Many articles are currently being written about the perilous state of the Automotive industry, and with good reason.  Even with government subsidies, it is by no means certain that all of our best-known brands will survive, at least in their current form. 

However there is more than doom and gloom to the current state of the industry.  The industry is on the brink of a set of revolutionary changes spurred on mainly by an increased worldwide focus on sustainability.   Vehicle platforms are set to change more fundamentally in the next 5 years than they have in at least the last 50.  And although opinions vary, it’s very likely that the harbinger of change will be electric.

Characteristics of the Electric Platform

Why is this the case?  Electric vehicles offer many potential advantages:

·         Zero emissions at point of use (particularly important in cities)

·         Lower overall emissions than comparable existing engine designs

·         Lowest per-mile/kilometer running costs (at least initially before taxation policies catch up)

·         Opportunity to generate power extremely cleanly as power stations shift from fossil fuels to wind, solar and nuclear sources

·         Opportunity to be a positive contributor to overall efficiency of the energy system by using surplus capacity available at night, and even potentially releasing it back to the grid during the day

·         Opportunity for more distributed generation through efficient utilization of home-generated power

·         Easy to implement regenerative braking, contributing further to overall efficiency

However they have historically – and still – several disadvantages and limitations due mostly to battery characteristics:

·         Limited operational range (typically of the order of 50 miles)

·         Battery packs are heavy and bulky which impacts efficiency, handling, and packaging

·         Battery pack longevity is still relatively unproven for different operating characteristics

·         Battery pack overheating can be a risk, particularly under high charge rates

·         Achievable charge rates limit the ability to easily extend range for pure electric vehicles

·         Lack of infrastructure and standards limits in-field support for pure electric vehicles

Hybrids

The combination of these characteristics gave rise to the hybrid engine, pioneered in practical form by Toyota with the Prius, in the late 1990s.  The hybrid engine uses a limited size battery pack with an electric motor mechanically coupled to a traditional petrol engine and fuel tank.  The battery pack is charged only by the petrol engine, and can be thought of as an energy buffer to help avoid scenarios where a petrol engine only does not operate at high thermodynamic efficiency.  However, the mechanical coupling severely limits the flexibility of the system, as does the need to carefully control battery operating characteristics in terms of total charge, charge/discharge rates, and thermal properties.  As a result, while hybrids are tuned to exhibit strong official fuel economy figures, in real-world use they are often less successful, and can be beaten by well-tuned designs leveraging more traditional powertrain layouts.  Hybrids have definitely proven the market demand for an ostensibly greener vehicle however, and have also provided the platform through niche and experimental modifiers who have adapted the platform to a ‘plug-in hybrid’, which allows the battery pack to be charged from mains electricity, enabling the first 25 or so miles of travel without any fossil fuel use.  Hybrids have also led themselves to being adapted to a large range of vehicles including compact SUVs and trucks, which has injected some limited life into that challenged part of the sales demographic.

The makers of hybrid vehicles are extending their availability in a broader range of vehicles, and will also be producing ‘official’ plug-in hybrids in many cases within the next couple of years.  As a prelude to this step, second generation hybrid technology is arriving right now, using more sophisticated battery technology and improved powertrain components to extend both performance and economy.

Pure EVs and EV Technology

Other manufacturers, however, are exploring other paths.  Pure electric vehicles – in most, but not all cases, small city cars – are multiplying, with new derivatives being announced almost daily.  Some are adaptations of existing platforms by their OEMs, others are modifications of bought-in or licensed platforms, others still are brand new designs, and in some cases brand new automakers exploiting what has been historically a niche market.  Most of these vehicles will still have limited range, but newer battery types are expected to increase energy density, charge rates, and longevity, in many cases using lithium-ion technology as proven – to a degree - in laptops and cellphones worldwide.  Nanofilament and polymer technologies help to reduce thermal problems during fast charge scenarios, to the extent that more drastic solutions such as Better Place’s battery swap technology might be largely avoided.  And the emerging technology of ultracapacitors, leveraging plastic film technologies and energy density developments still in the works, might yet overhaul battery packs for electric vehicle use, offering potentially even better energy density, charge/discharge rates, and longevity characteristics.  We also should give credit to the Tesla, the first production electric sports car, proving the value of the instant torque delivery enabled by electric motors, and engineered well enough – albeit at a cost – to have a realistic range, providing that the car is not driven hard (although that might not be a realistic proviso!).

However, many of these vehicles will still have relatively small ranges of 50-150 miles.  For many commuters, this range is entirely sufficient to cover the home-to-work and even light leisure use.  For multiple-car owning families and city cars, this is quite practical, although running out of power unexpectedly would not be an enjoyable scenario, as in many cases it may not be feasible to practically recharge a battery sufficiently to enable the trip home.  Although recharge-enabled parking spaces are beginning to appear in some European cities in particular (and at some private companies in the US), the infrastructure doesn’t yet exist to entirely avoid this scenario.  Worse , an emergent scenario might find a driver wishing that he had a completely different type of car with him, or even having to rent or borrow one.  And for a family or individual that wants a single car flexible enough to meet most needs – not a unrealistic goal in the prior automotive era – these designs will not suffice.

