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About the only significant electronic development in cars of the last decade is the widespread fitting of stability control. Like ABS, this system can prevent many crashes. In fact, German statistics show that cars fitted with electronic stability control are involved in fewer accidents. by JULIAN EDGAR What’s happened to Electronic Advances In Cars? Car manufacturers seem to have lost the plot. Instead of cramming new cars with useless electronic gadgets, they should be using electronic technology to improve efficiency and reduce fuel consumption. I T’S A SNOW-JOB: we’re being sold purported advances in car technology that achieve little real benefit. In fact, instead of being better off, we’re paying in cash and fuel consumption for a plethora of unwanted and unneeded gadgets: in-car entertainment, climate control, electric seat adjustment with memory, active steering, electric handbrakes, parking proximity sensors and auto-dimming rear 12  Silicon Chip vision mirrors. They’re being foisted on us to disguise the fundamental lack of design progress being made in cars and we are paying for these “advances” in higher fuel consumption. How so? Well, how much do you reckon a seat that contains no less than six electric motors weighs – some quite hefty in size? Or a sound system that includes a CD stacker, eight speakers (including a subwoofer) and two amplifiers? It’s not even possible to physically pick up the wiring loom of a modern car – it’s too heavy. And how much do all these gizmos cost to develop? You can be sure that if this stuff was taken out and the resources devoted to better engineering the basics of the car, you’d be paying less and going further on the same tank of fuel. Yes, there have been significant electronic breakthroughs in car design. Trouble is, all but one happened about a decade ago. Engine management It’s well over 15 years since we first saw “family-priced” cars with electronic engine management. Along siliconchip.com.au with its ability to reduce exhaust emissions, improve starting, power and economy, and allow the widespread introduction of other technologies like turbo-charging, engine management was a genuine breakthrough. But contrast that with electronic throttle control. These days nearly all cars are sold with a throttle that’s run by an electric motor. You put your foot down and a pair of potentiometers relays signals to an ECU that checks them for compatibility with one another and then decides how much throttle it will actually give you. The latter depends on engine temperature, the torque output of the engine at those revs – a whole bunch of internally-mapped stuff. Gee-whiz indeed! But so what? Apart from integrating more smoothly with the cruise control and allowing the system to close the throttle on you, what’s the huge benefit? In fact, many people complain that the throttle response of these systems is dull – one of the original aspects that engine management helped improve over points and carbies! And the engineers who design and then map the electronic system spend literally years on the project, including time on esoteric aspects like anti-surge control that stops incompetent drivers kangaroo-hopping. What if they spent that time and Where is the progress in current cars? This 12-year old Falcon engine has direct-fire ignition, a dual-length changeover inlet manifold, knock sensing and full engine management. Under the bonnet of a current Falcon you’ll find a lot more power but in terms of electronic and mechanical advances, just variable camshaft timing and electronic throttle control. The pace of improvement in engine electronics is slowing to a near standstill. money developing active aerodynamics instead, using just the same sort of actuators and control logic to reduce the drag of a car by 25-30% at highway speeds? Or what about infinitely variable intake manifolds, rather than the archaic two-step long/short runner changeover that’s now common? So forget kangaroo hopping: how about better fuel economy? Or take engine knock sensing. The ability to run ignition timing as advanced as possible for the conditions of fuel octane, intake air temperature Honda Insight: A Brilliant Concept Although a complete sales flop in Australia, the 2001 Honda Insight is yet to be bettered in terms of design. It addressed nearly every concern expressed in this article. The aluminium-bodied hybrid used a lean-burn, 1-litre, 3-cylinder petrol engine featuring variable valve timing and developing 56kW at 5600 RPM. Peak torque was developed at just 1500 RPM. A 10kW electric motor – which also doubled as a generator and starter – was sandwiched between the engine and the conventional 5-speed manual transmission and a 144V NiMH battery pack was fitted. The drag coefficient was just 0.25 and the total mass only 827kg. Twin airbags and ABS were standard. For the on-line magazine “Auto­ siliconchip.com.au Speed”, I drove an Insight on an interstate trip of 3500 kilometres, completed in just four days. Driven normally at the open-road speed limits, the car turned in an average of 3.6 litres/100km, the best real world economy of any car ever sold in Australia. The official highway figure was an astonishing 2.8 litres/100km! The sprint to 100km/h took about 12 seconds. And the negatives? A retail price of nearly $50,000 and poor packaging that saw most of the load area of this two seater taken up by a battery/electronics box. December 2006  13 Remember Those Big Old “Yank Tanks”? It’s not very many years ago that we all used to laugh at sixties “Yank Tanks”. They were enormous vehicles, vastly overweight, with simple suspensions and huge V8 engines to drive their bloated forms. In fact, to take one example, let’s briefly look at the pictured 1963-65 Buick Riviera. Despite having only two doors, the Riviera