General Motors announced changes to the Chevrolet Volt’s design after a NHTSA investigation into why a Volt caught fire following crash testing.

The changes will go into effect once production restarts at the Hamtramck, Michigan facility, but customer cars already sold will follow a different protocol.

Starting in February, GM will initiate a “voluntary customer satisfaction program” to make the necessary changes to the Volt. According to GM’s Rob Peterson said that  formal recalsl must be initiated by NHTSA, and their lack of movement prompted GM to enact a voluntary one instead.

The fix involves changes to the Volt’s battery pack housing, as well as a coolant temperature sensor and a special bracket to prevent overfilling. The previous system allowed the battery housing to be punctured, which then resulted in coolant overflowing onto a circuit board causing an electrical short. The short was determined to be the cause of the fire.

The rise of the internet has had myriad effects on everyday life, not the least of which has been its profound impact on consumer behavior. With ever more data being made available online, and with the rise of independent alternative media outlets like TTAC, car buyers in particular are fundamentally changing their relationship to the car buying process. Dealers have been noting for some time that the internet has created better-informed buyers who, armed with more information, are demanding the car they want at the best possible price, wreaking havoc on traditional car dealer tactics like upselling and opaque pricing policies.

But as the eternal dance between supply and demand shifts in favor of consumers, some dealers and OEMs are having a tough time adjusting to the new reality. At the same time, the need to make money off of online consumer education has created some tension for the new breed of consumer-oriented websites. This conflict has now broken out into the open, as the auto transaction data firm TrueCar has found itself locked in a battle with American Honda over the downward pricing pressure created by more widely accessible transaction data. And the outcome of this conflict could have profound impacts on the ever-changing face of the new car market.

Early last week, TrueCar CEO Scott Painter took to the TrueCar blog with an “Open Letter To The Automotive Industry,” in which he argued

Our world is changing. Unprecedented access to information and a massive shift in consumer behavior has resulted in a challenging new automotive retail landscape. It has also enabled a consumer appetite for data transparency. To hide from evolving consumer behavior is to deny change. At TrueCar, we embrace this opportunity. We also believe that transparency is the centerpiece of trusting relationships. Some in the industry disagree.

And indeed, from personal experience I feel comfortable saying that TrueCar does provide consumers with some highly valuable information by tracking vehicle transactions from several data sources and publishing the range of transaction prices on a local level. This clearly helps consumers navigate the often opaque and confusing world of dealer-level pricing, and facilitates a more efficient interaction between supply and demand. And if that’s all TrueCar did, it would be impossible to argue with the valuable service it provides.

But in order to fund its business model, TrueCar cannot simply give away data and hope everything pans out for the best. In order to generate profits, TrueCar works with “dealer partners,” allowing them to present a lower “haggle-free” price for the model being researched at no upfront cost. If the consumer buys that car, TrueCar gets a $299 commission from the dealer; if not, the dealer pays nothing. Dealers can tailor these “guaranteed lowest prices” based on TrueCar’s data, and they seem to generally beat non-”guaranteed” prices in the TrueCar “price curve” display by only a few hundred dollars. But by offering this service to its dealer partners, TrueCar has opened itself to conflict with OEMs, as this fiscally-necessary service muddies TrueCar’s role as a pure consumer service. Which is where the conflict with Honda comes in.

In his “Open Letter,” Painter mentions no OEM by name, and TrueCar’s EVP for Dealer Development Stewart Easterby tells TTAC

 We’re not trying to pick a fight… we very much value Honda/Acura. We have strong OEM relationships through our recent acquisition of Automotive Lease Guide, and we have lots of people on staff who have work for OEMs, so we generally have strong relationships with the industry.

But in an Automotive News [sub] piece published on the same day as Painter’s “Open Letter,” the TrueCar CEO claimed that American Honda was warning dealers away from advertising below-invoice “guaranteed lowest” prices. After talking to American Honda, AN updated its piece, noting that it had

incorrectly reported that Honda singled out TrueCar.com when the automaker warned dealers that they would put their local marketing payments from Honda at risk if they offered prices below invoice on Internet shopping sites

In fact, what had happened was that American Honda had simply warned its dealers that any advertisement of below-invoice prices could jeopardize the marketing assistance money Honda sends dealerships. American Honda’s Chris Martin clarified the automaker’s position in an emailed statement to TTAC, noting

Dealers who wish to receive marketing funds are expected to adhere to certain guidelines that govern dealer participation in its Honda Dealer Marketing Allowance (DMA) Program and its Acura Carline Marketing Allowance (CMA) Program.  Among the many advertising guidelines to which dealers must adhere to in order to receive DMA/CMA Funds, Honda dealers are restricted from advertising new Honda vehicles at a price below dealer invoice plus destination and handling charges and Acura dealers are restricted from advertising new Acura vehicles at a price below MSRP plus destination and handling charges.  Such guidelines do not limit a dealer’s discretion to advertise a new vehicle at any price if the dealer is not seeking DMA/CMA Funds.  Furthermore, the dealer is free to charge customers any price it chooses, in its absolute discretion, for a vehicle.

Martin goes on to identify the central bone of contention:

The development of third party websites used for advertising is not any different than advertising pricing in a traditional newspaper or on TV.

And here, American Honda has something of a point. Whereas TrueCar’s price curve is a pure reporting tool, simply reflecting otherwise available data, it’s not entirely unfair for Honda to characterize TrueCar’s service to dealer partners as an advertising service. In practice, the only real difference between this service and any other form of advertising is that TrueCar only gets paid if a car gets sold at the “guaranteed lowest” price offered by one of its dealer partners. If you accept that reality, Honda has some very valid reasons for threatening to withhold dealer marketing assistance, as Martin’s statement explains

The function of these [DMA] guidelines is three-fold. First, it encourages dealers to use the advertising money provided by American Honda for interbrand advertising.  That is, rather than providing funds to dealers so that they can engage in discount advertising against other Honda and Acura dealers (which does American Honda and consumers no good), American Honda wants dealers to use the funds to promote the advantages of Honda and Acura vehicles when compared with competing brands. Second, discount advertising is detrimental to the Honda and Acura brand images.  American Honda has no wish to pay for ads that portray its products as “cheap” or “low-end” vehicles.  This may be appropriate for other manufacturers; it is not appropriate for the Honda and Acura brands.

So far, so reasonable. TrueCar’s service may be more palatable than the local, low-rent “Check Out Our CRAAAAZY Prices!” ads you see on TV, but in practice there’s little meaningful difference. Besides, the choice belongs to dealers: either accept Honda’s money with the inevitable strings attached, or throw in your lot with the new lower-price, but potentially higher-volume TrueCar (or CRAAAAZY Prices!) strategies. But with its third rationale for its policies, Honda strays from this reasonable territory, and betrays a distinct bias against TrueCar, arguing

Third, American Honda believes that much discount advertising is bait-and-switch advertising, which is not beneficial to the consumer and reflects badly on the manufacturer that condones it.  Dealers that advertise vehicles for extremely low prices (as some do on the TrueCar site) may engage in either direct bait-and-switch tactics or using the automobile’s brand name to sell expensive accessories, service contracts and the like.

Memo to Honda: these practices are as old as the auto industry itself. Suggesting that these tactics will never be used at dealers who toe Honda’s DMA line is just as disingenuous as the implication that TrueCar’s dealer partners are more likely to use them. If anything, TrueCar’s major sin is that it makes below-invoice advertising easier for the OEM to monitor and therefore squelch than in the pre-internet days, when consistently maintaining these DMA standards would have required a survey of every local publication and TV/radio broadcaster (not to mention direct-mail marketing), a task that no automaker was or is equipped to do.

But Honda’s apparent antipathy towards TrueCar is just the tip of a growing resentment towards the site. In a speech cited in the AN piece published last Monday, AutoNation CEO Mike Jackson expressed the angst that appears to be spreading across the auto retailing industry, especially in light of its recent deal with Yahoo [sub].

The good deal that they’re pitching to the consumer is lower than average. So to the extent that everyone goes with the TrueCar price, it moves the average down. It’s a death spiral, and the question is whether they are powerful enough to unleash that dynamic in the U.S. marketplace.

But Jackson’s implication, that TrueCar can essentially manipulate the market in favor of consumers, simply doesn’t hold up to scrutiny. On an abstract level, you can’t repeal the law the law of supply and demand. As Painter puts it

They’re trying to say Hondas are worth more than invoice, but if everybody’s paying less than invoice, that’s not true

More practically, however, TrueCar’s own data seems to refute the industry’s fears. Specifically, Easterby tells TTAC

TrueCar represents two to three percent of new car sales… we’re flattered that people think we’re influencing the market, but at that share, we clearly aren’t. The 21st C consumer demands transparency in all products and services, that’s what the web has done. TrueCar reflects the market, just as Zillow reflects the market for real estate, rather than determines it.

Even more importantly, Painter insists

Our goal at TrueCar is to foster healthier relationships between manufacturers, dealers and consumers through data transparency. To deliver on this promise, we require a high standard from our 5,800 dealer partners – an upfront competitive price and a commitment to a great customer experience. A discoverable upfront price is the cost of getting noticed. Contrary to popular concerns this does not create a “race to the bottom.” The lowest price only secures the sale 19.2% of the time within the TrueCar network. The sale is still won by location, selection and good old-fashioned customer service. [Emphasis added]

So where does this all leave us? Clearly Honda has the right to withhold DMA money from dealers violating its reasonable conditions on that money. By the same token, dealers have the choice of pursuing higher volumes with less traditional advertising by choosing the TrueCar strategy, or continuing to follow the time-honored tradition of collaborating with the manufacturer. And here, TrueCar’s price curve, which it says is not populated by dealer partner data but from independent, anonymized sources, becomes the killer app: it’s so good (reflecting a claimed 90% of all new car transactions), it can’t help but draw ever more buyers, who will then be exposed to its dealer partner “advertisements.”

Ultimately, it’s difficult not to conclude that TrueCar (and sites like it) won’t continue to draw ever more dealers away from the old DMA agreements, especially as online research becomes more important to the car-buying process and as traditional advertising dollars flow from TV, radio and print towards the internet. And if dealers and brands are sufficiently hurt by downward pressure on pricing, the alternative is always there. This is how competition works, and because TrueCar has more fundamentally aligned itself with consumers and the power of the market, it’s tough seeing them not coming out ahead in this struggle. And if they do, car buying could be changed forever. Again.

The theme that’s emerged most clearly from my interview with Bob Lutz was, somewhat counterintuitively, compromise. Every vehicle that’s developed and built is the product of nearly countless compromises, on everything from performance to efficiency, and from weight and materials to cost. The question isn’t so much if you compromise when developing a new car, but how you compromise… as was demonstrated in our last Lutzian anecdote. And even during my interview, as the conversation bounced from GM to Chrysler, from mass-market products to niche halo cars, I was thrilled that this issue kept coming up. Why? Because this theme played perfectly into the question that was at the top of my list of prepared questions. After all, there has been a mystery haunting GM followers for some time now… a mystery that I’d never seen a journalist ever ask about. And there I was, sitting with one of the few people who was even capable of fully answering it. So I just waited for a pause, opened my mouth and asked:

Why do GM cars weigh more than other cars?

I had no idea what kind of answer to expect… but I definitely wasn’t expecting the answer I got.

To be perfectly honest, I half-expected an angry denial or a brush-off… possibly even a signal that the interview was over. In the car world, weight is extremely important to engineering cultures and enthusiasts alike. The former see low weights as the achievement of engineering excellence in the abstract, while enthusiasts enjoy a low mass vehicle’s inherent advantages in handling, acceleration and efficiency. Ever since Colin Chapman built Lotus around the philosophy “simplify and add lightness,” curb weight has been the measure to look at for in-the-know-enthusiasts. And there I was asking a guy who was still informally advising GM, and would be officially back at the company a week later, why his cars were fatties.

Of course he couldn’t exactly deny the fact. Chevy, for example, won’t let you use its online “competitive comparison” system to compare weights, but if you go through the comparisons by hand you’ll find the weight of every GM car is at least a little heavier than the competition. Sometimes the extra weight isn’t much: for example, a base, four-cylinder Camry weighs 3,307 lbs to the four-pot Malibu’s 3,421. But go to the C-segment and you’ll find that a Cruze with automatic transmission weighs 3,102 to the Corolla’s 2,800 and the Civic’s 2,672. Similarly, a base Equinox is four hundred pounds heavier than a comparable CR-V. No wonder then, that Chevy struggled so long with fuel economy and the perception that it “couldn’t make a good small car.”

But if Lutz thought through all this before answering, he didn’t let it show. There was only the briefest pause as he considered the question, before the answer came:

Um, I’ll take part of the blame for that…

Huh? Really?

I said look guys, these vehicles are going to be robust, strong, I want a great ride, an absence of any noise, vibration and harshness, I want these things to be super-silent. So the guys put in heavy-duty components… also, Ed Welburne and I like big wheels, and the minute you say the minimum wheel size is 18 inches, you’ve automatically  bought yourself an extra 50 lbs of weight. We willingly and knowingly made decisions in favor of design and appearance and noise, vibration and harshness… all the things that make a vehicle feel substantial. You know, everybody cries and moans that the Buick Enclave is 400 lbs too heavy, but it’s the last thing on the customer’s list. They don’t worry if it’s 400 lbs overweight or not, they love the way it rides and drives.

And, you know, we did a lot of programs very fast, so there wasn’t always time to go back and say “gee, could we make this part out of something else?” So I will cheerfully admit that making weight reduction targets was my lowest priority… and it shows. But other than the automotive press, nobody cares about it.

And there you have it: if Lutz were simply a “car guy” in the mold of the most fanatical enthusiasts, there’s no way he would have run GM’s product development that way. But, beneath his “true-believer,” “engineers-first,” “car-guys-versus-bean-counters” image, Lutz is still a corporate executive first… a species more closely related to the “bean counters” than the “car guys” we all know from outside of the industry.  For all the passion he puts into his cars, he’s not developing them for himself. And for all of his public contempt for finance and “running a business by the numbers,” he’s always got an eye on what the majority of car buyers, not the aficionados, are looking for. In fact, it’s quite likely that most self-identified “car guys” who don’t work inside the industry would argue that Lutz’s priorities are as anti-car-guy as possible. After all, how can you truly claim to love a car in which you’ve concentrated all of its compromises into extra weight, the enemy of fun and efficiency? Since when do “car guys” trade hundreds of pounds of extra weight for a quieter ride?

Lutz didn’t provide too much more insight into this issue, sticking with his assertion that consumers simply don’t care about extra weight. And if asked in the abstract, it’s hard to imagine many “average consumers” placing “low weight” high on a list of priorities. But it’s clear that Lutz’s absolute emphasis on ride and refinement won’t last at GM, because weight simply isn’t abstract. Even if consumers don’t care about its effects on handling, as gas prices rise, they’re starting to care more about its effects on efficiency. And Hyundai certainly doesn’t seem to have compromised style, the all-important priority in the Lutz approach to product development, in order to bring down weight and achieve leading  fuel economy. So, is weight reduction going to become more important for GM? According to Lutz

Is it something that is being addressed? The answer is “you bet it is,” because it’s going to be harder to make fuel economy regulations with a heavy car. The guys are already doubling back on it. In the next generations they’ll get the weight out and hopefully still maintain the structural rigidity.

And on that note, Lutz whip-cracks back into “car guy” mode, singing the praises of beaming and torsional rigidity, saying “if you get that right, you’re 90% of the way to a great car.” Then, as I’m still struggling to remember a time when someone said “I love this car, but next time I’m going to buy one with more beaming rigidity,” the subject shifts again to CAFE regulation. I’m hardly an experienced interviewer, and my head is still spinning trying to make sense of what I’ve just heard, so the conversation flows on. I’m still not sure I understand why GM’s cars had to be so much heavier, but at least I know who to blame for it… if anyone actually cares.

A team of researchers at UC San Diego and the University of Washington, Seattle, has just published a paper titled “Comprehensive Experimental Analyses of Automotive Attack Surfaces“. Behind that dry title is a very exciting research study. In essence, they bought a modern reasonably-priced car with lots of fancy features, including a built-in cellular phone interface, and did a serious reverse-engineering exercise to determine whether it had any security vulnerabilities. It’s the most comprehensive study of its kind.

Curiously, you can read their paper all the way through and not see any name of the particular car they studied; they argue these issues apply everywhere. This seems unnecessarily conservative. Besides, if you read their previous paper and look at the photos, any car nut will be able to identify the car without any trouble. Let’s play along anyway; we’ll just say it’s a Generic Motors product.

You see, Generic Motors (and, I agree that this is about far more than any one car company) thought it would be really cool to have a telematics system that could do a variety of clever things, like automatically connect an operator to your car when the airbags deploy to ask you whether you’re in need of medical assistance. The way a security person looks at that, though, is that there’s a communications path from the inside of the car out to a data center somewhere and back in again. If the attacker can interpose on that, there’s just no end of mayhem that could be accomplished.

