Word of the day: Electrification

At this week’s Convergence in Detroit, Mark Reuss, NA president of GM, told a crowd at Tuesday’s keynote, “Hybridization is no longer enough; electrification is the future.”

What struck me most about this statement was the word, electrification; I had yet to hear it in the automotive context. So I did what anyone with a rocket stick would do, I googled it on my way home. The trail led back to GM’s blue paper on sustainable urban mobility, Roadmap to 2030.

For some time now I’ve been thinking about getting an electric or hybrid car but have been bemoaning the lack of choice. Apparently, the fact that a new ground-transportation paradigm requires wide-spread societal alignment hadn’t occurred to me. You just put up a few recharging stations, right?

GM EN-V electric concept car
Source Wikipedia

GM makes eight recommendations in their blue paper, two of which I find to be particularly interesting:

• Integrate electrically powered, connected vehicles into a multi-modal transport system that incorporates sophisticated inter-city transport, comprehensive subway systems, traditional vehicle movement, and specialized smaller urban vehicles
   
• Identify a series of “lighthouse” projects to demonstrate the potential and viability of connected electrically driven vehicles in a controlled environment such as an eco-city or small town

It is nice to see a company taking such a definitive stand and boldly painting a vision for the future; this kind of creative thinking is what we need.

I was surprised to discover the blue paper is from 2010; still if you haven’t already read it, it is worth a look. You can download the paper from the GM web site.

Hanging out with the cool kids at the EcoCAR booth

If you read Jin Xu's post earlier this week, you are already up to speed on the EcoCAR 2 competition established by General Motors and the U.S. Department of Energy. If you didn't read it, here's the skinny: To drive home with first prize, university teams must reduce the environmental impact of a 2013 Chevy Malibu without compromising performance, safety, or consumer acceptability. If that sounds hard, it is. Which explains why, out of 150 university teams that applied to compete, only 15 made the grade.

Today, at SAE Convergence, I was lucky enough to meet two of the talented young people participating in this competition: Ahmed Uddin from Wayne State University and Andrew Palmer from Ohio State University. Ahmed and Andrew had just finished delivering remarks at the EcoCAR booth when they stopped to chat with me about their projects.

The EcoCAR 2 Chevy Malibu

The Wayne State team dub themselves the Hybrid Warriors, and they are modifying the Malibu with a parallel-through-the-road PHEV. In a nutshell, the modified Malibu has two power trains, with an electric motor in back and a 2.4L engine in front. By taking this parallel approach, the team has actually upped performance, even though they replaced the stock engine with a power plant that cranks out less power, takes up less room, and puts out fewer emissions. Before these modifications, the car went from 0 to 60 in 9.5 seconds; now it takes only 8.9 seconds.

Meanwhile, the Ohio State team has opted for a series-parallel PHEV that uses an electric motor for the rear axle and a 1.8 L engine for the front. The systems can operate in charge-depleting, charge-sustaining series, and charge-sustaining parallel modes. Personally, I was fascinated by Andrew Palmer's description of the team's infotainment system (redesigning the center stack is an optional component of the EcoCAR 2 competition) and how they aim to make phone connectivity more seamless.

Cooler yet, the team is working on augmented reality, using a BlackBerry PlayBook. Picture this: You hold a PlayBook over the engine of your car, and the screen overlays a transparent view of the engine. The possibilities for this kind of functionality are enormous, and I invite you to check out two blog posts (here and here) from another Andrew — QNX's Andrew Poliak — for examples of how augmented reality could pimp your next ride.

Before you go, remember to follow @QNX_Auto on Twitter, where I will continue to tweet out reports from SAE Convergence.

Getting schooled for the future: EcoCAR 2 Year 2 Kicks Off!

Guest post from Jin Xu, global education program manager for QNX Software Systems

Jin Xu

Back in July, my colleague Romain Saha wrote about QNX Software Systems' role in EcoCar 2, a three-year competition established by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) and General Motors that challenges university teams to redesign the powertrain of a 2013 Chevy Malibu. To win, teams must reduce the environmental impact of the powertrain without compromising performance, safety, or consumer acceptability — a tall order! Last month, I got to take part in the much-anticipated kickoff to the competition, the Fall Workshop, and learned some interesting things along the way.

Before I delve into the details, allow me to set the stage. Competition to participate in EcoCAR 2 is fierce: out of the 150 universities that applied to compete, only 15 made it through — two of them from Canada. Each year, about 300 students contribute to their respective teams in a range of skillsets, from mechanical and electrical engineering to software development, business management, and community outreach.

