Range extenders can extend the driving range for an electric vehicle ...

intro
Industry motors ahead
Looking back over the past 24 months or so, it is astonishing
to see how quickly the auto industry has turned prototypes
and “blue sky” thinking into hard metal (or plastic) on
the roads.
While academics, politicians, environmentalists and lawmakers
were still attending conferences and having discussions about
curbing vehicle emissions, promoting electric vehicles and improving
fuel consumption, the industry simply got on with
it. BMW has a fleet of over 600 electric Minis on
the road, while Nissan, General Motors, Audi,
Toyota, Ford, Volkswagen and Hyundai are
among the other OEMs with all-electric
cars hot on the heels of the Minis.
Editor, Ed Richardson
Then there are the new brands -
Tesla has its roadster, Norway has its
Think City, and in South Africa there is the
Joule – some of the first new brands to be
launched as the industry enters a new era of
propulsion. They have the potential to spark farranging
changes in the way passenger cars are sold
and serviced. All-new technology creates an opportunity for dealer
and distribution business models which disrupt the present order.
In South Africa (as elsewhere), supermarkets now sell Chinesemade
scooters, motorcycles and scooters instead of the traditional
motorcycle dealers. That’s because the low cost of the Chinese
bikes has turned them into disposable commodities. Electric
vehicles will not (for now) be commodities, but neither will they
be maintained and repaired in traditional workshops. OEMs have
clearly seen the danger, and are leveraging their brands and net-
works with their own vehicles. AI
At present, the electric car is designed for city transport, and
hybrids seem to hold the key to more efficient motoring over long
distances and in town. Innovation in this field is extraordinary, as
we see the integration of what a few years ago were nice-to-have
accessories into the operating system of the car. The vehicle management
system of BMW’s new hybrid system, for example, uses
a built-in GPS to calculate when to run on all-battery power, and
when to start the engine. You can read about it in this
edition, and we can be sure that others will have
similar systems as designers think laterally and
software allows different systems to talk to
each other. Initiatives like Autosar and the
use of Linux through the GENIVI consortium
are fuelling this trend. As are
partnerships across continents, between
component manufacturers and
OEMs, and competing OEMs themselves.
China again has the potential
to disrupt the status quo through its
plans to be a world leader in hybrid
technology.
Hybrids bring their own challenges,
not the least of which is an engine which
seldom reaches optimum operating temperature.
This has repercussions for both
the lubrication of the engine, as well as the
designers of the catalytic exhaust systems which
have traditionally been designed to run hot.
Which brings us to the question of what fuel the engine will
use. Here again advances are being made at high speed. We have
companies turning algae into fuel, running engines on methane
from waste dumps, converting used cooking oil into diesel … the
list goes on.
What is perhaps most exciting is that all this research and development
has been going on while the global auto industry has
been navigating itself through one of the worst downturns in history.
Which is good news for a global economy built on the mobility
of the individual.
AUTOMOTIVE INDUSTRIES and Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, have put
together a digital library of back issues of AI from the early 1900’s (high res and low res) of
approximately 230,000 images of the print publication. This archive, which documents the
birth of the auto industry to the present, is available to AI subscribers.
Go to AI’s homepage www.ai.com.ai and click on the “AI Library” link or visit
www.ai-online.com/100YearLibrary
6 to read full version of AI stories go to www.ai-online.com