Earlier press reports on this research focused on how they found an attack against the car through the CD player. A carefully constructed CD-ROM, using a malicious compressed music file that would play without issue on your regular PC, could exploit a buffer overflow vulnerability and then control the CD player. Meanwhile, in modern cars, everything’s actually networked together. Consequently, from the compromised CD player, the attacker can take over everything else in the car with the greatest of ease: engine control, door locks, you name it.

Still, that attack is for chumps. How’s a car thief supposed to realistically get a malicious CD into your CD player? Do you valet park your car? No, the really exciting attack, and by exciting I mean “expensive factory recall” exciting, focuses on that built-in cellular phone interface. You see, that means that every Generic Motors car has a phone number and it turns out you can call it. Generic Motors got the security all wrong, and an attacker can thus take over your car without being anywhere physically near it.

What could this evil attacker do? Track you, actuate your brakes, listen in to your conversations, etc. This is normally the stuff that only dystopian science fiction authors dream about. If you want to get seriously dystopian, though, you have to read the paper’s own speculation (page 13). The authors imagine a world where a criminal agency tracks all of the Generic Motors cars in the city. When a garden variety criminal has an hankering for a particular car, he phones up the agency and asks where such a car might be and what it’s owners’ habits are. For a suitable fee, the agency directs the criminal to the car, helpfully unlocks the doors, and starts the engine, all for a modest fee. That’s service with a smile! Similarly, think how much fun the paparazzi could have using similar techniques to eavesdrop on the Hollywood starlet du jour.

Is this just a problem for Generic Motors? Far from it. Virtually any modern car can connect to your phone via Bluetooth and increasingly many cars come with built-in phones. To pick one example, the new Audi A7 uses this to great effect with Google Maps for navigation. To pick another example, Tesla has said that the forthcoming Model S will allow third parties to develop “apps” for their car. What could possibly go wrong with that?

Are our automotive companies and their suppliers responding appropriately? Maybe. I’ve spoken to a number of security people, both in the U.S. and Europe, who consult with these companies. The companies prefer to keep their security concerns under wraps. Suffice to say “they’re working on it.”

[Disclosure, I was the "shepherd" for this paper, meaning that the USENIX Security conference program committee asked me to help the authors of the paper make the changes that the committee requested. I'm not a co-author of the paper and I have had not personally participated in any automotive security analyses, unless you count the time, in high school, that we discovered that my Nissan key worked perfectly in a friend's Mazda. Zoom zoom.]

[Editor's Note: This piece, by Eric Peters, has been republished from the National Motorist's Association blog. It originally appeared at epautos.com.]

Big Brother’s doing a bit more than just watching you these days.

Remember the last time you got your driver’s license renewed? You may recall the procedure for taking your picture was a bit different than it used to be.

Instead of the usual “smile” you might have been told to do no such thing — very specifically. To be as expressionless as possible. And that the system seemed more “high-tech” than it used to be. Instead of receiving your new license on-site, it would be mailed to you in a week or so — from some unspecified “secure location,” perhaps.

You may have been told or seen signs or been given literature explaining that the new way of taking your picture is part of new security measures designed to make it harder for people to manufacture fake IDs (since a driver’s license is the de facto national ID in this country).

But they probably didn’t mention that the pictures — digitized images, actually — were to be downloaded into a new database that uses facial recognition software to “scan” for (are you surprised?) Terrorists — among other things.

Only it’s ordinary Americans who are being terrorized.

As The Boston Globe reports, Massachussetts resident John H. Gass had his license revoked after the facial recognition Hive Mind deemed him an un-Person. Glass had done nothing, though — other than being tardy opening his mail, including a threatening letter from the Massachussetts Registry of Motor Vehicles demanding that he prove the guy pictured on his DL was, in fact, him.

Here’s where it gets interesting — and depressing.

Gass had already established his identity — apparently, to the satisfaction of the state motor vehicle authorities — at the time his license was originally issued. Just like everyone else who applies for a driver’s license. Now it — well, a computer — demanded he prove it again. On his nickel. On his own time.

Or else.

“Or else” being — no more driving privileges for you.

Gass tried to do so — for ten days, according to The Globe.

First, he called the Motor Vehicle Registry, explaining that he’d forgotten to open his mail, including the letter they’d sent dated March 22, which notified him his license had been revoked effective April 1. The bureaucrats at the registry advised him his digitized image had been “flagged” by the computer because it was similar in appearance to the image of someone else. Now it was up to him, said the Registry drone, to come to them with documents to prove his identity.

Again.

Remember, Gass, like everyone else who has a driver’s license, had to provide such documentation at the time the driver’s license was issued. He had complied with the letter of the law. But now the law had changed. The arbitrary determination of a computer had resulted in the capricious revocation of his driver’s license.

This is of a piece with the TSA “No Fly” lists that have created nightmare hassles for people just trying to board a plane whose only association with “Islamic Terrorism” is that they watched Syriana a couple of years back. Usually not even that.

“I was shocked,’’ Gass said in a recent interview. “As far as I was concerned, I had done nothing wrong.’’

Meanwhile, his license would remain revoked — no small thing for Gass, who drives for a living.

So Gass brought his birth certificate and Social Security card to the Registry to establish that he was in fact himself (again). Insufficient. The drones demanded he also produce additional documents with his current address on them. By this time, Gass had obtained the assistance of a lawyer, who provided the registry drones with the documents and on April 14, at last, his driving privileges were restored.

Gass is suing the state, demanding a court an injunction blocking the MA Motor Vehicle Registry from revoking anyone’s driver’s license without at least giving them a hearing first.

May the Force be with him.

And with the rest of us, too — because this business is not confined to that imprisoned land, The People’s Republic of Massachussetts. At least 34 states are also using facial recognition software — typically (as in the case of MA) funded by a “grant” from the Department of Homeland Security.

Massachussetts received $1.5 million taxpayer dollars to harass the taxpayers of Massachussetts, for instance.

“The advantage if securing the identity of 4 1/2 million drivers is of considerable state interest,” says MA Motor Vehicle Registry Obergruppenfuhrer Rachel Kaprielian. “We send out 1,500 suspension letters every day,” she croons.

And it’s up to each and every one of these hapless recipients to prove to the state that the state is wrong — another example of the casual upending of a basic tenet of what was once our common heritage in the West: That you are innocent until proven guilty.

Not the reverse.

“There are mistakes that can be made,” admits Kaprielian.

But that’s not the state’s problem, of course. It is Gass’s problem.

And quite possibly, your problem, too.

This piece, by Eric Peters, originally appeared at  www.epautos.com

I am sitting in a parking garage in a throng of torpid auto-journalists, nearly all of whom are wearing the same glazed expression of terminal information overload. On-screen, molecules of fuel and air are doing a complicated little computer-animated dance, as narrated by Susumi Niinai, program manager at Mazda’s powertrain development division. His English, while Japanese-accented, is better than, y’know, mine, but the concepts he’s explaining approach the limit of comprehensibility to the lay-person. Mind you, it’s a pretty nice parking garage.

Some of you, like me, may have been hearing all the rumblings about Mazda’s new SKYACTIV technologies and been wondering whether it’s going to turn out to be a series of technological breakthroughs or, alternatively, a load of complete cobblers thought up by some Zoom-Zoom marketing guru.

Good news everyone! It’s the former. Bad news everyone! I have to try to explain it to you. And I borderline don’t understand it myself. Here goes…

First, let’s set aside Niinai-san’s well-illustrated presentation on the SKYACTIV engine series for a moment, and talk in generalities. As was repeatedly hammered into our heads throughout the day, Mazda is a small company with limited resources.

What’s more, they’re a small company in trouble. How much trouble? Well, previous posts have outlined current flagging sales and enough profit drops to alarm Mazda fans. This is not good. To be frank, if Saab goes the way of the 9-2x Dodo a few orthodontists may be mildly upset, but for the rest of us it’s a big ol, “Meh.” Mazda on the ropes though? For the enthusiast driver, that’s bad.

So how does a beleaguered company without the resources of a Toyota or Nissan take on the pressures of ever-increasing efficiency standards? More than that, how do you pull off competitive MPGs while still maintaining the apparently-conflicting mandate of maximizing driver involvement as a priority? Two choices: cut corners, or clip the apex.

Make no mistake, Mazda isn’t interested in broadening appeal by blurring their focus. I heard the concept of jinba-ittai repeated so many times during the various presentations I was on the point of climbing on a horse and shooting someone in the face with an arrow.

Additionally, partnerships don’t seem to be high on the priority list. While there is some sort of upcoming agreement with Toyota on the hybrid powertrain front, Mazda seems to have little enthusiasm for a percentage ownership by a larger company that might allow for an increased R&D budget. When asked if anything similar to the previous Ford arrangement might be sought going forward, Mazda’s gurus said something to the effect of, “the future is unpredictable, but we don’t expect so.” They were scrupulously polite, but one might as well been asking them if they were hoping a disfiguring skin disease might re-appear.

Without the bankroll, Mazda’s got to box clever. It’s all very well to identify brand values, and quite frankly, it’s heartening to hear a group of enthusiastic engineers reaffirm that the Japanese Lotus still puts “fun-to-drive” at the top of their to-do list, but how do to so on a shoestring? First, streamline.

“Monotsukuri Innovation” is Mazda’s way of bundling architecture together to reduce costs. The cutaway SKYACTIV platform on display clearly showed a transmission tunnel capable of supporting an AWD variant, but the chassis was intended for next-gen Mazda3 and Mazda6 cars. With minimal changes needed to build the CX-7 and upcoming CX-5 off the same platform, weight-savings and rigidity developments should echo throughout the entire Mazda range.

Much hay has been made of Mazda’s borderline-impossible weight target for the next MX-5. With a total weight reduction of just 100kg, the SKYACTIV body and chassis don’t seem as revolutionary – until you notice that no exotic materials are involved: the savings are realized purely though better design and a moderate (20%) increase in the use of high-tensile steel.

By removing curves and kinks from the underbody, Mazda’s prototypes boast increased safety ratings with less material used. However, evidence of budget limitations can be seen in the ring-structure connecting the upper and lower body. Rather than a full stamped piece requiring a very large and expensive piece of machinery, a section of the structure is attached using structural adhesive.

The importance of an 8% weight-loss is easily dismissed, until you drive a Fiesta and a Mazda2 back-to-back. Of the two, the Mazda has the dynamic edge, and despite meagre power output remains a joy to drive. Best of all, the optimist could choose to see Mazda’s weight goals as marking the point at which safety-driven model bloat hit its apogee and we began moving towards a lighter future where 160hp four-bangers were more than merely adequate.

More than that, the SKYACTIV-chassis’s focus on driving dynamics has resulted in further improvements to handing with a quickened steering rack combined and increased positive caster. The difference in the steering is readily evident; not heavy but much more direct.

However, the realist will note that weight-loss and chassis improvements aren’t enough. Only a minor fuel-savings will be realized by the SKYACTIV chassis and body. The major difference will come from drivetrain improvements.

Don’t look for anything radical in the transmission department. With great pragmatism, Mazda has noted and rejected the cost of developing a dual-clutch gearbox, spurned the non-involving fuel-savings of a continuously terrible – er – variable transmission and gone instead for refinements of the good old auto and manual transmissions.

The changes to the manual are clever, but slight. Minor adjustments to throw-length and some weight-savings realized by trickery such as a shared input gear for first and reverse show a general improvement, but Mazda’s stick-shifts are generally quite good anyway.

It’s with the automatic tranny that Mazda’s pulled a fast one. One need only look at the mixed reviews of Ford’s six-speed dual-clutch or check the recall list on the VAG DSG to see the pitfalls of pouring money into a completely new tech. Mazda has taken what seems to be the easy route here, re-jigging the venerable automatic gearbox with a more direct feel that’ll keep the enthusiast happy.

That’s perhaps an oversimplification, but with a greater lock-up range and a modular unit containing calibrated hydraulic controls, the new 6-speed auto feels much more in tune to what your right foot is doing, particularly on tip-in.

So we have bundled development and a focus on honing simpler technologies rather than chasing pie-in-the-sky tech. Time to get back to Niinai-san and the SKYACTIV engine suite, where both ideas combine for some real-world fuel savings.

SKYACTIV-G and -D engines have, respectively, both the highest compression ratio for a production gasoline engine and the lowest compression ratio for a diesel engine. For both, the concept is the same: hybrid vehicles are all well and good, but people keep buying cars equipped with nothing more than a trusty old internal combustion engine. Even with a market shift more towards electric and hybrid drivetrains, the bulk of the vehicles on the road are still going to be ICE-equipped.

Thus, improving the combustion cycle in both diesel and gasoline applications is going to affect passenger car sales right now, especially as Mazda doesn’t appear to intend a premium charge for their SKYACTIV technology. Rather, next year’s Mazda3 will bow with a SKYACTIV-G engine and the improved transmissions as the standard equipment on mid-range models starting sometime in October.

The availability of SKYACTIV-D remains nebulous, although it could appear in some Mazda products as soon as next year. This twin-turbocharged diesel boasts improved torque from a combustion cycle that ignites much closer to top dead centre, giving a longer power-stroke. Multi-hole injectors allow for a more homogenous fuel-air mixture and the low compression ratio allows for more precise timing control.

Why doesn’t everyone run their diesel engines this way? Among other issues not outlined, Mazda’s engineers needed to overcome cold-start problems with variable valve-lift. As much as I hate the phrase, it’s a paradigm shift: the low compression means thinner con-rods and a lighter rotating assembly that revs higher; this is a diesel that redlines at (and pulls to) 5200rpm.

However, it’s the SKYACTIV-G that you’re more likely to get a chance to drive in the near future. Want some good news on the efficiency front? How does 13:1 compression and a 4-2-1 header strike you?

That’s right, moving in a completely different direction than other manufacturers, Mazda has put together a hi-po four-banger that gains 15% torque across the rev range while still getting better fuel economy. It’s a sprightly little engine and noticeably more potent at low revs.

How do they get away with a compression ratio higher than a 458 Italia in a four-cylinder that runs on regular gas? Control the burn. That header is designed to maintain consistent temperature levels in the combustion chamber, and the SKYACTIV-G features special piston cavities which allow for rapid and even flame-front propagation. Those multi-hole direct injectors are at work here again, although there’s a limit to the tech. Overseas versions will be running 14:1 compression, but North American fuel requirements dictated a detune.

The next-gen Mazda3 will only be partially SKYACTIV, lacking the chassis and body upgrades that will first be fully available in the CX-5 crossover (which you’ll be glad to note will be available with manual transmission). With this partial first wave of improvements, Mazda is reporting attaining 40mpg on the highway.

Revolutionary? The numbers don’t seem so. But it’s competitive, and the comprehensive focus that Mazda is bringing to its entire lineup shows a different strategy than that behind a low-volume halo car like the Nissan Leaf.

Let’s face it, people are going to continue to buy Mazda products based on the way they drive. If Mazda can reduce consumption to the point at which a enthusiast looking for an engaging drive doesn’t end up paying a penalty at the pump, they’ll have a success story on their hands.

Electric vehicles present all kinds of challenges to the traditional ways of understanding cars. From design to differentiation, from range to refueling, EVs simply act different than the internal combustion-powered cars we’ve been refining for centuries now. And yet, through consumer incentives and subsidized charging stations, governments seem to be barreling headlong towards the goal of simply replacing our gas cars with electric ones, as if the two were fundamentally interchangeable. Sadly this is not the case, and a study by Project Better Place and PJM Interconnection [PDF] illustrates in stark terms just how costly an unplanned, uncoordinated rush to electric cars can be.

PJM and Better Place open their study with a question that some might find slightly absurd: what would happen if a major metropolitan area suddenly had a million EVs? The question is only absurd from a pure market perspective, as global EV sales volume projections are generally low enough to keep the possibility of a single million-EV metropolis squarely in the realm of science fiction. From a policy perspective, however, the study offers profound insights into issues that the governments who are currently promoting EVs absolutely must consider. Without an understanding of the unintended consequences of a rush to EVs, governments risk spiraling costs, misplaced investments, and market failures.

To understand the potential effects of a million-EV metropolis, PJM and Better place have created a complex computer model which

considered a distribution of 1 million EVs in the Washington-Baltimore Metropolitan Area and modeled the impact of charging the EV batteries in three scenarios: unmanaged charging, consumer-price-incentivized charging, and managed charging via a Central Network Operator (CNO).

