Leading automotive test system supplier AB Dynamics has launched a static driving simulator, the aVDS-S. It brings unprecedented levels of driver immersion to this sector of the market and enhances its growing portfolio of testing equipment that seamlessly links together to efficiently deliver highly detailed, consistent results.
Banbury based BMW performance car specialist, Everything M3s, celebrates the launch of its manual gearbox conversion kits for the E46 model M3 CSL with a short film that has been endorsed by leading supercar expert James Cottingham of DK Engineering.
StarterMotor, a charity founded to promote historic car usage, skills and industry involvement for the next generation, is proud to announce that it is now supported by historic car specialist, Blue Diamond Riley Services.
Tenneco Inc.’s Powertrain business group was named a GM Supplier of the Year by General Motors during a virtual ceremony honoring the recipients of the company’s 28th annual Supplier of the Year awards at the end of June.
During the event, GM recognized 116 of its best suppliers from 15 countries that have consistently exceeded GM’s expectations, created outstanding value or introduced innovations to the company. The awards ceremony was originally scheduled as a live-event to be held in March but was postponed due to the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. The recognition is for supplier performance in the 2019 calendar year.
This is the third consecutive year that a Tenneco business group has been honored and the second time Tenneco’s Powertrain business group has received the award.
“Our suppliers play a key role in delivering the products, services and experiences our customers deserve – and these award-winning suppliers went above and beyond our expectations,” said Shilpan Amin, GM vice president, Global Purchasing and Supply Chain.
“We also believe it’s important at this point in time to thank our entire supply base for their efforts the last few months to mitigate the impacts of COVID-19,” added Amin. “Not only have we been able to safely restart our manufacturing operations, our suppliers played a key role in assisting our initiatives to increase the supply of ventilators and personal protection equipment (PPE) for frontline health care workers to help save lives and keep communities safe.”
The Supplier of the Year award winners were chosen by a global team of GM purchasing, engineering, quality, manufacturing and logistics executives. Winners were selected based on performance criteria in Product Purchasing, Global Purchasing and Manufacturing Services, Customer Care and Aftersales, and Logistics.
“Tenneco is honored to be named a recipient of this prestigious award from one of our most trusted industry partners, General Motors, and it is truly a testament to our 32,000 Powertrain team members around the world, who strive to produce quality powertrain components every day,” said Brian Kesseler, CEO of Tenneco. “This award reinforces Tenneco Powertrain’s strong position in the global market for highly engineered engine components and highlights our commitment to global customers to develop innovations that deliver optimal fuel economy, meet and exceed the most stringent emission targets and enhance vehicle performance.”
Delphi Technologies, a global provider of aftermarket service solutions, has added to its highly-proven braking program in Europe. In 2019 the company launched more than 130 new brake pads and discs for popular new vehicles, including a growing parc of Asian applications and hybrid and electric cars. Fitted to an additional 19 million vehicles, the company now offers more than 97 percent coverage on brake discs and 98.58 percent on pads, in Europe. The latest introductions, on top of an already extensive line-up, will allow independent garages to meet the needs of a rapidly evolving vehicle parc with the very highest quality replacement parts, for fast, money-making repairs.
Quick off the mark for new vehicle applications
Delphi Technologies is quick to bring the right parts to the aftermarket, in the shortest possible timeframe. For pads, one of the first critical items to be replaced, that typically means within 6 months of vehicle launch, 12 months for discs. Last year, as an example, it launched new components for the Range Rover Evoque (06/19), Volvo S60 (05/19>), BMW 7 series (03/19>) and Mercedes B-class (01/19>).
“We’re particularly proud of our many first-to-market applications,” comments James Tibbert, EMEA Marketing Director, Delphi Technologies Aftermarket. “By being first on vehicles such as the Audi Q8 (02/2018>) and Toyota Supra (06/19>), Land Rover Defender (2020>) and Volkswagen Golf MK8 (2020>) the independent aftermarket can access the repair opportunity on the latest vehicles even sooner. As well as generating additional revenue from a best-practice, OE-quality service, garages will be primed to lock in future high-value repairs too.”
