variation allowed by certification emissions test cycles, can increase the toxic emissions by 40%?
The future of compliance is about balancing expectations with what society is willing to pay to meet them, and finding the most cost-effective place to make that investment, and maybe one of those places is going to be billboards and advertisements.
Gasoline direct-injection compression ignition (GDCI) enables efficient low-temperature combustion and low pumping losses that deliver a fuel economy improvement of 13% to 18% compared with the latest GDI turbos.
With effective mixture stratification and carefully managed combustion temperature, we’ve also managed to achieve the holy grail of low particulates and low NOx. And our industry peers agree that, under all conditions, GDCI is remarkably clean, demonstrating the potential for significantly reduced aftertreatment for both NOx and particulate emissions. Even better, this is an innovation for the real world.
It doesn’t need complex new hardware. It can be affordably applied to existing engine designs and compliance with the need to maximise use of validated, already capitalised performance. Our development car has a conventional four-cylinder engine with a standard crank, existing GDI injectors and it’s fuelled by standard gasoline.
Gilles Le Borgne, PSA’s vice-president of research and development
Regarding battery-electric vehicles, we are developing a new platform which will allow us gasoline, diesel, and also a full electric version for all our B-segment cars, and this will start by 2019. The design provides a full cabin space for all the passengers. The new battery-electric vehicles from PSA will be available with this new generation of lithium-ion batteries and will provide a driving range up to 350km. Four such cars will be introduced between 2019 and 2021.
Based on our experience, we are developing a range of gasoline hybrids. The vehicles will offer all-wheel drive and two-wheel drive, and no less than seven cars are planned, starting early in 2019.
It’s become increasingly clear that customers are better informed on car emissions and fuel economy. In November 2015 we decided to take a unique approach by collaborating with a non-governmental motor organisation to publish real-world fuel consumption figures for our cars.
The measurements are made under real driving conditions, on public roads near Paris: 23km urban, 40km extra-urban and 30km motorway. All the driving conditions have been defined to meet the so-called 50% customer. The 50% customer shows the same consumption as the average of all customers driving the same car.
We have opened up all of our data book to the motor organisation, marking standards such as the average mix of driving conditions, the number of occupants, the powertrain and so on and so forth, to define the average driving conditions.
The protocol measures fuel consumption by means of an audible emissions measurement system installed in the vehicle. Bureau Veritas, an independent body, guarantees the protocol and that it is conducted in line with the specification and that the results are accurate and reliable.
It’s really a scientific approach, and we are following three steps. The first step is the vehicle selection and verification. It’s supervised by Bureau Veritas, which delivered the rented vehicle, assists in the checklist – oil level, battery, tyre pressure and wear – and then applies seals on the bonnet.
In the second step we have the driving. We have three driving conditions, city, road and motorway. We have no expert drivers – for example, people involved in the engine tuning are banned. And we give no particular instructions to the driver – they’re driving in the normal way.
Then we have the data processing. We do an analysis of the driving dynamics and we compare with the average driver, and the test is considered acceptable if the average of speed of city, road and motorway is ±3km/h.
The average positive acceleration for city, road and motorway represent between 30% and 70% of drivers. And I must say that 25%, so one quarter of the test, are rejected for being too slow or too dynamic driving. Fuel consumption representative of the average driver is then calculated with a correlation of the weather conditions, for the city, road or motorway, depending on the vehicle segment, and whether it’s a C- or D-car.
The initial measurements are comparable to those of our customers, and it’s very stable. So far we have measured 18 vehicles, both diesel and gasoline, and it showed that our scientific approach is working quite well. PSA will publish most of the results for most of our vehicle range by this summer, and then go on to develop a calculator for fuel consumption tailored for customer use, such as big city, motorway or type of vehicle load. In 2017 we will extend this approach to the measurement of pollutants using the same cycle.