With a million EVs in one metropolitan area, a huge percentage of grid energy would be diverted towards transportation that was once powered by gasoline, and these three scenarios represent different approaches to managing the grid impact. The first, or “unmanaged” scenario is essentially the status quo, a market-driven pricing system in which cars are simply powered off of a standard electrical grid using home chargers and the public fast chargers that some cities are already installing (called Battery Quick Chargers or BQCs). The “Time Of Use” (TOU) scenario used a two-tier pricing scenario, modeled on the pilot EV tariff developed by Southern California Edison, which uses advanced home meters to distribute energy for (theoretically) lower grid impacts and electricity prices (as well as public BQCs). The “Central Network Operator” (CNO) scenario models a single EV services provider responsible for all charging and infrastructure, using Better Place’s in-house network models and experiences. In this scenario, the BQCs are replaced by BSSs, or Battery Swap Stations, another unique Better Place offering.

Without going into too much complexity in describing the simulation (check out the PDF for more), it starts with a transportation model which maps EV distribution, trips and charging behavior. That model is then run through each of the three different scenarios, and the results of each is then sent through PJM’s grid market model and assessed for impacts on grid load and energy prices (assuming no fundamental changes in generation and transmission techniques). The results are dramatic, and graphically illustrate the problem with a vehicle-centric approach to EV stimulus.

As the very first chart in this post shows (also shown here in grey), the unmanaged scenario causes huge peaks and valleys in grid load, as commuters follow regular schedules and charge their vehicles at roughly the same times, charging them until full as soon as they are plugged in. The red line in that chart tracks “Locational Marginal Prices” (LMPs), which are at their highest when the grid faces its highest draws. This results in $786.3m in wholesale energy increases per year, a number that the TOU scenario (shown above) actually makes worse by 4%. Where TOU does help is in the annual energy costs aggregated to EV owners (thanks to fixed prices), but it is only shown to help by a mere 3.7%.

If you replace the haphazard system of home-charging and public BQCs with Better Place’s battery swap stations (BSSs) and network management system, the peaks and valleys in the grid draw are dramatically leveled out compared to the unmanaged and TOU scenarios. And though localized marginal prices are higher at times than in the TOU scenario, on aggregate they offer 22% savings compared to the unmanaged scenario. That’s over $35m annually (in one city) that’s not coming out of consumer’s pockets. More importantly, wholesale energy prices enjoy a whopping 45% savings compared to the unmanaged scenario for a staggering $350m in annual savings. Now imagine those results multiplied across every American metropolis with a million vehicles, and the impacts of not committing to a central network operator are impossible to ignore on a national policymaking level.

In essence, only a single central network operator can manage the chaos of individual transportation without restricting mobility or causing regular stress on the grid. I personally tend to favor bottom-up, market driven solutions, and at first glance putting a single operator in charge of managing the distribution of energy for private transportation does not seem to be that. But when you go through the model it becomes clear that this single central switchboard and distribution system is actually necessary for efficient market function, allowing for constant response to localized marginal prices and constant mitigation of naturally clustered usage patterns. In light of this reality, the study’s policy implications are less shocking:

This joint study firmly concludes that the increases in wholesale energy cost due to the additional load of 1 million EVs in the Washington-Baltimore Metropolitan Area can be reduced by hundreds of millions of dollars per year if the charging is managed by a CNO responding to real-time LMPs.  These savings are without considering the value from various ancillary services and of large-scale dispatchable load for increasing the penetration of renewables, economic dispatch efficiency, and heat-rates for environmental considerations.  Existing mechanisms do not necessarily allow CNOs to capture any of this value, which could be used for infrastructure deployment.  Based on these conclusions, we emphasize how critically important both the presence of real-time LMPs and of CNOs are to reducing the impacts to the electric power system.  Therefore, we recommend that incentives be developed for advancing the power system such that PRD incorporates LMPs and for EV incentives to reach beyond the consumer to CNOs so that intelligent charging networks can be quickly constructed.

By simply giving consumers credits to buy EVs, the government is setting up the same consumers to overpay massively for their electricity, grids for overstress and utilities for waste and inefficiency. Rather than encouraging these negative outcomes, perhaps governments should consider investing in Better Place’s holistic network management approach. The upfront costs of a Better Place-style CNO are indeed large, but the alternative is well-over $350m in annual increased wholesale energy costs (in one city alone)… waste without end. Throughout history economists have found so-called “natural monopolies,” in which markets are unable to provide a service as efficiently as a single actor. With the problem of EV grid management, we seem to have found another. And because the battery-swap model also fixes the major micro-level problems with EVs, namely lack of range and battery depreciation costs, Better Place is looking more and more like a no-brainer to me all the time.

TTAC has long seen stop-start systems (which turn off the engine at idle) as one of the many common-sense technologies that will continue to improve internal combustion engine efficiency at a relatively low cost. Outside of these digital pages, though, the systems have taken longer to gain awareness in the United States, resulting in the lagging adoption rate pictured in the chart above. Up to this point, we’ve assumed that this can largely be blamed on the EPA test’s unwillingness to acknowledge the urban-driving advantages of stop-start systems, pointing to Mazda’s protests on the matter as evidence that government intransigence was keeping the technology out of the market. But recently Mazda has announced that all of its vehicles will get stop-start as standard by 2015, and Ford has said that it will begin offering the technology on “some” four-cylinder models for the North American 2012 model-year… and the rest of Detroit isn’t far behind. So what’s the deal? The EPA hasn’t changed its test… why are stop-start systems finally starting to trickle over?

Thanks to new research obtained by TTAC from the cleantech investment fund Pacific Crest, we now have a better understanding of stop-start technology, and why we’re actually glad it’s taking so long for the systems to get here.

Not having looked into the technology in any appreciable depth, Pacific Crest’s research was eye-opening. It turns out that the first generation of systems actually used variations of lead-acid battery technology known as “absorbed gas mat” (AGM) and “enhanced flooded batteries” rather than the newer NiMh or Li-ion chemistries. Though these technologies clearly offer advantages over standard lead-acid batteries (see comparison from Johnson Controls, above), they are still far from perfect. Pacific Crest’s research notes:

Gen1 AGM and enhanced flood batteries perform poorly, leaving future market share in doubt. The start-stop battery cranks the engine 10x more than a traditional battery, and the lead-acid chemistry is simply unsuited for this workload. Current AGM and EFBs degrade rapidly, with AGM batteries losing half of the charge acceptance within two weeks after first use (i.e., it loses half of its fuel-efficiency gains). They are not good at holding steady voltage during a stopping event (e.g., car stereos/windshield wipers may not work when the car engine turns off).

Yes, you just read that right: the current generation of stop-start systems lose half of their benefits after two weeks. Which means they’re great for juicing up scores on Europe’s urban-efficiency test, but they are as good as useless for the vast majority of the life of the vehicle (we already knew they were less-effective in cold weather). In an industry that typically validates equipment for hundreds of thousands of miles of useable life, this is nothing short of shocking. Especially when you jump ahead and find out the OEM response to these concerns

Ultracapacitor prices need to decline by approximately 50% to gain significant Gen2 share. Overwhelmingly, OEMs are interested in satisfying the European legislation at the lowest cost. With few exceptions, cost is the first, second and only consideration. The poor performance of the AGM battery is something these OEMs are willing to live with as they assume consumers (and regulators) will not notice or care about the fuel-efficiency losses soon after purchase. Representatives from Ford, BMW and Porsche all dismissed ultracapacitors solely on cost, even while recognizing the greater performance. The good news for ultracapacitors is that a few OEMs are interested in offering consumers the better performance. But in order to gain real market share, the module price needs to fall significantly.

That’s right, the OEMs can “live with it.” Because they literally don’t have to live with it: consumers do. How this issue has not erupted into a semi-serious scandal in Europe is beyond us. After all, if this is accurate and verifiable, it means manufacturers are building cars that may not actually comply with emissions standards in the real world for most of their lives. Whether consumers will “live with this” is one question… whether governments will is a very different proposition. But, as the paragraph above implies, manufacturers aren’t likely to abandon advanced lead-acid designs for some time. Luckily, though, the next generation of AGM batteries should be much improved… and they had better be!

By 2013, start-stop batteries need to get much better. The next-generation battery, expected to be introduced initially in 2013 models, is expected to do much more than current models and stretch lead-acid battery technology further. OEMs are demanding significant technology advancements to meet customer demands and higher fuel efficiency standards. The Gen2 battery not only will do start-stops, but also basic regenerative braking, start-stop during deceleration and electric boost during acceleration. The battery will, therefore, need to be able to handle more cranking events, and more charge. Also, the battery will need to operate a partial state of charge (i.e., normally hold 70% to 80% charge) in order to absorb energy from braking events.

Generally speaking, batteries need a 4x improvement in charge acceptance and a 3x increase in cycle life to meet OEM demands for 2013. Lead-acid batteries, ultrabatteries and ultracapacitors are all vying for share in the Gen2 start-stop market. No OEM is committed to a single future technology, although most of the OEM testing is focused on improving AGM batteries. Most OEMs (e.g., BMW) are waiting to see the final specs on Gen2 AGM batteries before turning their attention to alternatives such as ultracapacitors. If lead-acid manufacturers can produce an improved version at the current price point, AGM will continue to dominate the start-stop market, in our view.

Pacific Crest goes on to argue that ultracapacitors (which are good for over a million cycles and don’t lose capacity like lead-acid) need to see something like a 50% price reduction to compete for attention from price-sensitive OEMs, and points out that a lack of Chinese players in the ultracapacitor space is part of the problem. Though ultracapacitors sound sexy, if the next-generation of AGM batteries improve to the point where stop-start systems are offering full benefits for longer than two freaking weeks, then we say “bring ‘em on.” Meanwhile, every auto media outlet with stop-start-equipped long-term loaners (and possibly government emissions-control agencies) should be running regular tests to verify or disprove these troubling claims. A two-week lifespan for full-function on any automotive system is nothing short of misleading.

I designed TrueDelta’s Car Reliability Survey to provide information an average of ten months ahead of the established annual surveys. Early last December we shared with TTAC readers that ”Early data on the Ford Fiesta is not good.” Then, in early March, we stated about the 2011 Fiesta and the 2010 Taurus that ”Ford does not appear to have tested either model thoroughly enough.” The late February release on the TrueDelta site went a step farther, asking, “Is Ford slipping?” The answer last week from Ford: “Yes, but we’re going to fix it.”

The official Ford line, as conveyed through Automotive News: we’re being open about our “tech glitches” because, in the words of CEO Alan Mulally, “You can’t manage a secret.” But what is Ford trying to manage by being open about quality problems? Not the problems themselves—it’s possible to be open about problems inside a company without going to the press about them. Instead, they’re trying to manage something outside the company: public perceptions.

Why now? Because later this month J.D. Power will release its annual Initial Quality Survey (IQS) results, and Ford knows that its scores are going to be significantly worse than in the past. The reason stated in the Automotive News article: glitches in the new “MyFord Touch” touchscreen-based control system. Because the IQS combines usability problems and mechanical problems (something we’ve criticized the survey for in the past), a hard to use control system will harm a car’s score even if nothing is technically wrong with it. BMW’s scores have suffered ever since it introduced iDrive.

The article refers to Consumer Reports as well, and drew on their auto chief David Champion for a couple of quotes. But, in noting that CR dropped its recommendation for the Ford Edge “in part because of the controls,” the author doesn’t seem to realize that CR’s road test evaluations and its reliability survey are two entirely separate entities. While MyFord Touch might fail the former, it could very well have no impact on the latter.

What will have an impact on CR’s reliability survey results, which will be next be updated in October: the problems noted in TrueDelta’s survey, and that aren’t mentioned at all in the Automotive News article despite Ford’s “openness.” Things like the chrome finish flaking off the taillights on the Taurus and Fiestas that won’t start, whose fuel gauges don’t read correctly, or (in fewer but more serious cases) whose dual clutch automated manual transmissions fail. The Taurus problem is admittedly minor, but it nevertheless indicates a faulty product development process. Proper testing would have discovered that the finish would peel off the taillights in less than a year. Similarly, proper testing would have found that a poor ground would lead to no-starts in the Fiesta, and that the fuel gauges in the car were often failing to read correctly. If these common problems that appear early on were missed, what else has been missed?

These glitches aren’t entirely a new development. Earlier, the 2007 Ford Edge and Lincoln MKX suffered from very common failures to the seals of their AWD units, often multiple times with the same car—and this problem persisted for at least three model years. The 2008 Taurus has commonly had problems with its front struts. And the revision to the Fusion for 2010 created transmission driveability problems where none had existed before—and which have proven hard to fix. But the Fiesta has been the least reliable new Ford in some time, with multiple common problems (that have nothing to do with MyFord Touch). And as the first Ford of Europe car to be transplanted to North America under Mulally’s “One Ford” program it could presage problems with the 2012 Focus and upcoming Escape and Fusion replacements.

Someone within Ford is certainly aware of these other problems that have nothing to do with “tech glitches.” Mulally himself is likely aware of them; otherwise, he’s got an even bigger problem on his hands. If Mulally is aware of these problems, he realizes that they will impact the IQS this month and Consumer Reports survey results in the fall. But Ford’s professed openness didn’t extend to discussing these other problems with Automotive News. Instead, they focused on debugging MyFord Touch and installing new robots to improve the precision of panel fits. It’s not hard to imagine why. This way, when those poor scores come out, journalists and the broader public they inform might think that they’re due to buggy software and panel fits, and not anything more serious.

Ford might buy themselves a little time this way. But if they want to maintain the reputation for quality they worked so hard to achieve, they must address the true scope of the problem. Mo’ better robots aren’t going to do the trick now any more than they did for Roger Smith’s GM. Their product development process needs fixing.

While the political battle lines over increasing CAFE standards are being drawn in Washington, with the industry taking on both environmentalists and itself, a line of analysis that’s been around since 2009 is exacerbating the industry’s internal divisions over the impact of CAFE increases. A two-year-old University of Michigan study has been exhumed and expanded upon in a new CitiGroup report which makes a bold claim: CAFE will actually improve both sales and profits for the industry. And with Detroit taking the lead in resisting CAFE increases, one might think that the industry’s “turncoats” like Toyota and Hyundai, who have made marketing-led decisions to support CAFE increases, would be the main beneficiaries of these reports. Not so. According to this battle-line-confounding analysis, the biggest beneficiary of CAFE increases will be… Detroit. Madness you say? You may well be right…

We’ve reported on the work of the UM’s Transportation Research Institute a few times before here at TTAC, most notably the 2009 McManus/Kleinbaum study Fixing Detroit: How Far, How Fast, How Fuel Efficient [PDF here]. That study raised our eyebrows on several occasions, forwarding as it did the counter-intuitive conclusion that Detroit would be a major beneficiary of increased CAFE standards or, as the study puts it “increasing fuel economy standards encourages automakers to create a portfolio of products that is more likely to raise the profits of the Detroit 3 automakers than to lower them”). The study noted:

Our finding that Detroit 3 automakers’ profits would increase under higher fuel economy standards is very robust.  We assessed the sensitivity of our prediction of Detroit 3 automakers’ profits to extreme values of 11 uncertain factors we predict for our model, and found that just three of the factors had extreme values capable of generating a drop in Detroit 3 profits:  an extremely low consumer response to fuel costs relative to vehicle prices (less than one-fourth Sawhill’s (2008) statistically estimated median value), a gasoline price of $1.50 per gallon (an extremely low price not seen since 1999), or direct manufacturing costs (materials and labor) that are 2.2 times the estimates we used (Meszler) and 3 to 4 times the National Research Council (2002) estimates (adjusted for inflation).  While the three factors could result in losses rather than gains in profits, the likelihood of lost profits is low.  There is a 7% chance that profits would be less than zero if CAFE were increased 30% (35 MPG), a 15% chance of a loss if it were 50% (40.4 MPG).

As intuition would suggest, the larger mandate increases the downside risk.  But it also offers greater upside opportunity, as the chance that increased profits could exceed $6 billion is 18% for a 50% increase in fuel economy, but only 6% for a 30% increase.  The total uncertainty attached to the larger increase is greater, which means both more upside and more downside.  Overall, the risk and reward profile of these scenarios is very positive, with only a small chance of losing and a very large probability of gain.

That 2009 finding was, however, put in the context of a domestic auto industry in the midst of crisis and restructuring, and as a result it focuses largely on fuel economy as a factor in a larger turnaround. At the time, GM was still emerging from the wreckage of the SUV/pickup market, still suffering from the kind of self-defeating thinking that McManus and Kleinbaum document:

For example, GM conducted internal research for decades that found customers value fuel economy far more than the company’s financial calculations assumed.  As publicly reported, the company systematically discounted these research results when calculating the benefits of improving fuel economy, often by as much as two-thirds.  In other words, if the research said the sales gain would be 10%, the number used to do financial calculations was 3%.  In fact, the belief that fuel economy was not “worth it” became so ingrained into the culture of the company, and so institutionalized in decision making that the senior people might not even be aware that they have been ignoring their own research.