EREVs

This is where what is starting to be called the EREV (extended range electric vehicle) comes in.  Personally I think of this more as a second generation design of hybrid, but the hybrid makers seem to take exception to this point of view, hence the new terminology.  This design – characterized most publicly by the GM E-FLEX design for the Chevy / Opel Volt, but with others on the way and with the potential for licensing of the technology by GM to other OEMs – is unique in providing a flexible platform encompassing a generator that is NOT physically coupled to the drivetrain.  The generator exists and is designed solely to recharge the battery pack when required.  Motive power comes purely from a high efficiency electric motor, which also provides regenerative braking.  The battery pack is more than adequate for a decent plug-in range, and enabling the vehicle to operate as a pure electric vehicle all of the time if the owner wishes.  However, the generator and onboard fuel supply enables a range competitive with or even superior to traditional designs, which means emergent scenarios are entirely supported and a single vehicle can provide short-range pure electric modalities as well as traditionally fuelled long-range behaviours on demand.  This does come at the cost of some additional weight over a pure electric design (and a traditional design) but nonetheless represents a huge potential step forward.

Inevitably, the transmission of energy from the generator to the battery pack and to the electric motor is less efficient than a mechanical transmission.  So why does this design even make sense?  Because traditional engine types suffer one huge drawback – their thermodynamic efficiency is low in part-throttle conditions.  In other words, the most effective way to operate a petrol or diesel engine from a point of view of energy output-per-unit-of-fuel consumed is to rev the hell out of it under heavy load conditions!  This won’t however, give you the maximum fuel economy, because all of that power has nowhere to go most of the time.  As a result, most engines operate most of their time in part-throttle conditions, and in fact can only operate ‘economically’ in part-throttle conditions. 

In comparison, a generator designed purely to ‘top up’ the onboard battery pack can be designed for maximum thermodynamic efficiency, probably at a single available RPM level (around 4000 rpm for the Chevy Volt, for example).  This will in general provide more energy per minute than the vehicle will consume – but the good news is, as long as the other half of the generator (that provides a load for the engine and converts motion into electricity) can consume the full power output and store it effectively in the battery pack, this isn’t a problem.  In fact a few minutes charging will provide many more minutes of running time in light urban or medium speed cruise conditions.

EREV Platform Flexibility

The story doesn’t stop there.  Because of the use of electrical transmission of power, the generator type can be freely varied while keeping the rest of the platform the same.  This means that diesel, biofuels (100% ethanol for example), or even hydrogen internal combustion or fuel cell designs can be substituted for the original petrol-based generator.  In the case of the fuel cell of course, no device is required to convert (heat into ) motion into electricity, so the generator can be even simpler, notwithstanding the relative complexity of a hydrogen fuel supply.  The same architecture can also be easily applied to a wide range of vehicles by use of different sizes of generator, battery pack, and motor – and the relative range on battery and on fuel can be adjusted similarly depending on vehicle type, consumer demand, government regulations, and technology evolution.

The Next Generation? (or Super-platform)

It’s possible to conceive of a further evolution in this platform design also, and some major and  niche manufacturers are exploring this territory.  Whether to use a single electric motor (with or without a gearbox, usually 2-speed)  or a motor at each driven wheel is a matter of some debate in the industry right now, and designs have been shown that integrate neatly at each wheel hub (or even into the wheel itself, although practicality here is arguable given unsprung weight issues and exposure to damage).  Volvo has a concept car with a 4-wheel drive version of this architecture.  If electronic means of steering and suspension control is added to the same package, it’s possible to conceive of flexible, reusable wheel ‘modules’ that can be easily adapted to a wide variety of designs.  Compromise and simplicity in mechanical sophistication can be compensated for with sophisticated software control of the dynamics of the vehicle including micro-bursts of torque or wheel deflection that open the vehicle up to whole new handling and ride models that simply can’t be achieved today.  And the flexibility of being able to compensate for vehicle characteristics or imbue different handling and feel characteristics with the same mechanicals make this software-driven car an inevitable evolution that mirrors the development of electro-mechanicals inside consumer electronic devices such as VCRs, cameras, and robotic systems.

This ‘super platform’ or range of ‘super modules’ could be adopted across the entire range of several automakers driving significant economies of scale, and yet differentiated and branded in software to each individual variant.  It’s not infeasible to carry personalization right down to the individual customer given this model, within safe or brand-aligned limits set by the automaker, and rather more so than might be available today with tuneable dampers or parameter settings for powertrain behavior in high-end saloons and sports cars.

This means that anti-lock braking, stability control, smart differentials are within the reach of everyman on every platform and come ‘for free’ – but also that these kind of techniques and technologies can continue to evolve, potentially just with smarter software downloads.  And the ability to use the connected car to provide first class automated fault support and correction and to use real-world vehicle data to enhance both hardware and software designs can effectively be taken for granted also.