Breeding ground
The EcoCAR 2 initiative is part of the DOE's 24-year-old series of advanced vehicle technology competitions, which are a mainstay of the automotive industry and have become a veritable breeding ground for talent. More than 70% of participants will land jobs in the automotive industry and, in a true testament to the competition's "circle of life," many student participants return as organizers and sponsors. The Fall Workshop served as a primer for participants, including training sessions for the donated components and software, including our QNX CAR 2 application platform. Suffice it to say, EcoCAR 2 is a big deal — and we're proud to be a part of it.

Center stack competition

For the first time, competing
teams can create their own

center stack

So what stood out about this year's workshop? For the first time in the competition's history, a reconfigurable center stack is being offered to the competition teams, a nod to how both EcoCar and the larger automotive industry have expanded beyond their mechanical roots. Students have been asked to use Freescale's i.mx6 Sabre ARD board and to choose their preferred software to design the center stack of the future. Each team will have to complete their center stack design by May 2013 to be eligible for the Freescale Innovation Award. A representative from QNX Software Systems will serve as a judge for these awards and will evaluate the designs for look and feel, responsiveness, completeness, and overall innovation.

Center stack platform: The
Freescale i.mx6 Sabre ARD board

On the first day of the workshop, we demonstrated the QNX CAR 2 application platform on the Freescale Sabre board. All 15 teams attended our training session, and we plan to provide them with further training on the platform in early 2013.

EcoCAR comes to SAE Convergence
If you’re in Detroit this week, you’re in luck. EcoCAR will hold remarks in their booth, M15, at SAE Convergence on October 16 from 12:15 to 1 pm ET. The remarks will feature speakers from the DOE and two of the university participants, Ohio State and Wayne State.

I was impressed how just a few days in September could hold so much potential for the future of our industry. It was an honor to take part in the EcoCAR 2 workshop on behalf of QNX Software Systems, and I am excited to see how the students will use the QNX CAR 2 application platform to drive automotive technology forward!

The hidden cost of ethanol

Because of the drought plaguing the mid-west, about 2.2 billion less bushels of corn will be produced this year. That correspondingly means a huge hike in corn prices, from $6/bushel in May to a record high of $8.50/bushel today, a 40% increase. That fact got me thinking about ethanol.

Oil independence sounds like a good thing, right? Grow our own fuel, from a renewable resource, without strip mining the land or polluting the earth. Who wouldn’t want that?



There seems to be a good deal of debate about how ethanol is produced and what impact it actually has. Massive lobbyists are on both sides—agribusiness on one side, and petroleum on the other—so it pays to look at where the information is coming from.

The unfortunate reality of current corn production is that it needs a lot of oil to keep it going. Fossil fuels are used for farm machinery, fertilizer, and pesticides. Raising corn uses a terrific amount of fresh water, which is not an unlimited resource. Because of these factors, raising corn for ethanol does not necessarily reduce the carbon footprint of your gas tank—in fact, it may increase it.

Some plants are much better than corn when it comes to carbon footprint, like switchgrass, algae, sawdust, or sugar cane. These all use either material that is already waste or much more of the plant. Corn ethanol the way it's made today uses at most 50% of the kernel—just the starch. The rest of the kernel, stalk, husk, cob, is cellulose waste that could be used, but current production methods can’t take advantage of it.

Unfortunately, you can’t pick where your ethanol comes from. I want a green tank, but I can’t choose the source of any ethanol I might buy. Because ethanol is primarily made from corn today, for now it would seem that the balance tilts away from ethanol as a truly green choice. That isn’t to say that all biofuels will always be problematic. There’s certainly something to be said for voting for further ethanol development and breaking our dependency on oil. But I feel that in the current biofuel environment, voting for ethanol is really just lining the pockets of agribusiness. We’ve gotten the “green” message ahead of the true bigger picture of the implications of ethanol production.

(But if you want to be truly green, your best bet is to be a vegan that bikes everywhere. That’s a little ambitious—even for me. As a compromise, just drive an electric car and charge it up with your windmill.)

QNX CAR goes to school

A while back, my good friends at Freescale approached me about sponsoring a program called EcoCAR 2. Established by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) and General Motors, EcoCAR 2 challenges 15 North American universities to create a greener vehicle without compromising performance, safety, and consumer acceptability.

This initiative isn't really new as it builds on a 23-year history of DOE advanced vehicle technology competitions. What is new is that, for the first time, students are being asked to include an infotainment system in the vehicle.

This is an exciting opportunity for QNX. Being able to work with young minds and supporting university research has always been a priority, but this is the first time we've been able to engage so directly with the next generation of automotive engineers. We are enabling them in much the same way that we enable our customers, with full access to the QNX CAR application platform as the baseline for their systems.