That example, combined with consumer feedback confirming that lack of fuel economy was keeping them from buying American-brand autos is the fundamental basis for the study’s assumption that significant fuel economy improvements are relatively low-hanging fruit. Or, to borrow a slide from the report:

This argument is quite like the one forwarded by the Union of Concerned Scientists recently, which holds that payback in lowered fuel bills will make consumers more likely to spend more for increased fuel economy. Whether that’s entirely true or not isn’t yet clear, although early sales of Ford’s EcoBoost F-150 seems to indicate that it’s possible. Still, whether paying more upfront for longer-term savings (essentially a front-loading of lifetime costs) will prove attractive to the mass market remains very much to be seen (and the study assumes “consumers respond the same to fuel cost as to retail price”). Moreover, the McManus/Kleinbaum study depends on a return to the previously “normal” sales levels of over 15m annual sales by 2016 and over 17m units by 2020, levels which have not proven to be sustainable over the long term without dangerous levels of subprime credit lending.

Which leads us to a Citigroup/Ceres report based on the McManus/Kleinbaum study, which looks to the 2020 period and beyond for further evidence of the UM team’s basic conclusion. That report uses the same GM price elasticity and cross-price elasticity model that the 2009 report relied upon, and assumes the same $4/gal gas price average for its baseline scenario (itself a questionable assumption, given that gas prices have already risen to $4/gal). Though the Ceres report goes into more detail about the market penetration and cost increases of different fuel-efficient drivetrains, the conclusion remains the same as it was in 2009, namely that

Under the simulation, the Detroit 3 gain relative to the industry due to a number of factors, including 1) Narrowing the historical gap between Detroit 3 fuel economy and competitors; and 2) Light trucks and larger cars, in which the Detroit 3 sport a greater share, have greater potential to add consumer value through fuel economy than do smaller cars and car-based trucks. This is because future fuel economy increases have a greater impact on the fuel economy of these larger vehicles, thereby providing more utility to the consumer, and since full-sized trucks tend to be used for commercial purposes, this is a key factor in the purchase decision. Finally, the prices–and therefore the estimated variable profits– are higher for trucks and large cars.

The question that doesn’t appear to factor into the analysis anywhere: can we really rely on trucks to maintain their volume levels in the face of steadily increasing gas prices? Just as McManus and Kleinbaum question whether fuel economy is optimized in the baseline scenario (in turn leading to the low-hanging fruit for Detroit), I would question whether or not truck demand is “optimized” in the 2020 pre-CAFE senario outlined above. After all, the last time Ford’s full-sized truck sales hit the 670,000 unit level was 2007. In order to gain the unique benefits projected in this series of reports, that volume can not continue to decline as it did in 2008-2009 or settle to just over a half-million units as it did last year. Meanwhile, with the overall truck market settling into a 30-year low, that volume (and the low-hanging-fruit profits that underpin the CAFE-is-good-for-Detroit thesis) can hardly be relied upon.

In short, this line of analysis is truly puzzling. If, as it appears, the 2009 report was intended as a justification for the bailout, the Ceres/Citigroup revisit of the theme is puzzling. After all, the thesis that Detroit stands to gain the most form CAFE increases runs directly counter to the lobbying message coming out of Detroit’s governmental affairs offices as well as the Alliance of Automotive Manufacturers. On the other hand, even accounting for the flawed assumptions of $4/gal gas, strong truck sales and the consumer’s willingness to front-load costs (something the American consumer is famously allergic to), the study still sends Detroit in the right direction. Though I wouldn’t rush to assume that CAFE increases (or even higher fuel prices) will spur marginal profitability or volume gains for the Detroit automakers, steadily rising gas prices will have more of an impact on the market than CAFE. Whether profits improve or not, Detroit has little choice but to correct for its decades of anti-fuel-economy planning as the market changes. And, as Detroit has learned all to well in recent years, profits are nice but survival is the bottom line. Survival, not a groundswell of business success, is what should be motivating the Detroit automakers to stop worrying and learn to love (or at least accept) CAFE increases.

Though the EPA won’t actually announce its 2025 CAFE standard until September, the California Air Resources Board’ insistence on a 62 MPG standard for ’25 has the industry’s analysts and talking heads in something of a frenzy. Smelling the smoke on the breeze, Automotive News [via AutoWeek] trots out a range of interpretations of the proposed 62 MPG standard, from the frightening to the apocalyptic. Cost increases per vehicle for a 62 MPG by 2025 standard are estimated by government agencies at $3,500 “at most,” while Alliance of Automotive Manufacturers reckons they’ll run “as much as $6,400.” Sean McAlinden of the notoriously industry-friendly Center for Automotive Research figures the market will have to shift to 64% plug-in hybrids, at a price increase of $9,970 per vehicle, while the AAM adds that 62 by 20205 “could cut car sales by 25 percent, costing the industry 220,000 jobs.” And the EPA seems to be listening to the rising chorus of grumbles, as the agency’s Margo Oge soothed the locals on a recent visit to Detroit with the words

We will be very mindful — and I underline ‘mindful’ — of the consumer throughout this process. Unless people buy these new clean cars and trucks, and buy them in large numbers, everyone loses.

But if CARB wants 62 MPG by 2025, it will get it from the EPA. Which means the real question is simply how much will the standard actually add to per-vehicle costs? Is the industry inflating its numbers in hope of a teaspoon of federal sugar to help the medicine go down? Is the 62 MPG standard really an industry killer?

The answer, it turns out, is a big, fat “depends on who you ask.” But one thing is certain: the automakers are going to use everything they have to fight the standard, a fact evidenced by the absence of clarification anywhere in the media that the scary-sounding 62 MPG standard does not mean vehicles will need achieve window stickers with ratings anywhere near that high. As Hyundai has pointed out already, CAFE is measured using the old “unadjusted” mileage test, while modern EPA window sticker ratings use the tougher “adjusted” test. As a result, there’s a huge discrepancy from the ratings consumers use in their day-to-day lives, and the staggering CAFE numbers that are being thrown around.

As you can see, 63.7 MPG CAFE is roughly equivalent to 44 MPG EPA. Not so bad after all. And yet the industry continues to use the scary-sounding CAFE numbers without any kind of qualification. Well, except for Hyundai, which points out that its 40 MPG EPA highway Elantra will achieve around 50 MPG CAFE combined by the next generation… which will debut around the same time the 39 MPG CAFE combined car standard comes out in 2016. Clearly the fear that the industry won’t build anything besides cartoonish “Pelosimobiles” when CAFE increases are overblown.

On the other hand, as a limited-line manufacturer, Hyundai has a much easier time with CAFE than the Detroit firms which have built huge portions of their businesses around large body-on-frame trucks. And even though CAFE standards are notoriously riddled with loopholes allowing vehicles like the Chevy HHR count towards the truck-side efficiency number, this is where the real challenge comes into play. GM reportedly has to cut 500 lbs from each truck by 2016, and as much as 1,000 lbs per truck by 2025, a task that has both GM and Ford looking at exotic frame materials like aluminum and magnesium.

There’s no doubt that creating direct descendants of today’s Silverados and F-150s, to be sold at the same volumes they sell at today, would be a huge struggle under a 62 MPG CAFE standard. But forcasting isn’t that simple: even five years away from the 2016 30 MPG CAFE truck standard, with gas averaging around $4 per gallon, WardsAuto reports that the US pickup market has hit its lowest level in 30 years.

Against a backdrop of sluggish housing starts, high unemployment and skyrocketing pump prices – key historical barometers for the segment – fullsize and small pickups accounted for 11.8% of total light-vehicle deliveries in the month

It is the segment’s lowest market share in the Ward’s database, which dates back to 1980. At their peak in July 2005, pickups accounted for 22.9% of U.S. LV sales.

The share shortfall occurs as sales climb. Through the first four months of 2011, pickup deliveries were tracking 17.9% ahead of like-2010. However, total U.S. light-vehicle sales were pacing 19.4% ahead of prior-year, according to Ward’s.

By 2005, the two segments were running bumper-to-bumper, with pickups controlling 18.77% of the market compared with the Middle Car segment’s 18.79%.

Through April, pickups accounted for 12.6% of U.S. light-vehicle sales, while the Middle Car segment made up a whopping 20.8%.

If pickup sales are already declining steadily as a product of higher gas prices, it’s fairly safe to say that, barring any major reductions in the price of oil, the pickup market could well be dramatically smaller come 2016. In fact, having lost about seven points of market share since 2005, it’s conceivable that the pickup segment will be closer to eight percent of the market come 2030. Yes, pickups have made a comeback as gas prices bottomed out over the last two years, but in the sweep of history it’s fairly safe to say that Detroit’s truck dependence isn’t a viable strategy for the future. The good news: Ford and GM are finally making money on smaller cars, and, as the market for pickups retracts, pickups’ impact on CAFE numbers will go down as well, as CAFE is sales-weighted.

Will the cost of developing large pickups go up as the US approaches a 62 MPG standard? Sure. But if pickups aren’t selling in huge volumes, those costs will simply be passed along to the remaining buyers who absolutely need a full-sized truck’s capability, without affecting CAFE overall. The insanely high costs and and 62-percent plug-in hybrid penetration foreseen by Sean McAlinden must surely assume that truck volume will not change dramatically between now and 2025, a foolishly dangerous assumption that, if taken seriously, would likely sink Detroit whether CAFE increases or not. With gas prices rising steadily and inexorably, the market is likely to change before CAFE even makes much of an impact. Whether the standard for 15 years from now is set at 50 MPG or 62 MPG CAFE really shouldn’t make much of a difference.

Look at the SUV market: after the crash of 2008, which was instigated by a sharp spike in gas prices, SUVs came back strong and have been growing faster than pickups and vans ever since. But there was a key difference: as the chart below proves, “SUVs” were increasingly car-based CUVs before the crash even started. When “SUVs” came back post-crash, they were largely replaced by vehicles that served the same function with slightly higher costs and greater efficiency. And not because pre-crash SUV buyers weren’t convinced that they “needed” the allegedly unique capabilities of their body-on-frame utes. Who’s to say the same dynamic won’t happen with trucks?

There has been an almost-palpable sensation of glee propagating through the various import-leaning car communities I frequent. For nearly two years, they’ve had to sit back and listen to the other guys relentlessly gushing about domestic brand turnarounds. With only a few notable speed bumps, it has been a pretty good run so far for post-bailout Detroit. Market share is up; buyers are coming back; product is improving–a sad state of affairs for the import fanboy. Then, out of nowhere, those cunning deviants over at Motor Trend—known of course for setting the magazine landscape ablaze with their out-of-left-field criticisms and take-no-prisoners, “gotcha”-style journalism—dropped a Molotov cocktail into this Texas-desert-dry landscape of domestic love.

The 2011 Explorer, they said, quite simply sucks.
“Now hold on,” you might protest, “they didn’t say that.” And maybe they didn’t in so many words, but as Jonny’s follow-up makes clear, it’s pretty much how they felt about the example they tested. And really, does it matter what anybody said? The finishing order of a comparison test is much like that of a race (or if you’re an Orioles fan like me, the AL East standings). First place is the winner, second place is the first loser, and last place is reserved for cars purchased only by the uneducated, unworthy co-workers whom you spend so much time slandering in the company of your Audi-driving Internet friends. I can only speculate as to the exact details (I don’t drive an Audi) but I’d assume the conversations largely revolve around themes such as poverty, racial discrimination, and—like any discussion about anything on the Internet, ever—pornography.

But I digress. While much to-do was made about their Explorer’s pre-production status, there was another recurring theme that I’d rather talk about, one that has been in the news a bit lately in flammable proximity to phrases like “technical service bulletin” and “frustrated owners.” I’m referring of course to MyFord Touch, Ford’s latest and flashiest SYNC-cessory.

Yes, accessory. For all the press Ford has been getting, positive or negative, there’s a serious absence of understanding as to what MyFord Touch actually is, and for that matter, what it does. MyFord Touch is essentially an extension of MyFord, the interior settings customization option that Ford has been offering for several model years in some variation or another. MyFord lets you select ambient lighting colors and brightness, display functions and colors, and other nifty settings that have little or nothing to do with anything related to the functionality of the car.

MyFord Touch extends that customization to the gauge cluster and infotainment system and offers you a pretty LCD touch-screen (hence the “Touch”) interface from which to control, well, almost everything. But wait, there’s more. Depending on the car and the trim, the Touch option also replaces many center stack controls with either raised, touch-sensitive faux-buttons or a glossy, piano-black touch panel on which more frequently-needed controls such as audio adjustments, HVAC settings and their various on/off switches are duplicated.

Remember too that all of these functions can be controlled by voice through the SYNC interface—triple redundancy. And that sums it up pretty well. By the time you’ve optioned your Ford up to the point where Touch even enters into the equation, you have probably already purchased at least two alternative control interfaces. That’s because MyFord Touch is not SYNC. It’s just a pretty interface that adds another layer of visual panache and techno-gee-whizardry to an already robust infotainment package. You don’t need MyFord Touch if you don’t want MyFord Touch.

And why would you? Well, for one thing, it’s cool. It’s the automotive entertainment equivalent of the iPad—pointless, redundant and expensive. You may know this concept by its more common colloquialism: luxury. That’s what MyFord Touch is, a luxury. It’s a premium option designed for buyers who need to be seen with an expensive gadget, and like any expensive gadget, it will have its share of growing pains. Just learning how to touch the screen properly takes practice (The trick? Just fat-finger it. Hovering delicately over the option you want, waiting for the road surface and suspension to fall into perfect harmony before jabbing daintily at the ¼”-thick bar representing your favorite Lady Gaga single is an exercise in anal-retentive futility. Aim in the general direction of what you want and mash that sucker with ham-fisted authority. You’re welcome.)

That’s not to say that MyFord Touch itself is faultless. Learning the proper technique for prodding at the interface is just the start. Even with several weeks’ worth Touch-equipped press cars under my belt, I still have to stop and think about what it is I’m trying to do. Sometimes, the interface is so unintuitive that I jab at the SYNC button with frustration and curtly inform the synthetic slave girl behind the dash what exactly it is I want “her” to do.

There are plenty of “hey, neat” moments too. The touch-screen provides a handy interface for managing Bluetooth devices, allowing you to connect multiple gadgets simultaneously, assigning each a priority and function. Want to stream music from your iPod touch but make calls from your Blackberry? Stream music from your Droid but use your passenger’s iPhone for phone calls? No sweat. It’s all right there in the phone settings menu. Tech geeks can tweak to their hearts’ content.

Well-executed too are the customizable LCD displays flaking the speedometer (Certain models get only one, mounted dead-center. Focus buyers, I’m looking at you). They share the duties of the typical center-mounted multifunction display that has recently become somewhat of a staple. The left-side screen focuses on vehicle systems (tachometer, fuel economy display, trip info, vehicle health, etc.) and the right is a further extension of the infotainment system, allowing the driver to choose quickly from different audio/video sources or adjust those already selected using wheel-mounted buttons—yes, another layer of control.

The truth is, the story of MyFord Touch is much like that of any other fancy gadget. Early adopters get the worst of it, dealing with patches and updates and pesky issues that never seem to go away. Such is the way of modern software, unfortunately. To most of us, it’ll never matter. Nobody’s forcing it on us, and we’re content to choose something else. To fanboys, it’ll be a reminder of why they’re so certain that Ford can’t build a good car.

Hey, everybody needs something to hang on to.

Byron Hurd’s “Lord Byron” column can be found here at SpeedSportLife

GM and its Korean battery partner LG Chem have signed licensing agreements with the Department of Energy’s Argonne National Laboratory, giving the two firms access to Argonne’s proprietary lithium and manganese-rich metal oxide mix for use in lithium battery cell cathodes. The material will need “several years of testing” according to The General, but could extend battery life, increase charging voltages and storage, and make Li-ion cells safer. Energy Secretary Stephen Chu says GM’s agreement with the publicly-funded lab

gives General Motors the ability to use cutting-edge battery technology throughout its supply chain. The licensing of this technology will also spur the renewal of the American battery industry, creating hundreds of new jobs where they are needed most.

But that’s not quite the whole story. According to press releases, GM’s deal with Argonne allows the automaker to

to use Argonne’s patented composite cathode material to make advanced lithium-ion batteries

But LG Chem’s agreement allows the Korean firm

to make and use Argonne’s patented cathode material technology in lithium-ion battery cells

In short, a publicly-funded lab has licensed technology in a way that appears to deepen the (partially) government-owned automaker’s dependence on a foreign firm. Confused? So is the mainstream media. And so, to some extent, are we.

Though the mainstream media reports (not to mention Secretary Chu) seem to treat LG Chem as an afterthought in this deal (if they mention the Korean connection at all), the artist formerly known as Lucky GoldStar Chemical is the glue that holds everything together. The Korean chemical giant currently ships Lithium-ion cells (the actual “batteries”) from Korea to Michigan, where GM then uses them to assemble battery packs (in which multiple cells are linked together and managed) for the Chevy Volt. In 2012, LG Chem’s wholly-owned US subsidiary (known as Compact Power, but referred to in the Argonne pressers as “LG Chem Michigan, Inc”) will open a Li-ion cell manufacturing plant on Holland, Michigan which will eventually manufacture cells using Argonne’s technology for the second-generation Chevy Volt.