Fast-growing service opportunity on Asian vehicles
To meet the rapidly growing demand for replacement parts, the company is extending its line-up for Japanese and Korean applications. The expanded range includes more than 2,600 parts (the whole braking range for Asian VMs) fitted to popular vehicles such as Mazda 3 (01/19>), Hyundai i30 Fastback (11/18>), Nissan Qashqai (04/19>) and Toyota Corolla (02/19>), and covers over 99 percent of the European parc on pads and 97.7 percent on discs.
“The likes of Kia, Hyundai, Toyota and Nissan are continuing to gain share from their western rivals,” adds Tibbert. “With a parc of 90 million region wide, up 20 million in just the last five years, Asian brands represent a fast-growing service opportunity for both specialist and multi-brand garages. Our newly extended range, one of the best in the industry, will give garages the quality parts needed to service this increasingly important fleet, and with it a lucrative revenue stream.”
Leading the charge on hybrid and electric vehicles
Delphi Technologies is also introducing new product lines to support the rapidly growing hybrid and electric (HEV) market. Leveraging its expertise as a pioneer in propulsion technologies, solutions and services, coupled with a rich heritage as a leading braking manufacturer, the company already covers more than 95 percent of the European HEV parc on pads, and 93 percent on discs. This includes applications such as the Toyota Corolla (02/19>), Yaris (04/15>), Auris (12/18>) and Prius (01/16>), Mitsubishi Outlander (09/18>), Lexus ES 300h (07/18>), Peugeot 508 (08/19>), Volvo XC40 (06/19>), Mazda CX30 (07/19>), and ensuring the aftermarket is well positioned to access this fast-growing service opportunity with proven quality products.
“Whilst HEVs may be unfamiliar territory for many workshops, using products from a market leader in both HEV and braking technology, means that technicians can service these, and other vehicles, in complete confidence. Knowing they’re installing a product that has been engineered for optimum noise, wear and stopping performance, just like the OE,” Tibbert concludes.
For 2020, the Toyota Gazoo Racing UK team in the British Touring Car Championship (BTCC) has engaged D2H Advanced Technologies to provide them with computational fluid dynamics (CFD) modelling in helping to develop the BTCC Corolla’s aerodynamic performance. Virtual analysis suggested the results have saved 0.75 seconds per lap across a variety of circuits, and the car has been a challenger for the lead in the second meeting of this year’s delayed season.
D2H Advanced Technologies is the new name for a rapidly expanding specialist technology and engineering consultancy grown from a foundation in elite motorsport. Since being established five years ago, the company has extended its expertise into a wide range of industrial, technology and high-performance sectors, and the rebrand from D2H Engineering to D2H Advanced Technologies reflects its increased capability to deliver technological solutions to a wide range of customers, including automotive.
MAHLE Powertrain’s latest development of its passive MAHLE Jet Ignition (MJI) technology can now be easily added into existing engine designs with only minimal changes to the final machining process. Continued work throughout the lockdown period means that passive MJI can now be installed as a press-in unit into engines utilising an M12 sparkplug, or larger.
“As the automotive industry seeks ways to unlock incremental efficiency and performance benefits from the internal combustion engine, jet – or pre-chamber – ignition technology is rising to the fore,” explains MAHLE Powertrain’s head of new technology and data management, Adrian Cooper. “We are beginning to see jet ignition being adopted into high-end production powertrains, such as Maserati’s recent Nettuno V6.”
MAHLE Powertrain has over 10 years’ experience developing its novel MJI pre-chamber ignition technology, which enables a highly efficient combustion process using either a passive or active system, suitable for use with either port or direct fuel injection systems. “We have worked with manufacturers and pinnacle motorsport such as F1 on the integration of this technology for close to ten years,” says Cooper. “However, our recent work on passive MJI makes the technology more accessible for adoption by mass-produced engines even as a retro-fit to existing designs, as part of a highly efficient powertrain.”
The passive MJI system features a small pre-chamber, which when ignited discharges extremely fast-moving, heated jets through a series of nozzles. This provides multiple ignition sites within the main combustion chamber, which leads to rapid, highly stable combustion and significantly improved knock mitigation characteristics. This enables the use of a higher compression ratio and in testing, up to a 10% reduction in fuel consumption has been measured.