This is year one of a three-year program. Given the innovation that has gone into the QNX CAR platform by QNX and its ecosystem in the last year alone, I cannot imagine what the bright young minds will come up with for 2014. Looking forward to it...

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Resources

• Learn more about EcoCAR 2
  
• Follow EcoCAR 2 on Facebook
  
• Check out the EcoCAR 2 blog
  
• Tune in to the EcoCAR 2 YouTube channel

 

Doug Newcomb goes social with new car tech blog

Lots of people blog about automotive technology, but few have the chops to grab my attention. Doug Newcomb is an exception, and I invite you to check out his blog, which came online two weeks ago.

The blog may be new, but Doug himself has deep roots in automotive journalism. Among other things, he created the car technology section of Edmunds.com; edited several publications, including Car Audio and Electronics, Car Stereo Review, and Road&Track Road Gear; and contributed to many others, including Popular Mechanics, MSN Autos, Corvette Quarterly, and SEMA News. On top of that, he wrote Car Audio for Dummies.

So far, Doug's blog posts have run the gamut — from the new Garmin Suzuki infotainment system to the virtual exhaust sounds emitted by Audi's e-tron supercar. Speaking of which, here's a video showing how those sounds were created:



To learn more about this and other developments in car tech, take a minute to visit Doug's blog or connect with him on Facebook.

PostScript: In case you're wondering, I wrote this post before I discovered that Doug had written a short article on QNX's membership in the Car Connectivity Consortium. Holy synchronicity, Batman!
 

The need for green in automotive

The need for environmentally friendly practices and products has become so painfully obvious in recent years that it’s no longer possible to call it a debate or a controversy. Nowhere is this more conspicuous than in the automotive industry.

“The personal automobile is the single greatest polluter as emissions from millions of vehicles on the road add up.”— US Environmental Protection Agency

Working at QNX has given me insight into just how complex the problem is and how going green in automotive is not going to be a revolution. I've come to realize that it will require a good number of players on a large number of fronts.

An example of what happens when
your car takes way too long to boot. :-)

What we at QNX are doing to move the cause forward is called fast booting. Some operating systems take up to 60 seconds to boot. Can you imagine getting in your car, turning the ignition, and waiting a minute for your radio to work? Me either.

To prevent such undignified delays, these systems typically do not power down completely. Instead, they suspend to RAM while the vehicle is off. This lets the system boot ‘instantly’ whenever the ignition turns over. But because there’s a small current draw to keep RAM alive, this trickle continually drains the battery. This might have minimal consequences today (other than cost to the manufacturer, which is a whole other story) but in the brave new world of electric and hybrid cars, battery capacity equals mileage. Typical systems thus shorten the range of green vehicles and, in the case of hybrids, force drivers to use not-so-green systems more often. More importantly perhaps, these systems give would-be buyers ‘range anxiety’. Indeed, according to the Green Market’s Richard Matthews, battery life is one of the top reasons the current adoption rate is so low.

A little-known feature of QNX technology helps solve this problem.

Architects using the QNX OS can organize the boot process to bring up complex systems in a matter of seconds. Ours is not an all-or-nothing proposition as it is with monolithic operating systems that must load an entire system before anything can run – Windows and Linux are prime examples. QNX supports a gradual phasing in of system functionality to get critical systems up and running while it loads less-essential features in the background. A QNX-based system can start from a cold boot every time. Which means no battery drain while the car is off.

And while this is no giant leap for mankind it is certainly a solid step in the right direction. If the rest of us (consumers, that is) contributed similarly by trading in our clunkers for greener wheels, the industry could undoubtedly move forward in leaps and bounds. I suppose this means I’m going to have to take a long hard look at my 2003 Honda Civic.
 

Harman infotainment systems gear up with QNX technology

Paul Leroux

If you've ever driven an Audi, BMW, Ferrari, Mercedes, or Porsche, chances are it used a sound system or infotainment unit from Harman International.

Mind you, Harman isn't just about the high end. They also offer a scalable infotainment platform that can target both higher-end and lower-end vehicles. And they aren't just about European cars, either. Earlier this year, they became the first non-Japanese supplier to supply an infotainment system (the QNX-based Entune system) to Toyota. They also supply systems to Hyundai, Lexus, Subaru, and Ssangyong.

Since 2003, Harman has used the QNX OS as the software platform for its infotainment products. (In fact, Harman owned QNX Software Systems for about 5 years, before QNX became a subsidiary of RIM.) In this video, Rick Kreifeldt, Harman's VP of global automotive research and innovation, discusses how QNX technology and expertise help Harman cut time-to-market and create greener products. Check it out:



A version of this post originally appeared on the On Q blog.