Those cells will be assembled into battery packs by GM, which is apparently why The General had to sign a licensing agreement to use Argonne’s technology. Of course GM will be testing and evaluating those cells in cooperation with LG, but otherwise, The General’s main role in this announcement appears to be to give a patriotic sheen to a move that cements its dependence on its Korean partner.

After all, without a GM deal to announce, it would be tough for Secretary Chu to tout “the renewal of the American battery industry” by licensing a publicly-funded technology to a Korean company. After all, if LG Chem’s Michigan plant makes it part of the “American battery industry,” wouldn’t every foreign automaker with a US production facility count as “the American auto industry”? Clearly, the Detroit talking points about how it doesn’t matter that transplants hire Americans because “profits don’t stay here” are going to need some recalibration.

And Chu wasn’t the only person hyping this licensing arrangement to gloss over some inconvenient realities. Jeff Chamberlain, who heads Argonne’s Energy Storage Initiative, had this to say:

It is especially gratifying to know that the commercialization of this Argonne-cathode is helping the development of an emerging U.S. battery manufacturing industry, as well as the creation of new American jobs.

The goal of Argonne’s battery research is to support the U.S. automobile industry… The added benefits of this endeavor are the potential creation of U.S.-based green jobs, lessening U.S. dependence on foreign sources of oil and a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions.

American jobs? Sure. The American battery “assembly” industry? OK. But as far as American “manufacturing” and “independence” goes, this deal appears to fall way short. Instead of fostering a true “American battery industry,” this deal merely ensconces a Korean firm at the base of a supply chain that, according to Chu (as well as GM, the Argonne lab and all EV proponents), will supply the future of the automotive industry. It’s one thing for local governments to incentivize the production of transplant manufacturing plants, but it’s quite another for the federal government to do so under the guise of helping an automaker it partially owns.

But this isn’t the first time LG Chem has received assistance from the US government to make Detroit dependent on its cells. After all, its “transplant” factory in Holland, MI is being built using $151m in recovery act funds. Nor is GM the only US-based automaker to slouch towards dependence on the Korean firm: Ford will be using LG Chem battery packs in its forthcoming Ford Focus EV. Where GM simply relies on LG for the basic components of battery packs, Ford will rely on the Koreans for the whole assembly as well as the cells that make it up (but then, Ford’s Focus EV is heavily foreign-firm-dependent in other ways as well).

In fairness, no American firm offers the kind of Li-ion cells needed for automotive applications… which is a problem we’d hope a publicly-funded institution like Argonne (not to mention Recovery Act dollars) would be focused on addressing. For all the support the Obama Administration has given the EV sector, it’s more than a bit galling that none of it has been focused on addressing America’s shortcomings at the base of the EV supply chain. No amount of red-white-and-blue- or green-washing can cover for the fact that any future American EVs will now be dependent on a foreign firm.

Alternatively, America could make its peace with the fact that it’s trading one malignant foreign addiction (Oil) for a more benign but no less foreign dependence. After all, Foreign  auto firms hired thousands of Americans over the last several decades to build the cars that Detroit wouldn’t or couldn’t. But if that were to happen, all the bailout-era rhetoric drawing a distinction between the “American” auto industry and the “foreign” transplants would be revealed as the thinly-disguised protectionism it really was. And this announcement would not be used as evidence of the strength of “American” battery and auto industries.

Science fiction author Charlie Stross recently penned a blog piece on the future impact of autonomously computer-driven cars. Let’s call them “robocars.” I’ve pondered this before and Stross’s post is the perfect jumping-off point for a discussion of the many issues standing between science fiction and the robocar future. Let’s take a look.

Firstly, based on the progress from DARPA’s Grand Challenge and now Google’s fleet of robocars, it’s eminently clear that computers are getting very good at driving. Robocars rely on a variety of different ways of sensing the road (stereo video cameras, laser range-finders, sonar, radar, GPS — you name it and somebody’s tried it). One of the ways that robots gain increased accuracy is by fusing data from multiple distinct sensors, and that means that the cost and reliability of those sensors will be one of the limiting factors before robocars hit the mainstream, never mind the pesky problem of all those sensors looking decidedly ugly.

Stross posits that once robocars become affordable, insurance companies and government regulations will immediately favor them over traditional cars, and it’s easy to see why. Take away the human driver and you take away driving while drunk, distracted, or drowsy. Long-distance trucking companies would immediately jump on the chance to have their rigs running all day and night without drivers who require food and sleep. Stross suggests that we won’t even bother owning cars any more, except for the occasional nut-job / TTAC aficionado who likes to race. In a congested big city where taxis are everywhere (New York, London, etc.), plenty of people already don’t bother to own cars, and new business models like ZipCar fill in where taxis don’t really cut it. Still, while I’ve only spent occasional time in New York, I have attempted to get a taxi there while it’s raining, and let’s just say that supply didn’t meet demand. With robocars, we can easily imagine ZipCar-like services where you pay more for higher priority when demand grows. Maybe we’ll see instant auctions: I’ll pay $100 for the first car that shows up right here, right now! Or reverse auctions: I need to go from here to there, who’s willing to take me for the least money? My kingdom for a ride downtown in a Mercedes! Make it so, number one.

I see a completely different impact on suburbia. With my own house, I made the tradeoff to live close to work versus having a glorious suburban starter castle and a one hour drive-time commute from hell. What if all that pain went away and I could rig up my car to be more like a rolling office? Now living in the distant suburbs wouldn’t be nearly as bad. Robocars could drive faster, with less separation between cars, and would be far less likely to get into wrecks. And when wrecks do happen, robocars wouldn’t slow down just to rubberneck. Expensive parking lots at work or the airport? Why bother? Send the car home and it will pick you up when you need it again, or send it a few miles away to a robocar-only parking lot that can really pack the cars in for a cheaper price.

Since I’m a computer security guy, I should probably spend some time on how things could go horribly wrong. Some of Stross’s commenters got into the dystopian aspects of robocars. Much like all the robots in the inexplicably lame I, Robot movie all going evil at the same time (poor Isaac Asimov, spinning like a hidden Iranian centrifuge in his grave), it’s easy to imagine that robocars would be required to have “back door” access for the government, both in terms of reporting your whereabouts (see, for example, attempts to tax cars based on miles driven rather than gas consumed) and in terms of being able to hijack your car for any of a variety of purposes ranging from instructing a bank robber’s car to go straight to the police station to various spy-vs-spy applications, up to and including murdering undesirables by driving them at high speed into any convenient brick wall.

Perhaps less ominously, it’s easy to imagine hacking your robocar to post bogus traffic announcements that cause other cars to reroute themselves away from you, giving you a clean shot at your destination. You might also send fake messages to a car from its tire-pressure sensors causing the target robocar to slow down and pull over because it thinks there may be a flat tire (the fake message part is already feasible). Computer security researchers have already determined that in-car electronics aren’t particularly well-engineered from a security perspective, which seems unlikely to change any time soon, so there may not need to be any sort of government-mandated backdoor. It will probably be there as a consequence of poor engineering.

Malicious behavior aside, teenagers will have great fun hacking their friends’ cars to take them to incorrect destinations and hacking their own cars to ignore speed limits or take them to the party while the electronic logs say they went to the library. Tinkers will still mod their robocars in a variety of ways, such as increasing the g-limit for acceleration, braking, and turning in non-emergency situations. Why? A robocar would make for a hell of a hoontastic experience! J-turn your way into every parallel parking space. Safely and accurately.

It’s equally easy to imagine the liability lawyers getting involved in all kinds of ways. If a software bug caused my car to misbehave and I got hurt, or if a car thief told my car that it wasn’t mine any more and it left me, whose fault is that? Can I sue the manufacturer for negligence? That kind of fear, alone, will slow down the rise of the robocars. It’s a safe prediction that robocars will first come to us as an evolution of taxis and ZipCar-like services, particularly when the technology is still expensive and immature. Another easy prediction: the big consumer demand will start when the Baby Boomers, now in their 60′s, hit the age where their kids agitate for the keys to get taken away. The Baby Boomers will proudly get up, shake their canes at us, and lead us into our inevitable robocar future. Let’s just hope all the security issues have been worked out beforehand.

Linguistic note: I’m using the term “robocar”, while ABC News, in the clip below, uses “self-driving cars.” If you think about the word “automobile” — “automatic” plus “mobile” — robocars are really a step toward realizing the original purpose of the car, namely to get you where you want to be, automatically.

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Yes, I can muster some appreciation of Econolines of yore. But the painful reality is that the current E-Series is an ugly, primitive and inefficient pig virtually unchanged since 1974.  The fact that the American light truck sector hasn’t had the same revolution that European design influences have had on passenger cars is a mystery. Case in point: Ford’s Transit (not Connect) vans are a (several, actually) giant development leap ahead of the Econoline, offering FWD, RWD and AWD variants in three wheelbase lengths, numerous configurations, and driven by the most advanced diesels that can get well over 20 mpg. The Transit outsells Mercedes Sprinter in Europe. What the hell is Ford waiting for?

The remarkable flexibility of the Transit platform is demonstrated above. For a more in-depth look at the Transit, head over to the UK site here. And of course, there are passenger van versions as well.

Perhaps the cleverest aspect is the Transit’s drive train options: FWD, RWD or AWD are available, depending on your need or mood. The FWD versions offer a lower load floor for easy package delivery. The heavier rated versions naturally come in RWD. And the DuraTorque direct injection engines come in four and five cylinder versions, up to 200 hp and 470 Nm of torque. Plenty of power for towing too.

The mini-buses come with up to 17 passenger capacity.

A stubby six-speed falls right to hand. Looks like the Transit offers a somewhat more engaging driving experience to boot! Of course, automatics are available too.

And why not just ditch the F-Series too, and switch it all over to the versatile Transit platform? Oh, the whole macho high-riding American cowboy image would suffer, and our male population’s collective testosterone level would fall to that of those sissy Europeans. Can’t have that. Is that a woman on that job site? That explains it all; this is a girly truck.

No, unless it has a hood at least an acre large and a grille the size and boldness of an old Kenworth, Americans aren’t going to touch these girly toy trucks. Oh well; I guess Ford figured that out a while back. We love our Econolines!

]]> http://www.thetruthaboutcars.com/2010/09/the-next-generation-econoline-hopefully-yes/feed/ 59 http://www.thetruthaboutcars.com/2010/08/editorial-do-not-buy-a-2011-mustang-5-0/ http://www.thetruthaboutcars.com/2010/08/editorial-do-not-buy-a-2011-mustang-5-0/#comments Tue, 31 Aug 2010 18:23:04 +0000 Sajeev Mehta http://www.thetruthaboutcars.com/?p=364321

Runkle joined the company last year and is convinced that in the long run no other energy source can compete with oil, and that the internal combustion engine will be here for a long time, albeit with an entirely new architecture, the OPOC. That’s the word that Runkle kept using regarding the OPOC engine’s design, architecture. That and “disruptive”. The OPOC, according to Runkle, is cheaper, better, simpler, stronger, lighter and cleaner than any other power generating technology now or in the foreseeable future. Cheaper than hybrids and electric vehicles and with a smaller carbon footprint too.

The engine’s width is exaggerated a bit by the other dimensions which are much smaller than a conventional engine of similar power. Runkle showed a slide of a proposed two-module engine, made up of two 75 HP two cylinder modules, that easily fit inside the standard frame rails of a Ford Fusion. The modular design, with an electric coupling clutch between the modules, allows for variable displacement without the frictional loses that current cylinder deactivation systems involve. The second module is simply decoupled and shut off and doesn’t spin when not needed. The modular concept also allows for superior EPA cycle performance since it can do the complete cycle on only one module, and also heats up quicker eliminating a lot of cold start emissions. EcoMotor’s target is to meet emissions standards without specialized catalytic converters that other diesels currently need to comply.

I took a picture of Runkle holding up a mockup of one of the 75 HP modules and it’s remarkably small. Runkle also showed me a suitcase generator, a 10KW emergency generator with a 10-15 HP OPOC, that’s literally the size of a small suitcase. Ten kilowatts is enough power to run most of your home. Because of the low profile, in front engined cars, the OPOC would allow lower hoods and better aerodynamics. In rear and mid engine vehicles, it’s compact size gives more passenger and cargo space. The Fusion concept drawing was with a transverse crankshaft, but Runkle said that with only slight modifications to the frame rails, the 150HP OPOC could fit longitudinally too.

For power generation applications, the modular concept allows scalability that is not possible with current ICEs. If peak demand means you need a 1000HP, that means you run a 1000HP engine all the time. With a modular design, as load increases, more modules can be brought on line and when load decreases, modules can be shut off, saving fuel.

Runkle says they won’t be following Lotus’ model with their Omnivore engine (another two-stroke design which EcoMotors has studied along with 15 other new engines but feels that they all fall short of the OPOC’s potential). Lotus plans to license the technology but not build engines itself. EcoMotors, Runkle says, intends to use Qualcomm’s model. They both sell chip sets they make themselves and they license their technology to others, creating de facto industry standards. EcoMotors will build motors themselves for sale to non-automotive customers. He contends that no matter the application, power generation, marine, pumps, helicopters, diesel-electric locomotives, whatever you need an ICE for, the OPOC is a superior choice. It runs efficiently at both steady speeds, good for power generation and in use in range extended EVs, and under direct load from the driving wheels. OPOC architecture will also be licensed to major automakers and engine manufacturers.

The central location of the electrically operated coupling clutch between the modules seems ideal for integrating an electric motor so I asked about hybrid plans. I was shown a diagram of what they call a “tribrid”, a two module engine with an electric motor integrated into the transaxle. OPOC’s suitability for genset applications and compact size would make it ideal for range extended EVs. While I’m on the subject of hybrids, Runkle and Hurden both said that EcoMotors is not at all involved with the electromagnetic hybrid ICE engine that Bill Gates and his associates have patented through Intellectual Ventures, his IP enterprise.

Though they’ll gladly sell motors and technology that would be used in hybrid vehicles, Runkle is convinced that the OPOC is by itself superior to hybrid and EV technologies in terms of overall cost and environmental impact.

In comparison to conventional ICEs, not only does the simpler design mean lower production costs, Runkle anticipates that the cost of building the production line itself will be 30% lower than with a conventional engine, and converting an existing plant to OPOC production would yield even greater savings. The lower cost of entry is a selling point to developing countries like China and India.

With Runkle’s background running Buick’s racing program, and Colleti’s background building SVT products at Ford, I asked about motorsports and performance cars. At first Runkle, who headed development of some fairly high performance production, concept and racing cars, said that he’d already done that and was interested in an efficient, cost effective powerplant. Then he smiled and said, that the OPOC would make a “phenomenal racing engine” and proceeded to tick off what made it an ideal racing powerplant: high specific output, low weight, low aero, and low cg. He then said that it would “probably be outlawed” and that in any case racing was “not in the budget”.

When I asked for a time frame to production, Runkle said that he hoped there’d be OPOCs in production in some form within 3 years. When I asked him where he saw the company in 10 years, he said that it’d be a billion dollar company, selling millions of engines, that famous car companies and well known engine suppliers would be producing OPOCs of their own designs, making their own improvements, paying royalties.ed.

“We feel that we have the engine and technology for all reciprocating ICE’s.”

When I alluded to Zhongding’s “investment”, Runkle took pains to say that they “are not an investor, they are a customer”. EcoMotors is developing a variant of their engines for Zhongding and that the letter of intent is being formalized into a contract.

In terms of deals with other companies, the OEM automakers have shown “a lot of interest” even though EcoMotors has not made a lot of presentations, pitches and road shows. During our interview, Runkle was running through an abbreviated PowerPoint presentation they use for investors and potential customers, but so far the haven’t really marketed the concept. They have no communications staff and what marketing they are doing is being handled by an outside firm, PCGCampbell.

Runkle said that nobody’s thrown them out of an office yet, but that they want to be sure that their game is good before they start marketing the idea seriously. A $350 market is the big leagues.

In the second chapter of Pirke Avot, The Ethics of the Fathers, the concept of wisdom is discussed. Rabbi Shimon says, ” Who is wise: One who sees something from its birth”. The ability to see the end from the beginning, the possible consequences or opportunities from a situation, both the good and the bad, is indeed one of those things that separates the wise from the foolish. I’m sure that from their excitement, EcoMotors thinks that they are midwifing the birth of a great new thing. Time will tell how wise they are.

Predicting the future is a risky business. Lincoln Steffens, muckraking journalist and admirer of the Soviet Union said, regarding the then young USSR, “I have been over into the future, and it works.” Steffens apparently wrote that before he actually visited the workers paradise in the early 1920s. A decade later he regretted that endorsement.

