Shaping The Future
The Sun Herald
Saturday August 31, 1991
FOR 50 years the automotive industry has been crying wolf with the future
Tomorrow's Car has been a cliche - invariably billed as bigger, brighter and better; an exercise in fancy rather than fact.
In 1991, the wolf is finally at the door. The car-makers are coming to terms with some sobering truths about the future, truths that are nowhere near as sexy as the flash and razzle of the showcar circuit.
Driven by the need for clean air, conservation, better crash standards and traffic overcrowding, the major players in the global industry have all reached the same conclusion - that the decade of the 1990s must produce the most radical design and engineering changes in the car's 105-year history.
Future shock is real inside the research labs, none more so than at Ford, America's most successful maker of the 1980s.
At company technical centres in the US and England the engineers know the problems but readily admit that in areas like exhaust emissions, the technology simply doesn't exist to produce all the answers. Not yet.
Meanwhile the clock is ticking on issues like the radical new US Clean Air Act. The first of a new raft of lower emission standards must be achieved by 1994. By 1998, America's Big Three are required by law to build 30,000 zero-emission electric cars for California.
Before 2000, Ultra-Low Emission Vehicles, the so-called ULEVs, running on alternative fuels, will be commonplace.
But that's only the engine technology ...
The real picture of Tomorrow's Car begins with shape, weight and style.
DESIGN
JACK TELNACK is Ford's vice-president in charge of world design, based in Dearborn, Michigan. He has a clear picture of where Ford should be.
He's already built two prototypes called Mystique - a multi-purpose vehicle- and Contour - a four-door sedan - which he insists are serious exercises, using technology straight out of Ford's Advanced Engineering centres.
They are both "cab-forward" designs with short noses that place the driver much closer to the front of the car.
Doing so creates more space for a given set of exterior dimensions; or alternatively, allows downsizing of exteriors without sacrificing cabin size. Telnack calls it Maximum Man, Minimum Machine.
Achieving it, he says, is only possible with more compact engines and advances in crash safety technology - like new bumpers and energy absorbing construction which are both under fast-track development.
"We'll really be cab-forward by 2000," he says.
"More compact engines like T-drive or the Orbital two-stroke will make it possible. Cars will be more of a total shape rather than a defined hood, roof and rear deck ... and the wheels will be out at the extremities for space efficiency."
T-drive is a Ford engine program that transversely mounts an in-line four, six or eight cylinder engine across the nose of the car, presenting a profile only one cylinder wide.
Australia is involved in developing the program with unique engine castings and transmissions.
The Orbital engine, even in V6 guise, is tiny, occupying far less space than a conventional engine of equivalent performance.
Telnack sees weight for a full-sized car trimmed to under 3,000lbs(1,368.8kg) for a six-seater, with a wheelbase of 106in (269.24cm) - 108in(274.32cm). That's a Falcon-sized package.
But that's his worst case scenario using conventional materials. The Contour uses an aluminium space frame which, by itself, saves several hundred kilograms:
"But once you take that massive amount of weight out of the platform you can then reduce the size and weight of all your ancillaries and components,"he says.
"Brakes can be smaller and lighter, springs, suspension parts, everything. Aluminium is the way to get there - no question about it.
Telnack says his two cars will give the buyer: "better visibility, better aerodynamics, and because the side-glass areas are smaller, a feeling of solidity and protection."
Significantly, Ford's chief designer is not a plastics fan. At least he doesn't see the stuff replacing sheetmetal for exterior panels.
And one from left field - Ford is experimenting with Velcro fastening systems to attach body panels.
The bottom line - greater space efficiency, less weight, less cost, lower fuel consumption and cost-effective recycling when the car is finished its useful life.
ENGINES
DEEP within the bowels of Ford's Dunton Research Centre north of London, a 1.2 litre Orbital two-stroke engine is under test.
Powertrain Research manager Adam Mirren says: "There's better than a 70 per cent chance we can deliver."
By that, he means engines in production cars by the late '90s.
The two-stroke offers light weight, compact dimensions, good fuel economy and is simple and cheap to produce. The downside, says Mirren, are noise and vibration problems and some question marks about durability.
"I'm optimistic," he says, "that the problems we've seen, although we don't have solutions at the moment, are solvable (sic)."
Ford, like many other car-makers, has bought the rights to Orbital's fuel injection system. It's this Ralph Sarich development that has, it appears, cleaned up the two-stroke's bad environmental reputation.
"What we're getting from Orbital," says Mirren, "is fuelling technology. We'd design our own engine. Right now we have two to three years ahead of us to see if the technology lives up to its initial expectations.
"We hope to get package size, low weight, low emissions and economy as good as class leading four strokes. What we're seeing indicates that the Clean Air Act is achievable.