“We have also used the opportunity during the pandemic to further develop the cold-start and emissions performance,” continues Cooper. “Through careful development, we’ve been able to engineer a system that operates under these conditions without requiring a second ignition source, enabling the system to be applied to existing cylinder heads without the requirement for costly re-engineering. We have adapted an MJI-equipped production engine to start, run and perform reliably at -8 degrees C with equivalent catalyst light-off capability to conventional spark ignition. This is very encouraging, and we’ll be continuing development to lower this figure substantially.”
Cooper stresses that the key to maximising the benefits of MJI is to understand the vehicle manufacturer’s requirements and develop the correct combustion strategy accordingly. “Our experience of integrating these systems means we can tailor MJI to many different applications, from low cost hybrid ICE to down-sized, high specific power engines or even to heavy-duty gas engines. While the engineering effort to integrate the MJI system has been simplified, other engine systems need to be further optimised in order to gain the largest benefits, which might include higher compression ratio, revised inlet camshaft profile and re-matching of the boosting system. A whole system engineering approach is the way to get the best from MJI.”
MAHLE Powertrain is now working on the development of a demonstrator engine to showcase the technology’s potential in applications between 80kW to 120kW.
From now on, MAHLE will focus even more strongly on its strategic future priorities. The Stuttgart-based technology group is therefore maintaining its investments in research and development at a high level despite the crisis. MAHLE will further strengthen its research and development activities by expanding its global competence centers, including those in Germany and China. The key development areas are battery systems and hydrogen applications—for which MAHLE already supplies numerous innovations. MAHLE has recently begun to install hydrogen testing infrastructure at its headquarters in Stuttgart. MAHLE CEO Jörg Stratmann has weighed in to the topical debate on how to achieve the climate targets, advocating an approach that is open to all technologies: “We must tackle the climate targets using effective technologies and all the solutions currently available to us.”
“Viewed from an international perspective, there will not be one single powertrain of the future. That’s why MAHLE is continuing to follow its dual strategy: electrification, development of the fuel cell, and the use of hydrogen and alternative fuels in an intelligently electrified combustion engine,” said Dr. Jörg Stratmann, Chairman of the MAHLE Management Board and CEO at a press conference in Stuttgart on Friday. “At the moment, the change in powertrain technologies is driven primarily by political objectives. The current one-dimensional debate focused on a single drive is not productive. We want a dialog that has a basis in technology.”
As part of the expansion of its global R&D infrastructure, the group has recently set up a new competence center for mechatronics in Kornwestheim, near Stuttgart. In the future, all international activities in this field will be coordinated from this location. In Fellbach, also near Stuttgart, a new, ultramodern test bench for electric drives has been commissioned, which is one of very few of its kind in Germany. An e-mobility development center in Suzhou/China is scheduled for completion in December. MAHLE will pool its expertise in mechatronics, thermal management, and fluid management at the site and work on solutions specifically for the Chinese market.
MAHLE sees the use of hydrogen as key when it comes to shaping carbon-neutral mobility—both in fuel cell technology and in the combustion engine. Through policy initiatives and a highly diverse range of collaboration agreements in the industrial sector, the group is working hard to accelerate the establishment of these technologies. At MAHLE, research and development activities relating to hydrogen are pooled in a project house.
At the press conference, MAHLE’s Head of Corporate Research and Advanced Engineering, Dr. Martin Berger, presented a current project involving a type IV hydrogen tank. The design consists of a liner made of plastic and an outer casing made of carbon fiber. MAHLE is working on the development of a new production process for this tank that will increase its hydrogen storage density and make it cheaper at the same time. The group is also installing hydrogen infrastructure to test fuel cells and hydrogen-powered combustion engines.
To accelerate the market penetration of battery electric mobility, MAHLE is working intently on the subject of battery cooling. To allow for fast charging, the temperature in the battery cell needs to be evenly distributed and must not rise too high. On this point, Martin Berger gave an insight into another of MAHLE’s new developments—by harnessing the concept of immersion cooling, charging times can be reduced and batteries made smaller. He commented that: “Immersion cooling paves the way for a whole new generation of battery systems. With this technology, electric vehicles will be cheaper, lighter, and more resource-efficient.”
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