Music writer Jon Landau’s prediction was a bit more accurate. “Last Thursday, at the Harvard Square Theater, I saw my rock and roll past flash before my eyes. And I saw something else: I saw rock and roll future and its name was Bruce Springsteen.” Landau was soon to edge The Boss’ original manager, Mike Appel, out of the picture, took over management of Springsteen’s career and production of his music, and did everything in his power to make his prophecy a self-fulfilling one.

Earlier this week I believe that I saw the future of transportation and stationary power and its name is OPOC. That stands for “opposed piston opposed cylinder”, a new engine architecture being developed for production and licensing by EcoMotors, a Troy, Michigan startup.

Yes, there are lots of “revolutionary” engine designs, most of them hype, and those that aren’t just hype rarely reach working prototype stage, let alone production. The OPOC, though, comes with a pedigree and a management team that brings substantial and credible automotive experience.

OPOC is the brainchild of Prof. Peter Hofbauer, former head of powertrain development for Volkswagen and designer of VW’s first diesel engine. Some call him the father of the modern high speed diesel. Dr. Hofbauer is Chief Technology Officer at Ecomotors. CEO of Ecomotors is Don Runkle, longtime GM engineer and executive. Runkle held the positions of chief engineer of Chevrolet, chief engineer of powertrain and racing at the Buick Division, director of Advanced Vehicle Engineering, vice president of GM’s Advanced Engineering Staff and GM’s North American VP in charge of the Warren Tech Center. President and Chief Operating Officer is John Colleti, ex of Ford, where he was responsible for the hugely successful (and fairly profitable) SVT high performance program.

According to EcoMotors, their leadership team has more than 230 years of collective experience in the automotive and power generation industries, has been awarded over 150 patents, and has managed more than 30 powertrain programs and more than two dozen new vehicle launches. Between them the company’s leaders have won four engine of the year awards.

The engine startup made the news recently when Bill Gates and Vinod Khosla anted up $23.5 million for EcoMotors’ round B funding. Khosla had previously invested in the company and it operates as part of his Khosla Ventures group. EcoMotors plans on both building engines for non-automotive applications, to prove the engine’s competence, and license the architecture to automakers to develop their own engines based on the OPOC layout. The payoff is potentially huge. There are over 100 million internal combustion engines sold every year in the world. About half of those are cars and light trucks. Some are for heavy trucks and buses, while the remainders are used for everything from power generation to lawn equipment. That’s a $350 billion/year market in total, and EcoMotors is convinced that the OPOC is suitable for just about every ICE application.

Gates’ involvement got big headlines, but it’s Khosla’s backing of the project that gives it particular credibility. Khosla, a founder of Sun Microsystems, is fond of backing what he projects will be disruptive technologies capable of entering the mainstream in a variety of developed and developing markets, with sustainable and profitable non-subsidized prices. He’s known as a major investor in alternative technology, with investments in cellulosic ethanol and batteries, so the fact that he has endorsed, with his money, an internal combustion engine says that there is yet life in the old bird. Of course the OPOC is a bird of a different feather.

EcoMotors says that though they expect another round of venture funding, they now have sufficient funds to fully develop and engineer the OPOC engine to ready-for-production status, and maybe into early production planning.

Earlier funding, about $50 came in the form of defense contracts with DARPA. Two engines were successfully developed but the US government stopped funding for the program. Another $18 million was committed by Zhongding Holding Group and Global Optima of China to fund development of engines for their own production.

It’s easier to understand how the OPOC concept works from a model or animation than with a description. In basic form it’s a horizontally opposed two cylinder engine. Each opposing cylinder has two pistons, opposing pistons that are connected to the same crankshaft but out of phase so that they move in opposite directions to each other, compressing the air between them and allowing it to expand as the crankshaft spins. So there are two cylinders, each with two opposing pistons. All the reciprocating forces cancel each other out, there is no force on the crankcase, all the force is direct to the crankshaft and the stresses on the crankshaft are simple. So far there have been some piston failures, and casting problems but they haven’t broken a crank yet.

By going with a two stroke design, they eliminate complicated valves and associated machinery, as well as the need for a separate and expensive cylinder head. A comparably powered OPOC engine has 1/6 the number of parts as a conventional V8. The OPOC achieves close to 4 stroke levels of gas scavenging by lots of fluid dynamics modeling, careful port design, and the electrically controlled turbocharger. It’s a standard Borg Warner turbo with an electric motor connected to the turbine shafts. From idle, it gets the turbo to speed, reducing turbo lag. More importantly it allows control of back pressure, improving gas exchange. Once the turbo is up to speed, the motor acts as a generator, and that current is supplied to the electrical system.

The folks at EcoMotors are very big on two cycle engines. As Runkle said, if you could choose, why build a complicated 4 stroke engine that wastes half the strokes? The OPOC has power on every down stroke. The drawback to a two-cycle engine, of course is that they are dirty. The lack of precision valves and the ability of a 4 stroke to pump air means that two cycle engines don’t have as complete a burn nor do they scavenge the exhaust gases well. A typical two stroke leaves a lot of exhaust gas in the cylinder as well as spewing some unburned fuel out the exhaust. EcoMotors says that their design has all of the advantages of a two-stroke engine with none of the drawbacks, achieving 90% gas scavenging, close to a four-stroke’s 95% and much better than the best two-strokes.

EcoMotors is doing the engineering and design on the engine, whose 6^th generation version is currently being developed. The actual assembly and testing is being done at Roush Industries, with Roush contributing some technical expertise. When I asked EcoMotors if I could have a tour of their engine lab, they graciously arranged interviews with Don Runkle and Jonathan Hurden, EcoMotors Chief Engineer, at the Roush complex in Livonia.

I first met with Hurden, who showed me the latest engine that’s being assembled, and told me what was protected proprietary information and thus out of camera range. He described the engine, answered my questions and then took me into the test cell where the latest completed version of the OPOC engine was running on a dyno. After that, I sat down for a detailed interview with Don Runkle, where he gave me a condensed version of the pitch they give to potential customers and investors, as well as some answers to my questions.

Like his bosses, Hurden has an impressive resume, having managed powertrain development for the Rover Group, been chief engineer at BMW Group managing powertrains for Land Rover and Mini, and been managing director at Mahle Powertrain (previously Cosworth Technology).

While I was there, the castings for the newest version engine were arriving via UPS. The internals of the latest 6^th gen motor are already running on the dyno in the 5^th gen crankcase & block. The newer engine will have wet cylinder liners instead of the current dry sleeves.

The engine is surprisingly compact, though it looks a bit wide. Hurden says that width is deceptive. The M100 engine on the stand is a 300HP direct injected two-stroke diesel engine. It has a displacement of 2.5 liters, cylinder bores of 100mm (with very short strokes), and has dimensions of (LxWxH): 22.8 x 41.3 x 18.5 – note the short length and low height. With aluminum construction, it weighs only 300 lbs.  Compare that to the 300HP engines from Cummins and Navistar that respectively weigh 1,100 and 900 lbs. and have dimensions that dwarf the OPOC. Runkle says that production OPOC engines will easily weigh less than half what similarly powered diesel and gasoline engines weigh. Though the current prototypes run on diesel fuel, the OPOC engine can run on a variety of fuels including gases and alcohols as well as gasoline.

The power and torque ratings are dyno tested with standard ancillaries.

Hurden said that combustion development was their current focus. Towards that end, a joint project with the University of Michigan  College of Engineering has developed an optical version of the OPOC engine that allows high speed photography of the combustion chamber, combustion plume and exhaust gases. Hurden said that the current prototype is a “robust workhorse”, and that while he “intends to break these engines”, so far they haven’t broken a crank or thrown a rod, though he did show me a badly detonated piston. Every prototype including the first has run at least as well as predictions and so far the measured results match well with the anticipated figures. The main focus is meeting emissions but before that comes durability. The Roush technician building the engine is an alumnus of the Roush NASCAR team and he said that their motto was “break it on the dyno so it doesn’t break in use.” Right now it seems to be durable and some of the emissions targets have been met. The overall goal is the 2010 Tier 2 Bin 5 Heavy Duty Truck standard. While it can meet the standards at specific RPM levels, they are working on meeting the standards across the power band. The RPM range is currently 700-3800. Though without valves and with a short strokes this could be a high revving engine, the ultimate goal is fuel efficiency and high RPM means high piston speed and that’s the major source of friction in an engine. Lower friction = better efficiency so the redline is currently 3800 RPM, in line with other truck diesels.

Hurden expects that they will meet the emissions targets later this year. He said that with the exception of the design of the combustion chamber, no advanced technologies or costly materials were needed for development, just the normal engine development processes used, let’s say for the next LSx at GM. He alluded to problems with castings, an age old one in the auto industry. The one area where he said that EcoMotors was breaking new ground was in combustion chamber design. That the only part of the engine that they asked me not to photograph, the complex combustion chamber carved into the piston head.

All I can say is that it’s the coolest looking piston head I’ve ever seen. If it was back in the Rocket 88 and Cobra Jet days, the shape carved into the head would have inspired ad men to new heights in pursuit of an appropriate brand name.

Since they’ve registered OPOC as a trademark, I asked if they had any branding plans a la HEMI and they found the idea of an OPOC logo on the fender of a car somewhat humorous.

They made no claims for durability, but the fact that there is no complicated valve train to break, nor a cylinder head to warp or crack (the ports are circumferential to the cylinders), shows potential for good durability. More important to durability are the engine’s inherent balance, simple loading on the crankshaft and no forces on the crankcase. Loading on the crank is such that only two main bearings will suffice. That further lowers friction.

In current development, the M100 OPOC engine tuned to meet current North American emissions standards, on the dyno generates 240 HP and 487 foot-pounds of torque, so they aren’t too far away from meeting both power and emissions goals.

Hurden then took me through a maze of rooms ending up at the test cell where the gen 5.5 engine was spinning away merrily. After putting in some ear plugs we went into the dyno chamber so I could get some video for the web site. I can say without a doubt that the OPOC is the smoothest running engine I’ve ever seen run. I was tempted to ask about doing the Rolls-Royce balance a coin on top of a running engine trick, but I also have little doubt that it would have stood still. In a video of the engine, they placed a beaker of water on the running engine and there was hardly a ripple in the surface.

The OPOC may be the best balanced combustion engine ever built. It’s absolutely phenomenal. Other than the noise, the only way to tell it’s running is to look at the belt drive and pulleys.

The engine, impressive as it is, is still a development prototype. When I entered the test cell, in addition to the electrically controlled turbo mounted between the cylinders, on the floor, plumbed into the maze of exhaust pipes, was what looked like an Eaton supercharger running off an electric motor. When I asked about the blower, Hurden asked me not to photograph it since it won’t be part of the final engine. While they are fine tuning the combustion process, they need a surplus of intake air under pressure, which the Eaton blower supplies reliably. Once they get the combustion chamber shape finalized, the onboard turbo will be optimized to provide all the compressed air the engine needs.

Just in time for today’s tour of Michigan’s “battery belt,” the Obama Administration has released a study [full PDF here] of its electric vehicle stimulus efforts which concludes that the money was all well spent. Though the report covers a number of programs, from the ATVM “retooling loan” program which is backing companies like Nissan, Tesla and Fisker, to charging station subsidies, the major accomplishment of these billions of dollars is encapsulated in a single claim:

By 2012, thanks in part to the Recovery Act, 30 factories will be online and the U.S. will have the capacity to produce 20 percent of the world’s advanced vehicle batteries. By 2015, this share will be 40 percent.

As you can see from one of the report’s graphs (above) the US will achieve this 40 percent share of the world’s EV battery production just as two-thirds of the cost is beaten out of the things. And because batteries don’t follow Moore’s Law, it’s all diminishing returns from there. So what happens come 2015?

The obvious answer: oversupply. A study released earlier this year projects that

Planned investments will thus result in significant overcapacity between 2014 and 2017, especially in the US and in Japan. Given the announced investments, capacity in 2015 will already reach 200% of the demand projected for 2016. In addition, not all investments have been announced; as-yet unknown investments by key players will lead to further overcapacity, and national subsidies will stimulate even more investments.

Though that number likely includes the Obama Administration’s spending, it certainly doesn’t include the just-announced $12.5b investment by the Korean government into its Li-ion battery industry. And that investment comes at a time when two Korean firms (LG Chem and Samsung) already control 40 percent of the world’s Li-ion cell production. That investment will not only water down the Obama administration’s claimed benefits of EV stimulus, it will also greatly accelerate fears of oversupply. Given the beating that EV battery maker stocks (like A123 Systems) have taken of late, it’s not a fear to be taken lightly either.

Meanwhile, let’s look at the Obama stimulus’s main claim to fame: a stark reduction in battery costs between now and 2015. That claim is already looking like a red herring, considering the starting point of the Obama study’s graph. Since the hypothetical battery used for the graph is 33.33 kWh (100 mile range at 3 miles per kWh), the Obama administration’s estimate values currently-available batteries at about $1,000 per kWh. That number flies in the face of the Nissan Leaf, which has reportedly cracked the $400/kWh mark with its current battery pack. In short, the Obama Administration’s 2015 battery price of $10k would be a mere $3k reduction in price from currently-available prices… realized over 5 years and at a cost of billions of taxpayer dollars.

These lower-than-anticipated prices are yet another indication that oversupply is on the way, and that multi-billion-dollar governmental investments in the Li-ion sector are simply inflating a bubble that will have to pop at some point. Meanwhile, Obama’s much-touted stimulus program funneled nearly as much money to foreign firms like Nissan and LG Chem as it did to homegrown outfits. These foreign firms, which are able to double-dip into US and (say) Korean government investments will be able to beat prices even lower, squeezing out the more marginal recipients of only US investment. Meanwhile, the limited range, capacity degradation and relatively high cost of EVs compared to gas powered cars will keep demand relatively inelastic even as competition and overinvestment drives competition.

And then there’s one final element to this story that can not be ignored: just as global battery supplies hit 200+ percent of global demand in 2015, a number of firms are planning to release their first generation of hydrogen fuel-cell cars. Toyota, Honda, GM and Hyundai have all targeted 2015 for the release of $40k-$50k production fuel cell cars, which should suck a lot the early-adapter oxygen out of the (by then) oversupplied EV market. At this point, the lessons learned by Toyota with its hybrid program will start to be felt: having binged on high-priced early-adaptor sales, Toyota was able to pay off its hybrid development program, but big profits are proving elusive as EVs are coming into their own. Firms like Nissan are positioned to do for EVs what Toyota did for hybrids, but as a result, Toyota can sit out the five-year cycle, and slowly build on its hybrid technology, before creating a whole new fad for the well-heeled and greener-than-thou segments just as EVs start to pay for themselves and reach a reasonable price point.

With cutting-edge consumers migrating towards hydrogen cars, and battery oversupply reaching dangerous levels, 2015 will not be a happy year for firms that have invested heavily in EVs. Government stimulus between now and then might help, but it won’t be the major factor in driving down prices, nor will it guarantee a sustainable business model. With competitors (namely Nissan) already established to serve much of the market by 2015, and with other competitors already looking past EVs for 2015 and beyond, the government can’t expect stimulus alone to keep EV startups (like Tesla and Fisker) and EV catch-ups (like Ford and Chrysler) on a solid footing.

Jim Sikes’ Prius high-speed dash to fame or infamy is a media hype-fest, with wild swings in sentiment from Toyota bashing to Sikes trashing. The rush to judgment is innately human, and Sikes certainly makes an easy target. But in the process, very little effort has been made to analyze what actually happened, or what might have actually happened, on the basis of the facts rather than Jim Sikes’ financial history and sexual proclivities.

There clearly are valid questions in Sikes’ seeming inability to bring the Prius to a stop, and certain inconsistent and contradictory statements. But Toyota, which should know better, is not helping either. The brakes on the Prius were utterly worn down in examination, and were witnessed to be smoking. Yet Toyota continues to assert that “the hybrid braking system used in the Prius would make the engine lose power if the brakes were pressed at the same time as the accelerator”. (WSJ 3/14/10) That statement smells as bad as some of Sikes’, so I rented a 2008 Prius to determine what could or couldn’t have happened, and examine some of the other claims and counterclaims. You be the jury.

A memo released by the Congressional aide who witnessed the tear down of the Prius clearly shows that the front brake pads were worn completely off, and grooves had been cut into the discs from the pad retainers or calipers. The rear drum brakes shoes, which tend to wear much more slowly, were worn down to one-eighth of the normal depth. The discs showed signs of heat discoloration. Sikes claimed he smelled the brakes. The CHP officer said he saw the brakes smoking. There is no doubt that the brakes were being applied by Sikes.

This morning, NHTSA issued the following statement: “Further, the Prius is equipped with a system that detects simultaneous brake and accelerator pedal applications. When the brake applications are moderate or greater, the system will close the throttle allowing the vehicle to slow down and stop,” said NHTSA officials. “The system on Mr. Sikes’ Prius worked during our engineers’ test drive.”