was no less than 5.3 metres long and weighed 1800kg. Its huge pushrod V8 engine could be optioned up to just less than seven litres with a peak power (measured in SAE units) of 253kW. Standard transmission was a DualPath Turbine Drive automatic. It was a huge, heavy, over-powered barge which probably drank fuel at the rate of 25 litres/100km. Today, many of us are driving cars that, philosophically at least, are not much different. Take the SS Commodore. It’s 4.9 metres long, just 40cm shorter than the Riviera, and it weighs 1650kg or just 8% less than the sixties Buick. And the motor is now six litres and 260kW, although its fuel consuption is con- and engine load is of great benefit – it provides optimal power and economy. Trouble is, that technology was available in family cars well over a decade ago. The same goes for “direct fire” ignition, where troublesome distributors and ignition leads made way for multiple coils. Even ABS – a worthwhile gain to be sure – was being sold on Australian family cars over 10 years ago. In fact, about the only really worthwhile breakthrough I can see in the last decade is the fitting of electronic stability control, which has the potential to prevent many accidents. In fact, German statistics show it is doing just that. The hoopla You’d never believe from watching the ads and listening to the salesmen that every new model is anything but a grand exposition of cutting-edge technology. Sure, since the 1950s in the USA (when annual styling updates were introduced), car manufacturers 14  Silicon Chip siderably better than the old Buick’s. So huge, heavy cars with enormous V8 engines aren’t something from an American car museum – they’re here now and available at your local dealer. We laughed at cars like the Buick have been selling cars on the latestis-best philosophy. But now it’s electronics that is underpinning much of the hype. “Have you seen our twin DVD screens, sir?” “Do you realise this car has auto windscreen wipers, madam?” “This auto transmission now has six ratios and Adaptive Logic Control”. (No sir, I don’t know why it needs that many gears when in fact this year the engine is larger and has an even broader torque curve than before.) “Madam, this seat has three memories – and oh no madam, it’s not just the seat! When you press the button it also adjusts the external mirrors and the position of the steering wheel to your preferred settings.” “That’s right, sir, the steering column now has two electric motors in it”. “Have you seen the rear window blind, madam? It rises and falls at the touch of a console button. And you know what? It automatically drops because they were much larger than was necessary, therefore had far greater weight than was needed and as a result, used huge thirsty engines to push along that weight. So are today’s big V8-engined cars any different in basic concept? down when you are reversing!” This parade of smoke and mirrors disguises the fact that the rate of progress in the fundamentals of car design – fuel economy, packaging and performance – has over the last decade been disgraceful. Fact: my 1994 EF Falcon 5-speed manual gets better real world fuel economy than a current Falcon. Fact: it also matches the current car in acceleration to 100km/h. Fact: most SUV-type vehicles have incredibly bad interior packaging that sees 15 and 20 and 30-year old cars look amazingly spacious. (Just sit in a 1960s Austin 1800 or look in the load area of a 1980s Holden Camira wagon.) Yes, in an accident I’d prefer to be in a current car – even though that same old EF Falcon has a driver’s airbag and ABS. Toyota Prius So what about that touted technological masterpiece, the Toyota Prius? Well, the best that can be said is that at least Toyota tried. siliconchip.com.au The car is aerodynamic, it has power (and bottom-end torque) appropriate to the real world and it is space-efficient. But the shortcoming screams to anyone with even only half an ear on the automotive world: batteries. The NiMH battery pack is heavy (the Prius, for its external size, is one of the heaviest cars on the road) and requires such a huge amount of energy to produce that it’s doubtful whether the energy saving in fuel over the life of the car outweighs the production energy input. And in energy/kg terms, it has almost no capacity and is certain to have a life shorter than the rest of the car. In fact, it could be argued that the Prius could be an even better car without the heavy battery pack and instead with bodywork made from aluminium and powered by a very small turbocharged engine – say a 3-cylinder of the type first widely used in Japanese Kei class cars of 10-15 years ago. Diesels Diesels have been much in the news recently and the specific power and torque outputs of passenger car diesels have rocketed. They also achieve significantly better fuel consumption than petrol engines – although the major upsizing of diesels now being fitted to passenger cars is rapidly eroding that advantage. But since these more efficient diesels run electronic control, doesn’t that shoot down my argument in flames? No! Most of the technological breakthroughs in diesel fuel systems have been purely mechanical, espe- The gizmos being packed into today’s cars disguise the lack of real progress being made in economy, packaging and performance. From 10-way power electric seats to multi-screen DVD players, dual climate control, electric handbrakes and auto-dimming rear-vision mirrors, it seems that electronics is now being used in complex gadgets designed primarily to just entertain and amuse. cially the engine-driven fuel pumps designed to develop very high fuel pressures. Apart from a high voltage system used to operate the high-pressure fuel injectors, the electronic architecture of the system is very much like a late eighties petrol management system. And anyway, trucks