INTERVIEW: EXCLUSIVE: CONTINENTAL’S TULA DSF TESTED CONNECTED FOCUS ON: FUTURE STARTS SYNTHETIC FUELS HERE December 2015 MAHLER PITCH PERFECT AT AACHEN COLLOQUIUM 2015 Contents 14 14 Automotive Design Interview 5 Comment Electronics arms race hots up • Rebalancing the The automotive supply chain landscape is undergoing blame game huge transformation. Dr Elmar Dagenhart, chairman of the executive board, Continental AG, explains how his 6 company plans to be right at the forefront News • Firing on all 18 Cover story cylinders - sometimes! Sizing up the down-sizing challenge Exclusive report With the impact of VW’s ‘Dieselgate’ still being felt 18 widely, the Aachen automobile and engine technology • iStream T25 comes Colloquium was particularly pertinent this year. Ian on stream Adcock reports on the most significant technologies and presentations • JLR’s ‘POLAR 3’ concept unveiled 24 Focus: concept car review Double coupé coup! • All-plastic engine Automotive Design's Ian Adcock reflects on some of soon to be tested the concept cars from 2015 that caught his eye 13 28 Focus on synthetic fuels The Columnist Connecting in Fuelling a sustainable future 24 Frankfurt What is the best route for the UK to achieve its Kevin Jost, SAE targeted 80% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions? International Automotive Design weighs up the options Editorial Director 30 Focus on accident recorders No hiding place 34 60 second If vehicles eventually talk to each other and to interview infrastructure stations, as expected, there’s going to Richard S. Chung, be a massive amount of data about traffic and road vice president conditions, writes Terry Costlow industrial design/ 30 craftsmanship, 32 Question time Yangfeng Achieving top grade Automotive Interior Volvo becomes only the third manufacturer to install Systems a Vi-GradeSim to develop its chassis. The company’s vehicle dynamics concept engineer Carl Sandberg reveals the inner workings of VI-DriveSim December 2015 www.automotivedesign.eu.com 3 Comment Editor in Chief: Ian Adcock [email protected] Sub Editor: Brian Wall [email protected] Editorial Director: Kevin Jost, SAE International. [email protected] Managing Editor: Jean L. Broge Senior Editor: Lindsay Brooke Associate Editor: Ryan Gehm Custom Electronic Products Editor: Lisa Arrigo Contributing Editors: Kami Buchholz, Stuart Birch, Rebalancing the Jack Yamaguchi, Contributors: Steven Ashley, Dan Carney, Terry Costlow, John Kendall, Bruce Morey, Paul Weissler blame game Art Editors: Martin Cherry, Neil Young Illustrator: Phil Holmes Production Manager: Nicki Mckenna [email protected] Director, Global Sales and Marketing: Scott R. Sward [email protected] Tel: 001 610-399-5279 Circulation Manager: Chris Jones [email protected] The elephant in the room at the Aachen Advertisement Sales Colloquium (page 20) was, undoubtedly, the Publisher: Joseph T. Pramberger revelations about VAG’s cheat software [email protected] Tel: 001 212-490-3999 ext 5505 affecting some diesel and now, apparently, Belgium, Benelux, Denmark, Finland, France, Ireland, Italy, Netherlands, Norway, Scandinavia, certain petrol engines as well. Spain, Sweden, UK Chris Shaw A good number of senior engineers that Tel: +44 (0) 1270-522130 M: +44 (0) 7983-967471 [email protected] I spoke with, off the record, as well as directors Austria, Czech Republic, Germany, Hungary, at some of the big engineering consultancies, Poland, Switzerland Sven Anacker were unsurprised by the revelations. To them, blame lay not just at [email protected] Tel: +49-202-27169-11 Fax: +49-202-27169-20 VW’s door, but that of bureaucrats who had drafted poor legislation Japan Shigenori Nagatomo and a general media that views the motor industry as the whipping Tel: +81-3-3661-6138 Fax: +81-3-3661-6139 [email protected] post for all the pollution problems that concern us today. USA While suppliers and OEMs are confident that Euro 6.2 with Global Sales Manager: Marcie Hineman [email protected] Tel: 001 724-772-4074 Real Driving Emissions will win the pollution argument, try telling Print Advertising Coordinator: Lori Patterson your neighbour about the emission issues they cause with their [email protected] oil-fired central heating, compared, for instance, to a modern diesel Automotive Design car. They won’t hear of it. Tel: 00 44 (0)1322-221144 Fax: 00 44 (0)1322-221188 And while all of this is going on, there’s yet another scandal that www.automotivedesign.eu.com [email protected] has barely affected European OEMs – so far. The US recall of ISSN 2043-0299 potentially some 19m vehicles fitted with faulty Takata airbags with Published: February, April, June, August, ammonium nitrate propellant, and alleged “misrepresented and October and December by AD Media Europe manipulated test data”. That last bit sounds familiar, doesn’t it? Hawley Mill, Hawley Road, Dartford, Kent, UK. DA2 7TJ Yet the difference is that the Takata issue has barely rippled the Copyright 2014 AD Media Europe. Annual subscription (6 issues per