The key here is the degree of brake pressure, and what variance there may be from car to car, or if that system is prone to malfunction. I tested the system initially by applying very strong pressure, and the system worked, cutting power from the engine. But there is a wide range of pedal pressure less than a full-on application that did not cut the power.

I drove along for quite a few miles, with wide open throttle (WOT), and kept the Prius’ speed reduced by continuous left foot braking to various degrees. Depending on terrain and brake pressure, vehicle speed was restrained to as little as 45 mph and as high as 90 mph.

Coincidentally, as the battery depleted (from e-motor assist), the brakes also began to lose some effectiveness from excess heat and fade. Describing the amount of pedal pressure used is subjective, but I would call it moderate, comparable to what one would use to come to a stop from high speed in a reasonably short time.

When I noticed increasing fade, I pulled over and the front wheels were engulfed in a cloud of smoke. I had also begun to smell the brakes through the ventilation system. I did not drive long enough to induce significant brake wear, but I have little doubt in my mind that they could be fully worn down driving in this fashion for an extended period, such as Sikes’ thirty-some miles at speeds between 80 and 94 mph.

Several scenarios are possible. The brake override that normally kicks in at high braking pressure could have failed. If his Prius suffered some sort of random electronic “ghost” to cause the UA, than it seems safe to assume that could theoretically also affect the brake override. But even then, it still should have been possible to stop the Prius, IF one strong application was undertaken. If Sikes cycled the pedal repeatedly, like the SD CHP officer in the Lexus did, the relatively modest-sized Prius braking system could have begun to exhibit terminal fade fairly quickly, and the engine would have been able to overpower it to some degree.

If the override system didn’t fail, that leaves two possibilities. Either Sikes purposefully and carefully modulated the brakes just to the degree that allowed the Prius to continue to travel at fairly high speed, using both feet like I did. Or if his Prius really was running wide open against his will, he is such a tentative and poorly skilled driver that he never actually pushed the brake pedal harder than a moderate amount.

Unless his performance on his cell phone was remarkably well controlled, it sounds to me like he was genuinely panicked and was putting all his effort in steering the car and maintaining some degree of control. It’s also clear from the 911 tape that most of the time the phone was on the seat or elsewhere, because he wasn’t responding to almost any of the 911 operator’s requests or questions.

It is possible that since he thought putting the car in neutral might cause it to lose control, he may have felt the same about the consequences of a full-on brake application: that it might throw the Prius into a skid. Many drivers have never explored the full range of their vehicle’s dynamic responses to unfamiliar or extreme control inputs, and are loath to find out.

Speaking of neutral, putting a Prius into that realm is not as simple, obvious or intuitive as might typically be the case. The joystick has to be held to the N position for a more than a moment, because the stick has no detent. And then it goes back to its normal position. This is similar to D and R, but it might be a challenge to ponder during an actual emergency.

One aspect of Sikes’ story is suspect. He claims that the actual gas pedal was stuck to the floor, and that he reached down to try to pull it up, unsuccessfully. First, this is an e-pedal, and a Denso one that has no history of sticking. Even if it was a bit sticky, it would have been easy to pull free,assuming you could reach it. I’m tall, and had no trouble reaching it; Stephanie did (have trouble).  Sikes wants us (or himself) to believe that the engine running wide open would somehow cause the pedal to also be wide open, as would be the case if there was a mechanical linkage or throttle cable.  But he may have said that to convince himself and/or others that he was trying to do something about the runaway Prius.

The hoax theory is compelling, but why would Sikes put himself at serious risk by destroying his brakes, when he had no way of ascertaining when the police would actually show up, if at all? Why not just drive down the freeway at 85 to 90, and just say the brakes didn’t work at all, like others have done? Or run into a wall at slow speed? Somehow, Sikes doesn’t strike me as a high-speed daredevil, willing to risk his life at ninety with completely shot brakes. Of course, that could also just as well confirm his stupidity.

The comparison to the Balloon Boy is appealing, but conveniently leaves out one important fact: the Ballon Boy was never in the balloon; it was launched empty. Sikes actually was in his brakeless Prius at ninety, audibly panting hard, so in that regard at least he was either a lot gutsier or a lot stupider than the Ballon Boy perpetrators. And a hell of an actor, to boot.

And the data beat goes on. I asked Edmunds if they had updated model information to filter out the spike of UA reports to NHTSA after the 9/29/09 Toyota mat recall in order to improve my attempt at coming up with a model-specific UA rate. Not only did they oblige, but they already did all the work! A big hat tip to Edmunds, who has taken a lead in the quest to make sense of the data as well as the whole UA fiasco.

A note of explanation from Edmunds:

Attached are the UA complaints against sales by Model for MY2005-2010 and complaints received through 9/30/2009.  A couple things to note about our “complaints per 100k sold” measure: if the model sales was less than 30k, then we excluded it from the list and if the model sales was between 30k and 100k, then we extrapolated the complaints to 100k.

Furthermore, I removed a few cars that had very low UA reports, generally less than four. But I left other in with low numbers because they were essentially “twins” of other models (Fusion/Milan), in order to test how reliable and consistent they are between the. I’m happy to see that generally that is the case: (Grand Cherokee: 7.57; Commander: 7.30); (Fusion 2.91; Milan 3.18) (Vibe 2.85; Matrix 2.75).

Obviously, the same question as to the Panther triplets comes up: they’re all high, but by varying degrees. And of course the biggest on is the discrepancy between the ES 350 (32.03) and the very similar Camry (6.52).

One more minor note: the Lexus LS 430 has an old-time bottom-hinged accelerator pedal, so mat entrapment is not an issue with it. And it hasn’t been implicated with a sticky pedal either. So in its case it must either be human error or…

Finally, the next step would of course to cross tabulate both sides of this chart to specific model years, since awe saw in our previous post how much variation there is from year to year. And then…

Here’s TTAC’s and the web’s only complete guide to Toyota’s gas pedals (so far), with tear downs, pictures, analysis, explanation, the shim fix, and commentary, all consolidated into one portal:

Part 1: Exclusive: TTAC Takes Apart Both Toyota Gas Pedals: Tear down of both the recalled CTS pedal assembly and the non-recalled Denso pedal assembly. Note: Assumptions and conclusions in this initial tear down lack the more complete understanding of the importance of the friction arm aspect of the CTS unit.

Part 2: Toyota Gas Pedal Fix Explained – With Exclusive Photos: Describes Toyota’s proposed fix for the recalled CTS gas pedal assembly, with detailed photos and graphics. Explains the significance of the friction arm assembly and its limitations.

Part 3: Toyota Gas Pedal Fix Simulated – Friction Reduced, By Too Much?: TTAC simulates the fix prescribed by Toyota for the recalled CTS pedal assembly, and notes how the fix changes the degree of friction, and the possible unintended result. With detailed pictures

Part 4: Why Toyota Must Replace Flawed CTS Gas Pedal With Superior Denso Pedal: Detailed analysis with pictures of the two pedal assemblies, an explanation as to why the Denso design is superior, and a call for having all CTS pedals replaced with the Denso pedal.

Part 5: TTAC Does The Toyota Pedal Shim Fix:  Stop Gap Solution At Best: Toyota’s solution is carried out here with detailed pictures, the whole Toyota document detailing the fix, and our commentary.

Part 6: Toyota Floor Mat/Gas pedal Recall Includes Computer Reflash And Trimming Of Gas Pedals: Info on the details of the floor mat/gas pedal interference recall.

Part 7: Toyota Recall  Creates Unintended Accelerator Consequences: As predicted in Part 4 (above), the CTS shim fix reduces the carefully designed amount of friction required for comfortable and smooth pedal action to the point where pedal action may now be jerky and potentially unsafe.

(Thanks to you-know-who-you-are for access to these parts and info)

[Note: A significantly expanded and updated version of this article is here]

For most of the fifties, sixties and into the early seventies, automotive aerodynamicists were mostly non-existent, or hiding in their wind tunnels. The original promise and enthusiasm of aerodynamics was discarded as just another style fad, and gave way to less functional styling gimmicks tacked unto ever larger bricks. But the energy crisis of 1974 suddenly put the lost science in the spotlight again. And although historic low oil prices temporarily put them on the back burner, as boxy SUVs crashed through the air, it appears safe to say that the slippery science has finally found its place in the forefront of automotive design.

During the ornate and boxy fifties and sixties, with the exception of Citroen, Saab and a few other minor adherents, aerodynamic progress was relegated mostly to the racing world. The value of reducing forward aerodynamic drag on race cars was understood from the earliest LSR days. But what was not at all so well understood was the role of vertical aerodynamic forces, the tendency of most streamlined shapes to start acting like a wing, and want to take flight with increasing speed. This not only makes high-speed racers unstable, but also contributes to reduced cornering ability.

In 1957, British researcher G.E. Lind-Walker published the results of studies that opened the door to understanding the importance of generating downforce, particularly in racing cars. His work began a revolution in racing car design as down force played such a critical role in improving acceleration, cornering and braking, the three essential components of racing.

By the early sixties, front air dams and rear spoilers were appearing on racing cars, and no one exploited the possibilities more than Jim Hall with his highly successful Chaparral racers. The 2B above shows the first fully functional use of front and rear spoilers and fender vents, all specifically to generate down force. They made the Chaparral essentially unbeatable in 1964 and 1965.

Two years later, Hall introduced the startling Chaparral 2E, which was the paradigm-shaping race car in terms of aerodynamics. In the the 2B, the aero aids were tacked on to a relatively typical sports racer of the time; the 2E was organically designed to maximize down force, including the adjustable rear wing. The 2E profoundly influenced the whole racing world, including NASCAR. The Plymouth Superbird (and Charger Daytona) shows the extreme lengths taken by Chrysler to incorporate these on a production car for their aerodynamic benefits, although the actual racers did better when they had a much larger lip spoiler added like this one.

We’re not going to pursue the evolution of racing aerodynamics further in this limited survey, but the Chaparrals’ influence would also quickly spill over into passenger cars. GM hired an aerodynamicist back in 1953 to assist with wind tunnel tests on its turbine concept cars, although he was grossly underutilized for years. But GM’s technical assistance to the Chaparral team was a well-known fact. How much of that was aerodynamics is not clear, but the first mass production car to sport a chin spoiler like the  2B above was the 1966 Corvair. It was added in the second year of the Corvair’s 1965 re-style to reduce drag and improve down force and cross-wind stability.

In Europe, Porsche also put its racing experience to good use, and its 1972 911 Carrera RS sported a full complement of spoilers to dramatically increase high speed stability and handling.

In Europe, Citroen was mostly the keeper of the aero flame for production cars. But one outstanding example in Germany was the rotary engine-powered NSU Ro 80 from 1967.

It’s Cd of .355 set a low-air mark for sedans that would stand for some years. Other than its rotary engine, the NSU was a remarkably influential car, defining the modern idiom almost perfectly. Citroen’s SM Coupe of 1970 (below) lowered the bar for coupes, with its .26 Cd, thanks in part to its adjustable suspension height setting.

After NSU was bought by VW, Audi took up the work that had begun with the Ro 80. This resulted in an aerodynamic breakthrough and one of the most influential design of the modern era, the Audi 100/5000 of 1982. With flush mounted windows and a modified wedge shape that paid tribute to the NSU, the Audi became the first mass-production sedan to achieve a Cd of .30.

In the USA, the energy crisis of 1974 suddenly thrust aerodynamics into the mainstream, and the long-neglected aerodynamicists were now finally embraced and integrated into the design process. GM’s downsized sedans of 1977 were the first to benefit from their knowledge, although its quite obvious that these cars like the Caprice below were relatively slow learners of the art. Although well behind Europe’s state of the art, even fine detailing for aerodynamic efficiency made an effective difference.

While GM was dipping their toes, Ford suddenly plunged wholly into the aerodynamic ether. Determined to jettison their boxy image after their near-death experience in 1979, Ford’s new management made a bold commitment to a complete embrace, and was determined to be the leader in the field. The 1983 Thunderbird was the first volley, but the really bold gamble was the 1986 Taurus, and its Sable sibling.

The Taurus and Sable were among the first US cars to use composite headlights, allowing for a smoother front end. The Sable was slightly more aerodynamically optimized, and beat the Audi with a .29 Cd. The race was on, and within a few years, GM would also be fielding dramatically more aerodynamic cars.

Mercedes had been utilizing aerodynamics to fine tune their cars for decades but the W126 began a more aggressive push to stay on the leading edge. The highly influential W124 (above) achieved a Cd of .28 in its most slippery variant. From this point forward, there were continual improvements from the major global manufacturers, although total aero drag often rose because cars were generally getting wider and taller too.

Needless to say, the SUV phase set aerodynamic influence in that segment back to the horse and buggy era. The ultimate wind-offender was the Hummer H2, which not only sported a .57 Cd, but its total aero drag of 26.5 sq. ft. is the highest on record for any modern vehicle listed. Wikipedia has nice charts of both Cd and total drag here.

To give GM credit, the 1989 Opel Calibra coupe set a new record for its class, with a superb Cd of .26. Fine detailing, now including the vehicle under-belly, paid off without having to resort to extreme or stylistically unpalatable measures. It led the way into the mainstreaming of super-low Cd vehicles. Incidentally, that .026 is the same value that the 2011 Chevy Volt finally attained after its extensive date with the wind tunnel.

GM’s experience with the Calibra and long hours in the wind tunnel paid off dramatically with the EV1. Electric vehicles’ limited energy storage density necessitates optimized aerodynamics if the vehicle is to run at highway speeds. Thanks to its phenomenal Cd of .195, the EV1 had a semi-respectable range of 60-100 miles, despite its old-tech lead acid batteries.

The Cd .25 barrier for mass production cars was broken by the 1999 gen 1 Honda Insight, a remarkable accomplishment considering what small car it is. Given that the Coefficient of Drag (Cd) is relative, its generally easier to attain a high number in a larger vehicle without having to resort to more drastic measures. The Insight shows plenty of those, including its rear wheel spats.

A more practical solution that also achieved a .25 Cd (in the specially optimized 3L version)was the advanced Audi A2 from 2001 (above). A lightweight four seater with aluminum construction, the TDI three-cylinder diesel powered A2 was the first four/five door car sold in Europe to be rated at less than 3 liters per 100 kilometers (78.4 US mpg). Surprisingly fun to drive too, it was not a sales success, likely due to its rather odd styling. It may well have suffered from Airflow syndrome, being just a tad too far ahead of mainstream styling acceptance.

With a Cd of .25, the 2010 Toyota Prius brings our survey of production cars to an end. It represents the current state-of-the-art for a production sedan without any compromises or additional tweaks. Undoubtedly, we’ve arrived in the full flowering of the aerodynamic age, even without the teardrop pointed tails and dorsal fins. That the aerodynamic frontier will continue to be cleft with ever less resistant vehicles is now an absolute given. We’re well beyond the point of no return, although the same sentiments were also widely held in the late thirties.

While continued refinement of the traditional automotive package will undoubtedly yield further reductions in the aerodynamic coefficient, to make a more dramatic jump requires extreme measures, like the Aptera. Its Cd of .15 is stellar, but substantial compromises are involved. It’s highly unlikely that this represents the shape of mass-production cars in the foreseeable future. But if the available energy resources for a rapidly expanding base of of global energy consumers and auto buyers happens to runs into a collision course, cars like the Aptera may well represent a possible solution to maintain personal mobility.

[A significantly expanded and updated version of this article is here]

In the “streamlined decade” of the thirties, automotive aerodynamics was promoted as the great breakthrough to the modern high speed automobile. It was almost a religion, and its influence was essentially universal. By the end of the thirties, highly streamlined concepts were in every manufacturer’s styling studios. Everyone assumed the post-war era would be dominated by further developments on the air-splitting Tatra theme. But the reality turned out quite different, especially in the US.

Before we move on, it’s essential to put the initial zeal for aerodynamics and streamlining into a larger context. Automotive streamlining was just a minor part of the most influential single design movement in history. The transformation of mechanical objects and the built environment from one that involved ornamentation, classical influences, and the exposure of the mechanical functioning (think traditional steam locomotive) to one where suddenly the exterior envelope was paramount was a paradigm-changing event. The fact that it emerged during the great global Depression gave it a transformative potential; the public saw streamlining as a way to “move forward”, and everything from skyscrapers to toasters were caught up in the zeal.

The crowning glory of this movement was embodied in the 1939 New York World’s Fair, whose theme was Building the World of Tomorrow. GM’s building was the zenith, especially its Futurama exhibit, which portrayed the world of 1960, with its fourteen-lane highways and giant streamlined apartment blocks. It’s hard to see from the pictures, but the thousands of moving miniaturized cars were perfectly streamlined, with tear-drop and finned tails straight from the Tatra 87.