I am personally a huge fan of the EREV concept and of what manufacturers like GM is doing to promote and advance this technology.  I am of the belief that more than any other development, this marks the realistic next stage in evolution for the automobile as we know it, and expect penetration of this platform through the industry to be relatively rapid.  There is definitely also a place for mechanically coupled hybrids as these reach their second generation, but I would expect their time in the sun to be limited, squeezed out by the EREV on one hand, and the pure EV on the other.  Perhaps EV developments and infrastructure will make the EREV  short lived too, but the dependency chain for an optimized EV infrastructure is a complex and fragile entity that might prove hard to extend into all areas of all markets in a reasonable timeframe.  Where that infrastructure can not or does not quickly go, the EREV can.

Where will these vehicles be found?

So that said, where will we find these different vehicle types cropping up in the next few years?  I still believe there is room for conventionally powered vehicles, but this will eventually be focused on track-day type use as a hobby or pastime rather than as a mainstream means of transport.  They are likely to meet the same destiny as the horse, being valued and kept for entertainment, leisure and sports.  Their role as flexible long range vehicles is likely to be supplanted in many cases by the EREV, while the urban transport and short-term commute role will be fulfilled by a mixture of EREVs and pure EVs.  Green cities and retrofitted cities with integrated intelligent transportation programs are likely to be the first to go pure EV, although it may be that EREVs are allowed so long as they do not use their onboard generators.  Technology could mandate / monitor this restriction fairly easily if so desired.  One application already in development in several cities around the world for pure EVs is the ‘short term rental’ fleet as a logical development to Zipcar and Flexcar type programs.  In these models, a vehicle – prebooked or not – is picked up from a transport hub for use in ‘last mile’ scenarios to provide transport flexibility.  The vehicle is used for a relatively short period of time – starting perhaps with daytime use and being returned to the pickup point, but ultimately being used more for 1-way journeys and shorter rental periods, being remarshalled to the next pickup point by a variety of techniques including customer redirection (local hub model), human-operated ‘train’ systems, and autonomous self-drive, which is likely to inherit in these cities from AGV technology used for years in manufacturing plants.  When combined via smart software with integrated transportation systems, a flexible, user-convenient personalized service can provide the ultimate in transport flexibility and utility while making a huge impact on overall cost and environmental impact. 

A Microsoft Point-of-View

Why does Microsoft care about this?  For one, we seek to be a student of the industry and want to know and understand where it is heading.  Secondly, we believe the enterprise software solutions that we and our partners can bring to the industry can play a huge role in enabling the significant shifts in design and manufacturing technologies that come with the evolutions described in this post.  Thirdly, we have the most comprehensive offerings for in-vehicle software technologies and the cloud services that will support and enhance them, and therefore we can add great value as new vehicle platforms are designed and come on stream.  Some people believe that pure EVs in particular will need to carry sophisticated infotainment platforms from the getgo in order to help customers live with and ameliorate the impact of limited range and recharge facilities, and they may well be right.  If so, Microsoft platforms can enable the integration of personal and work calendars with navigation itineraries and destinations and real time traffic information and recharging point availability together with manufacturer aggregated and personalized real-world consumption information to provide the best possible management of vehicle range and charge, making this vehicle type as flexible as it can be despite its limitations.  The same technologies and architecture provides similar services to other vehicle types including conventional and EREV, but perhaps with a little less criticality.  That said, if you want to run these vehicles with maximum environmental benefit – perhaps avoiding the use of the EREV’s generator as much as possible – the same techniques apply, and are a natural extension of the ‘green driving advisors’ available on several vehicles today, for example within the Fiat ‘Blue and Me’ solution based on Microsoft Auto technology.

Where do you want to go today?

Addendum

I had the pleasure with many of my colleagues of attending the Detroit International Auto Show in January.  Detroit put on a good show despite the parlous state of the local industry, and despite less money being spent on the stands and less attendees, the overall sense was hopeful and positive.  Most notably, however, was the committment of most manufacturers to 'green' platforms and specifically electric ones.  I was most positively surprised by Chrysler, who showed several EREVs with a committment to start building an unspecified one in 2010, which is great news.  But many makers showed various forms of pure EVs, EREVs, and different configurations of hybrid.   The Chevy Volt was there, there was news of the Opel/Vauxhall versions to follow in Europe, and GM also showed a most impressive Cadillac concept called the Converj, based on the same E-Flex technology, which was many people's pick of the show.   But then again the Chrysler 200C was a pretty neat vehicle too, and this one just happened to feature some cool Microsoft Surface technology on the stand, as well as a most impressive projection instrument panel also based on our technology and put together by Microsoft partner Vectorform.  And although Ford had less overt commitment to EV technology, their continued focus on in-vehicle technology was most impressive, with continued development and deployment of Sync, very strong technology solutions in the new Taurus (I particularly liked the programmable 'teenager key'), and the best 'intelligent car' video I've ever seen on the Lincoln stand.

In comparison, other companies thought it was impressive to field a plug-in hybrid... concept!  With, if I recall, an 8 mile range on battery power alone, proving the point I made in the original article about the adaptability (or lack of it) of the hybrid platforms.  That said, about time this made it to the actual market, no?  it's not that hard to engineer, as the aftermarket conversions have proven...