year) for readers in pages of the European popular media. Effective PR or ignorance? the UK is £45, overseas is £66 and airmail is £86. I suspect the latter, but isn’t it about time the automotive sector, Origination: CC Media Group from the representative bodies to the OEMs and supply chain, Printed in the UK by Pensord Press actually started being more proactive about the huge strides the Moving on? If you change jobs or your industry has made in strangling pollutants, compared to other company moves, please contact [email protected] to continue industrial sectors and products? receiving your copy of Automotive Design. Elsewhere, Automotive Design was granted exclusive access to Tula’s demonstrator Dynamic Skip Fire cylinder deactivation system (page 6) – and you can also learn what Volvo has in common with Ferrari and Porsche on page 32. Findlay Media is a member of the Periodical Publishers’ Association Ian Adcock, Editor in Chief December 2015 www.automotivedesign.eu.com 5 News Firing on all cylinders - well, at least some of the time! GMC’s 2010 Yukon Denali SUV, with its 6.2-litre on a recent exclusive drive. To recap, DSF high load, or unthrottled, for maximum V8 (313kW and 624Nm), is the very antithesis employs digital signal processing (DSP) to efficiency, resulting in upwards of 20% or even of the direction in which European vehicles are randomly deactivate one or more cylinders in 30% improvement in fuel economy. heading – downsizing with direct injection and real time to fire only the number of combustion Depending on load, it can, like turbocharging – but it is an ideal demonstrator events required to deliver the torque or power conventional cylinder deactivation, cut half the for the Delphi-Tula Dynamic Skip Fire demanded at that moment. This ensures every cylinders, but DSF’s differentiator is that it can technology, as Automotive Design discovered combustion event happens at the optimum fire every 5th or 9th event, depending on load or torque required. It also takes into account cylinder and/or exhaust temperatures, so neither cools excessively, resulting in emission spikes as they are reenergised or the need for a given set of cylinders to be re-ignited, if they have been dormant for any length of time under part load. Mating Tula’s electronic software with Delphi’s De-AC lifters and De-AC rocker arms is key to implementing this for petrol and diesel, as well as any engine configuration or capacity. In this installation, a lost motion lifter is used with an oil control valve; in other systems, it would be a lost motion roller finger follower. As a function of the single stage oil pump, the V8 idles, and launches in first gear, on all cylinders and, although a two-stage or electric oil pump would allow DSF, conventional stop- start might be a more efficient solution. A fascia-mounted digital read-out displays an animation of the V8’s cylinders, depicting which are and aren’t activated. Although there are brief periods when two will function simultaneously for nearly all the time, it is a blur of scattered firings across all eight cylinders. While decelerating or coasting downhill towards traffic lights with no throttle, all eight shut down, during which time a 20% fuel saving was displayed. Despite the Yukon’s body-on-frame structure, there was no discernible feeling of cylinders cutting in or out, achieved by Tula programming the system so it functions outside of the Hertz (Hz) range passengers would find discomforting. There was only a marginal change in intake noise during the switch-over process, but nothing that couldn’t be easily dealt with during a vehicle development programme. Nor was there any delay during either tip-in or lift-off, the process being completely transparent at all engine speeds and loads. Although the Yukon is currently being demonstrated to European OEMs, Delphi and Tula are building a more representative demonstrator, based on a European four-door saloon powered by a 1.8-litre turbocharged GDi engine, that will be commissioned in 2016. 6 www.automotivedesign.eu.com December 2015 News iStream T25 comes on stream Gordon Murray’s revolutionary iStream T25 city Although the original automated car has taken a further step forward with the manual gearbox has been replaced by unveiling of new partners Shell and Geo Tech, a five-speed Getrag Dual Clutch the aim being to launch a prototype in spring- Transmission (DCT), apart from using summer 2016. a more efficient lubrication, no other Running under the code-name T25S, in modifications have been made to the deference to Shell, the three-seater is a quantum transmission. According to Shell’s technical advance over the original. Working as part of the manager for innovation, Robert Mainwaring, engine development team, Shell is developing budget restrictions meant the team focused on low viscosity engine lubricants typically in the the engine, “although the transmission may be range of 0W-12, and even less, for minimal addressed at a later stage”.” friction loss in the engine.