Needless to say, the world of tomorrow shortly after 1939 was interrupted by a less optimistic world affair. The war certainly took some of the edge off a design movement that somehow saw its social influence exceeding its grasp, but a look at GM design prototypes from round 1946 shows clearly that the now-classic streamliner model was still the predominant influence.

The models shown above attempt to predict the evolution of GM styling, starting in the rear and advancing to the glass-domed, central-steering but still dorsal-finned Cadillac of 1960. That turned out rather differently!

This more down-to-earth 1948 model year Cadillac concept clay (above) from 1945 or ’46 still shows a strong aerodynamic influence in its swept front and tapering rear. What caused the change in thinking that led to the final design?

The 1948 Caddy is mostly acclaimed for giving birth to the rear fin. But those were minor compared to the more significant deviation from GM’s advanced designs: the decision to retain the classical long front hood/short rear deck proportions, and to highlight them with a bold grille. America’s love affair with streamlining was essentially over before it was ever really fully realized. The Cadillac correctly predicted (or even more correctly, led) the coming decades of American car design, emphasizing power over aerodynamics. With ever more potent V8 engines and a steadily falling price of gas, who needed to cheat the wind  with wimpy little pointed front ends, especially when the failure of the Airflow was still fresh in Detroit’s collective memory?

That’s not to suggest that the streamlined era and aerodynamics hadn’t already transformed the industry. The ’48 Caddy may have been the turning point away from the pursuit of aerodynamic ideals in the US, but other manufacturers, particularly the independents, adopted various degrees of its influence on design, to their eventual peril.

With the first new post-war cars in 1947, Studebaker shows fairly muted but unmistakable aerodynamic influences on the styling trends of the era: the “pontoon” all-enveloping body, tarnished here by functionally unnecessary vestigial rear “fenders” and a bright accent line where the running board used to be.

The 1948 Hudson (above) was a bolder step, with its “step-down” frame and jelly-bean styling. It also shows the final break to the past by ditching any references to free-standing fenders.

Nash took aerodynamics more seriously than the rest. Its all-new 1949 Airflyte design shows a fairly comprehensive adoption of the fundamental principles. But both Nash and Hudson soon paid a price for their aerodynamic designs: as taste quickly changed, including hard-top coupes and sedans, larger glass areas, and more rectilinear designs, their bodies were not as adaptable as those of the Big Three. Their aggressive annual restyling cycles played a significant role in the demise of the independents during the fifties.

The Tucker Torpedo is still hailed by some as a direction the American industry could have taken but chose not to. It’s a viscerally exciting design, and certainly dramatically more aerodynamic, although in some ways disappointing. With its air-cooled rear engine and fastback, designer Alex Tremulis was clearly following the path that the Tatra T77 had trod fifteen years earlier, but with less conviction. That’s reflected in his choice to incorporate the tradition-evoking fenders that Tatra and even Frazier, Hudson and Nash had already tossed overboard. While the Tucker’s Cd of about .30 to .37 (depending on whose numbers are being used) was excellent for the times, it still far from the T77′s .212. Public response to the Lincoln Zephyr prototypes made it clear that Americans were wary of rear-engined full-sized cars (with good reason). An interesting historical footnote it was, but as a design the Tucker was already looking old-fashioned compared to what the Europeans were up to.

While it’s quite likely that I’ve done the US immediate post-war aerodynamic era some injustice, it will be inevitable in regard to Europe. Due to very different circumstances in regard to fuel cost, economics, and a more progressive mind-set, the aerodynamic era of the thirties was only a preview of coming attractions. Much more than post-war Americans, Europeans saw genuine possibilities in the marriage of aerodynamics and small cars to create breakthroughs in performance, efficiency and affordability to first-time motorists clamoring for new cars. The mid-engined three-seat Wimille Coupe of 1948 (above) wasn’t exactly intended at the low end of the market, but it does give a clear picture of how the Europeans were pushing forward with aerodynamic design.

The Saab 92 prototype of 1947 (above) is actually more of a thirties/Tatra throwback, but its clarity of line and remarkable functionality thanks to a FWD arrangement make it’s delicious tail worth savoring one more time. It’s Cd of .35 was terrific for a near-production car.

A more radical concept was the 1948 Panhard Dynavia. An extremely slippery (Cd .28) design based on the Panhard Dyna, which itself was a highly advanced small car utilizing a front boxer two-cylinder and FWD. But the practical limitations of such pointy tails (yes, that is the rear), not to mention passenger comfort (no AC), made this another unfulfilled slippery dream.

Even the smallest cars showed aerodynamic influence. This Isetta is a miniaturized rear-engined egg-shaped streamliner with a greenhouse remarkably similar to those advanced Cadillac concepts above.

In 1953, Alfa Romeo commissioned Touring to build open and closed sports racers with maximized aerodynamics. The resultant Disco Volante (flying saucer) coupe had a Cd of .26.

Alfa then had Bertone to build a series of coupes to push the aerodynamic envelope even further.  The result was the BAT cars, of which the BAT 7 attained a remarkable Cd of .19. The early fifties was to see a renewed interest in aerodynamics in Europe, but the leadership now changed hands. Whereas the Germans had been the early champions, and most of their early fifties cars showed strong aero influence, like the Porsche 356 and the DKWs and Auto Unions, influential Mercedes was taking a decidedly more upright and conservative stance with their passenger cars after their flirt with streamliners in the thirties. Of course, their racing and sports cars still benefited from their extensive aerodynamic research and experience, like this 300 SLR with a wind brake.

And there were compelling reasons for Mercedes’ conservative and pragmatic approach with its passenger cars. The maximization of interior volume, trunk space and a traditional RWD layout did not favor extreme aerodynamic measures. And the prestige of the Mercedes radiator shell still carried a lot of weight.

Now the Italians and especially the French were taking the lead. The English? They were still mostly stuck in the twenties, except of course their remarkable land speed record breakers.

With a Cd of .36, the Citroen DS was of course remarkably aerodynamic for a practical sedan in 1955. And that it bristled with other advanced technological design features is beyond this quick look at the “Goddess”. But it reaffirmed that aerodynamics could be successfully integrated in a new package, with FWD and little compromise in passenger space.

Given the front-end styling similarities of the 1953 Studebaker to the Citroen, this makes a good point of departure back to the USA. Both of these wind-cheating efforts show that the thirties have now been fully left behind, and that it was possible to integrate sound aerodynamic principles without having being stuck in the cab-forward long-tail streamliner mold. The Starlight Coupe’s Cd may have only been around .40, but it was the only serious effort of its kind in the US at the times and it was quickly adopted as a favorite for stock-bodied Bonnevile speed records.

Of course, it wasn’t just 200 mph Studebakers that were in demand on the salt flats. Early hot rodders knew that aerodynamics is the key to puncturing the brick wall to higher speeds. After WW II, surplus auxiliary external aircraft fuel tanks (bellytanks) were available cheaply. This created on of the more brilliant adaptations, the Lakester.

Looking remarkably like the steam LSR vehicles built by Stanley and others at the turn of the century, a flathead-powered Lakester tearing across the flats is truly a time-warping and wind-splitting experience on several levels.

Undoubtedly, many other cars deserving of mention in this time period were left out. In Part 3 we’ll take on the recent era, up to the present day.

]]> http://www.thetruthaboutcars.com/2010/02/a-brief-illustrated-history-of-automotive-aerodynamics-part-2/feed/ 0 http://www.thetruthaboutcars.com/2010/02/an-illustrated-history-of-automotive-aerodynamics-in-three-parts/ http://www.thetruthaboutcars.com/2010/02/an-illustrated-history-of-automotive-aerodynamics-in-three-parts/#comments Sun, 14 Feb 2010 20:29:41 +0000 Paul Niedermeyer http://www.thetruthaboutcars.com/?p=345269

[Note: A significantly expanded and updated version of this article can be found here]

That air presented the greatest obstacle to automotive speed and economy was understood intuitively, if not scientifically since the dawn of the automobile. Putting it into practice was quite another story. Engineers, racers and entrepreneurs were lured by the potential for the profound gains aerodynamics offered. The efforts to do so yielded some of the more remarkable cars ever made, even if they challenged the aesthetic assumptions of their times. We’ve finally arrived at the place where a highly aerodynamic car like the Prius is mainstream. But getting there was not without turbulence.

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Racers, particularly those chasing the coveted Land Speed Record (LSR), were generally the first to employ aerodynamic aids. The La Jamais Contente (The Never Satisfied) was the first automobile to break the 100kmh (62 mph) record, in 1899. Like all the first batch of LSR holders, it was an EV. The driver’s position seems to negate the aerodynamic aids, or maybe he was just posing, and more likely crouched down for the actual run.

The evolution of aerodynamics for LSR cars was remarkably rapid, as this Stanley Steamer Rocket of 1906 evidently shows. And the increase in speed was even more dramatic: the Rocket broke the 200km barrier, with a run of 205.44 kmh (127.66  mph). That would not be bettered until 1924, and not until 2009 for steam powered vehicles.

The first known attempt at streamlining a passenger car is this Alfa Romeo from 1914, built by the coach builder Castagna for the Italian Count Ricotti. Due to the very heavy bodywork, it turned out to not improve on the top speed of the open Alfa it was based on.

Undoubtedly, the real breakthrough aerodynamic passenger car was the German Rumpler “Tropfenwagen” (teardrop car) of 1921. Unlike the impractical and heavy Castagna Alfa, the Rumpler was as dramatically different (and influential) for its completely integrated and original design and engineering. It had a mid-engined W6 engine, and four wheel independent suspension using swing axles which Rumpler patented. The Tropfenwagen was tested in VW’s wind tunnel in 1979, and achieved a remarkable Coefficient of drag (Cd) of .28; a degree of slipperiness that VW’s Passat wouldn’t equal until 1988.

It’s important to remember that the Cd is a coefficient, and denotes the relative aerodynamic slipperiness of a body, regardless of its overall size. A brick of any size has a Cd of 1.0; a bullet about .295.  To arrive at the critical total aerodynamic drag that determines power required and efficiency, the frontal area (cross section of the vehicle looking straight on) is multiplied by the Cd. The Rumpler was relatively very aerodynamic, but it was also quite tall and boxy, which resulted in the one hundred or so production cars being used primarily as taxis. An ironic ending for Rumpler, but his ideas spawned imitations and extensions world-wide, and opened the whole field.

To put the nascent field of automotive aerodynamics in perspective, the typical two-box car of the twenties was more aerodynamic going backwards than forwards, as this ass-backwards car showed. That brings back memories of Bob Lutz stating that the Volt concept would have had better aerodynamics if they put it in the wind tunnel backwards.

Hungarian-born Paul Jaray used his experience working int the aeronautical field, and especially designing Zeppelins, to develop a specific formula for automotive aerodynamic design principles that lead to a patent, applied for in 1922 and issued in 1927.  His approach was influential, and numerous companies used Jaray licensed bodies during the streamliner craze that unfolded in the early thirties. His early designs tended to be very tall, and with questionable proportions and space utilization (below).

His designs eventually became more mainstream, and Mercedes, Opel, Maybach, and numerous other makes, primarily German, built special streamliner versions using Jaray bodies, like this Mercedes below:

The limitation of these cars is like the Castagna Alfa, they were re-bodied conventional cars with frames, front engines and RWD. Jaray only addressed the aerodynamics, not the complete vehicle like Rumpler had. It was a start, but others were taking up where Rumpler left off, like the English Burney, below:

Obviously more Rumpler influenced and less by Jaray, the 1930 English Burney featured a then-radical rear engine and also four wheel independent suspension.

One of the most influential and lasting designers of the whole era was Austrian Hans Ledwinka. After he took over as chief design engineer at the Czech firm Tatra in 1921, he developed the basis of a series of remarkable Tatra cars and eventually streamliners with platform frames, independent suspensions and rear air-cooled engines that Ferdinand Porsche cribbed from heavily in his design of the Volkswagen (VW made a substantial payment to Tatra in the 1960s to compensate them for this theft of IP).

The compact Tatra v570 of 1933 (above) is the forerunner of both the larger Tatras soon to come, and obviously of the Volkswagen. We’ll come back to Tatra later.

This Volkswagen prototype from 1934 (above) shows a very strong resemblance to the cribbed Tatra v570, with the benefit of some further refinement. Although the visual cues are not really as significant as they might appear to us now, because these were the leading-edge design elements of the time, and widely imitated or shared, on both side of the Atlantic.

As this 1934 prototype for an American rear-engined sedan by John Tjaarda shows, the Europeans weren’t working alone. This fairly radical design became tamed-down for the production 1936 front-engined Lincoln Zephyr, of which the less common but handsome coupe version is shown below:

Of course, Americans’ introduction to streamlining had come two years earlier  in 1934, with the stunning Chrysler Airflow (below). An essentially pragmatic approach, the Airflow also kept the traditional Body On Frame (BOF) front-engine RWD standard, but made some significant advances in terms vehicle design by pushing the engine further forward over the front wheels. This, combined with a wider body, dramatically improved interior space and accommodations. The Airflow had the same basic configuration as American cars from the late forties and early fifties. Progress is not always linear.

The failure of the practical Airflow can probably comes down to one thing: that overly flat waterfall grille. That was too much of  a break for the symbolism still engendered in the remnants of the classic car prow. The Zephyr had one, and it was a success, despite not being nearly as a good a car as the Airflow.

An even less pragmatic but remarkably practical and effective American vehicle was the Stout Scarab (above). Aviation engineer William B. Stout designed this extremely roomy mini-van precursor using  a unitized body structure and a rear Ford V8 engine. The first was built in 1932, and several more variations, a total of nine, were built in the mid thirties, but series production never got off the ground, due to an asking price almost four times higher than a Chrysler Imperial Airflow of the times, and even those weren’t selling so well just then.

A much more radical approaches to streamlining was Buckminster Fuller’s Dymaxion. The first of several prototypes also saw the light of day in 1933, in the midst of this fertile period on both side of the Atlantic. The Dymaxion also had a rear Ford V8, but with a tricycle carriage and rear wheel steering, which allowed it to turn on the length of its body.

Another lesser-know variation of the popular Ford V8 engined aerodynamic vehicles was this Dubonnet Ford of 1936, whose very slippery body allowed it to reach 108 mph. I appears to have  Isetta-type front doors for the front seat passengers. About as much crumple zone too.

Let’s jump back to Czechoslovakia and the fertile Tatra design studios. Here are some clays from about 1933 or so, showing the development of both the smaller VW-like v570 on the right, and the larger streamliners in the rear. The first of these, the T77, arrived in 1934 (below):

The T77 was measured to have a Cd of .212, a number that was not broken by a production car until GM’s EV-1 of 1995, which measured at .195.  A remarkable achievement, the long-tailed T77 was powered by a rear air-cooled V8, and began a long series of Tatras until the 1980′s along similar lines. My retrospective of Tatra is here.

Tatra became synonymous with the advanced streamliner of the pre-war era, enabling remarkably fast travel (100 mph) on the fledgling Autobahns of the Third Reich. Favored especially by Luftwaffe brass, they had a nasty habit of killing them, due to its wickedly-abrupt oversteer, thanks to the combination of rear V8 and swing axles. That earned it the nick name of “the Czech secret weapon”.  So many died at its hands, that supposedly Hitler forbade his best men to drive them. In many (other) ways, the Tatra 87 was the Porsche Panamera of its time.

To demonstrate just how far the aerodynamic envelope was pushed in this golden decade of streamlining, this 1939 Schlörwagen prototype was tested originally at Cd .186, and a model of it was retested by VW in the seventies with a Cd of .15. Either of these values put the “pillbug” at or near the top of the list of the most aerodynamic concept cars ever built, like the Ford Probe V of 1985, with a Cd of .137. Built on the chassis of the rear-engine Mercedes 170H, it was substantially faster as well as 20% to 40% more fuel efficient than its donor car. The Russians took the Schlörwagen as war booty and conducted tests as a propeller driven vehicle. It represents a state of aerodynamic efficiency in league with the most aerodynamic cars being considered today, such as the Aptera.

Its important to note that the rise of interest in aerodynamics in the 1930s arose out of the desire to reinvent the automobile from its horse and wagon origins and the assumptions that average driving speeds would be on the rise with modern roads. This made it a forward looking undertaking, as most drivers were plodding along at 35-45 mph outside of cities. But the first freeways were being built in Germany, and improvements in US roads, including the first parkways and freeways were taking place. It also explains the particularly strong interest and adoption of streamlining in Germany.

Note that I have not attempted to survey the influence of aerodynamics on the styling of cars in the latter thirties and up to WW II. Needless to say the influence was utterly profound, and gave us some of the most remarkable cars of the late classic era. But this had relatively more to do with style (and even affectation) than a genuine effort to push the envelope in terms of leading edge aerodynamics. Nevertheless, the benefits and beauty that resulted, like in this Bugatti Atlantique coupe are undeniable, but beyond our scope here.

Part 2: 1939 to 1955

Part 3: 1955 to the Present