"By the end of next year, we hope to be 85 per cent confident. My point of view is that the two-stroke is looking good but this is not the only technology we're looking at."
Lean-burn engines, hybrid gas-electric engines, methanol/gasoline combinations and electric motors are all under parallel development.
The reason is clean air.
Across the Atlantic at Ford's Dearborn facility, Don Buist's job is cleaning up the tailpipe.
It's the most difficult engineering assignment in the world automotive industry, dictated by the trend-setter in emission levels, the State of California.
"California is going to ratchet the car industry all the way down to zero emissions. They'll force us into electric cars and alternative fuels. Other states will adopt the same standards," Buist says.
The legislators are now targeting the technically difficult last 10 per cent in areas like hyrdocarbons.
"It's a step in the right direction for clean air," says Buist. "The only problem is that we're being forced so fast that we can't keep up."
Flexible-fuel cars that use a blend of 85 per cent methanol to 15 per cent gasoline are already running. Compressed natural gas is under study and of course, so are electric-powered cars.
The oil industry is working too, developing methanol infrastructure and, the long-shot, reformulated gasoline, with dramatically less environmental nasties.
"Fuel has basically been unchanged since the early 70s," says Buist.
"Now it's got to change along with the vehicles. For the first time ever, we're going to be marketing cars based on their green ability."
All this doesn't come without a cost penalty. For Ford, it will be around US$2.5 billion in research and development. For customers, it will range between US$600 and $US800 a car.
ELECTRONICS
AT the Blue Lagoon, Ford's Electronics Technical Centre in Michigan, Dr Mark Barron is working on everything from "smart" roads to navigation systems
He sees the future in two stages - before and beyond the end of the century. In the next few years, the electronics content of the average family car will increase from today's US$800 to over US$2,000 - and he's not including the stereo.
Today's vehicles use electronics, sensors and computers for anti-lock brakes, engine management, air-bag triggering, climate control - even transmission shift patterns.
Tomorrow, says Dr Barron, "anything that contains the word 'control' will be an electronics area."
Ford's EEC-IV computer system can adjust engine tune, fuel delivery and air mixture 250,000 times a second. But that's old news.
The next generation will move to a 32-bit microprocessor with incredible speed and precision to wring the last bit of efficiency from every drop of fuel.
By the end of the decade the car's heavy and complex central wiring system, sometimes as thick as your forearm, will be replaced by a single, multi-plex wire.
The benefits are weight savings and better reliability, because multi-plexing reduces the number of error prone connections in the electrical system.
Fuzzy logic - the ability of a computer to make decisions in shades of grey rather than black and white - is coming soon to the automobile.
It will allow highly sophisticated traction control systems, smoother engine and transmission matching and linking of all major controls to potentially over-ride drivers in dangerous conditions.
Collision avoidance is relatively easy, seeing through thick fog, dust or snow is a little harder, but Barron is working on it with infra-red and ultra-sonics.
Tomorrow's car won't have hydraulic steering or mechanical throttle linkages. Instead it will feature steer-by-wire and an electronic gas pedal.
Again, weight saving and control are the key benefits, with supplementary gains in fuel economy. The car won't allow the right foot to overfeed fuel into the engine.
With an electronic go-pedal and traction control system fitted, an on-board computer will be able to override the driver's input on icy or low-grip surfaces, avoiding skids and slides.
Today's traction control systems are relatively crude. Most automatically apply the brakes.
Active noise cancellation is another item under development. It uses electronically generated acoustic pressure waves to counter noise. The system uses microphones to detect noise and transducers, linked by computer, to emit counterwaves.
It can be fitted to engine mounts, the exhaust system and inside the cabin to "cancel" road noise, vibration and harshness.
In turn, it will allow car-makers to strip many kilograms of body-sealer from new models.
Ford has single-point air-bag sensors too. This is a much simpler triggering device than today's complex system and will substantially trim the cost of air-bag fitment.
Along with vastly improved on-board car communications - including a US$400 satellite navigation system that's ready to roll - those are all electronics items on the agenda for the next seven or eight years.
BEYOND THAT
"WE'RE working on voice recognition," says Barron, "so you tell the car to turn on the air conditioning or adjust the radio. Saves taking your eyes off the road."
Outside the car, he's working with a government body in California to develop "smart roads" - electronically controlled freeways where a series of computers externally control the speed and density of traffic - automatically- for better flow and routing around tailbacks.
Our low emission, low-weight, high-efficiency future will produce better, safer cars.
The industry's problem is that it may just produce too many.
Today's vehicle population stands at well over 400 million. If the growth rate continues, there'll be a billion cars on planet earth early next century
No matter how clean and use friendly they are - a billion cars, even will occupy a fair chunk of the earth's surface.
© 1991 The Sun Herald