have had electronically controlled diesels for 20 years or more. Missed opportunities So where should the electronic and mechanical advances have taken us? For starters, it’s bizarre that engine management systems are still running pretty well the same air/fuel ratios that they always have. If you burn less fuel, you get better fuel consumption – but cars still use a 14.7:1 air/fuel ratio (at least the madness of high-load 12:1 and 11:1 air/fuel ratios has just about ceased in new cars). Running leaner air/fuel ratios has emissions as well as economy significance – the output of oxides of nitrogen skyrockets. So, how Home to over 180,000 products Where all the leading brands live GO TO siliconchip.com.au www.rsaustralia.com RS213SC International Rectifier 100%C, 50%M. Panasonic 4col. Reliable • Simple December 2006  15 ment system is programmed to adapt itself to the appropriate fuel – whether that’s petrol, alcohol or any mixture in between. In Europe, half of all new cars are diesels. And if a DVD screen is obligatory, why not use it for the rear vision and not just when reversing – ie, to completely replace the mirrors and rear window? In addition to reducing the solar radiation into the cabin input (and at night, that of following cars’ headlights), the drag-inducing exterior rear vision mirrors could be dispensed with and the rear of the car far better tailored for low drag. (Many don’t realise that the shape of the back of the car is more important than the front in reducing aerodynamic drag.) Losing the plot At highway speeds, most of the fuel is used to push the car through the air. But after the rapid developments in the late eighties, aerodynamic development has now stalled. Drag coefficients have barely changed in 10 years, let alone developments like actively-controlled aerodynamics which has the potential to dramatically drop open road fuel consumption. to solve the problem of high oxides of nitrogen emissions when running lean air/fuel ratios? That seems like a good research project for the engineers – perhaps for those engineers currently working on the software control of the next model’s 10-way power seat design. Aerodynamics has stalled. At highway speeds most of the petrol that your car burns is used to push the car through the air. In the late eighties, manufacturers (finally) recognised this and moved to “slippery-shaped” cars. Aerodynamic drag coefficients dropped in just a few years from mid 0.4 figures to mid and low 0.3 coefficients. But since then there has been almost no change. In fact, most manufacturers now don’t even bother stating the drag coefficients of their new cars – let alone the total drag found by multiplying the coefficient by the frontal area. And the bizarre thing is that the poor internal packaging mentioned earlier is not the result of sacrifices made to produce low-drag cars – cars (like SUVs) with the poorest drag figures often have the poorest packaging! The number of production models with electronically-controlled moveable aerodynamic surfaces can be counted on the fingers of one hand, yet such an approach has the potential 16  Silicon Chip to substantially drop open road fuel consumption without any aroundtown disadvantage. The advances in electronics are also not being employed with any kind of engineering rigour. LEDs consume less electrical power, have faster light-up times and effectively never fail. You’d expect then to see LEDs being used on – at least – all rear lights and indicators (as in fact they are on most new trucks). But on cars, that’s the exception not the rule. Instead, manufacturers have moved to using coloured LEDs for instrument panel and foot-well illumination because then they can talk about the “cool blue” lighting! Solar cells? They’ve improved in efficiency at the same time as costs have decreased. So why don’t many cars in our sunny land use solar cells to keep the battery topped up and the internal fan ventilating the cabin when the car is parked? Mazda once sold a car with this feature on the local market but otherwise there’s been no sign of such lateral thinking. Alternative fuels? Almost zero progress, with LPG system technology lagging decades behind petrol fuel injection. In Brazil, 30% of new cars are able to run on either petrol or alcohol, with the alcohol made primarily from locally-grown sugar cane. In those cars, the engine manage- However, the problem is far more fundamental than not applying some obvious technologies: simply, car man­ ufacturers have lost the plot. They pack in more and more trivial and irrelevant equipment, making cars heavier. Even a small car these days has a mass of 1250kg or more. To cope with the increased weight, they fit larger brakes, heavier suspension and wider tyres. The wider tyres increase rolling resistance and accelerating the heavier mass requires more fuel, so producing more pollutants and to a large extent decreasing the effectiveness of tighter emissions standards. To be market competitive, apparently the next model is always required to have even more equipment and more power, so the cycle continues. It seems no manufacturer ever steps back and lays out the criteria for the functionality of a car, ignoring what others are doing and simply trying to achieve the best outcome. The mind boggles at the thought of what innovative and original car designers like Ferdinand Porsche and Alec Issigonis would now be able to do with the exotic materials, CAD/CAM design techniques, wellinstrumented wind tunnels and the electronic control systems available to today’s designers. One thing’s for sure: they wouldn’t be designing 1.8-tonne cars with the worst interior packaging in automotive history, hugely powerful and equally thirsty, and loaded to the gunwales with complex electronic gadgetry designed primarily to just entertain and amuse. SC siliconchip.com.au