Continuing our review of the ways in which technologies come to market, Mathew Beecham talked with Mark Gostick, chief executive, Camcon Automotive. Camcon is an independent innovation business with a portfolio of applications for the Binary Actuator Technology invented by one of its founders. In the automotive industry, the system’s fast motion control helps vehicle makers improve fuel economy and reduce emissions.
From your perspective, how do the Tier Ones evaluate which technologies to back?
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The most important criteria are development risk and potential benefit, each of which can be rated on a high-low scale to guide investment decisions. Obviously, technologies that provide lowest risk with highest benefit would be the first choice, and so on across the matrix. The challenge for the Tier One supplier is to rate the parameters with sufficient accuracy, filtering out prejudice and ensuring that previous experience of comparable technology, whether positive or negative, is used appropriately.
The benefits of a new technology are often linked to the planned, or possible, introduction of new legislation, or the emergence of new trends in the vehicle market. The relevance of a particular technology to an individual Tier One supplier may also be linked to that supplier’s strategic market position, existing product range, customer relationships and future business model.
For decades, many Tier Ones supported very large R&D budgets, generating a wealth of new technologies many of which never entered production. This was often because of some late-stage development challenge or because proven existing technologies improved to a point where the alternative solution was no longer needed. Today, Tier One companies are much more rigorous in evaluating R&D projects, supporting only those that meet strict commercial criteria.
While this is a highly effective model, it does restrict blue-sky innovation that just might create a break-through technology that will give the Tier One a substantial competitive advantage. With fast changing demands imposed by developing legislation in areas like emissions and safety – and in user-driven areas like communications – there are growing opportunities for break-through solutions. The challenge is to achieve those break-throughs and bring it them to market without the cost and risk associated with the necessary expansion of the proven in-house R&D approach.
What can the smaller businesses do in order to tick all the boxes for the Tier Ones?
When a small, innovation business takes a new technology to a Tier One supplier, it faces a major hurdle. By implication, the Tier One has either previously overlooked the potential of the technology or assessed and rejected it. The challenge is to present sufficient new evidence to justify a change of position by the Tier One. This justification may be the innovative application of a proven technology from a parallel industry, the accumulation of physical test data to support a previously unproven concept, or the demonstration of an economic, production-feasible route to volume manufacture. The key to introducing a new technology off their existing plan is often to reduce uncertainty relating to concept feasibility because the small company has already successfully completed the higher risk phases of the development.
As a technology matures from theoretical concept, through hardware demonstrator, to application readiness, the associated technical risks are reduced and the benefits are more easily quantified. Correct timing of the approach to a potential customer is paramount. Too early and the remaining risks outweigh the potential advantages. Too late and a competing technology may establish a foothold. Tier Ones have an opportunity to bypass much of the early stage cost and risk by engaging with smaller innovation businesses. But those businesses must understand how the Tier One evaluates their technology and ensure that they have a robust commercial case and a realistic route to market too. It’s essential to engage at the right point in the development cycle – not too early – and to consider the Tier One’s commercial objectives alongside the technical objectives.
When the technology is presented by an external organisation, the protection of intellectual property, on both sides, can obstruct the exchange of detailed technical information in sufficient depth to allow fully accurate objective assessment. The commercial challenge for a small business is to build a compelling technical argument without revealing material that would enable the Tier One to continue the work in isolation.
Of course, ideally the Tier One would also like market risk reduced as well so contact with OEMs to demonstrate product pull is also important – especially when it comes to the small company arguing its corner on value!
Faced with the 2020 EC and 2025 US regulations for CO2 and FE, in what ways does your Intelligent Valve Actuation help OEMs?
The immediate potential of IVA is to provide a comfortable 15 percent improvement in fuel economy and CO2 through improving low-speed torque to allow higher gearing, deletion of the throttle to reduce pumping losses, and greater control of Exhaust Gas Recirculation. These are the typical benefits obtained by optimising valve lift, timing and duration across the load-speed map in a relatively straightforward implementation on an existing engine, requiring no major changes to the architecture or operating strategy.
By providing optimum valve events, IVA is also able to improve idle stability at low engine speeds, enabling engine manufacturers to specify a lower idle speed, significantly reducing CO2 emissions under urban driving conditions. Even vehicles that use stop-start strategies to cut CO2 can benefit by using IVA to improve refinement through minimising torque fluctuations during restart. From a technology company perspective the regulations are very helpful for creating the market for these new technologies and aligning the needs of OEMs and providers.
What stage of development is your IVA at and what’s next?
Following extensive simulation, we now have a physical system operating under closed loop control on a test rig that has validated the earlier modelling. The next stage for us is to apply the system to an existing engine, in partnership with a Tier One supplier interested in taking IVA forward to volume manufacture.
How does it compare with existing variable valve control systems?
Previous generation active valve systems have relied on mechanisms that still enforce an inter-dependency between lift and period, and have often also been energy-intensive, noisy and unable to operate fast enough to deliver full valve lift at high engine speeds. Our rotary actuator eliminates all of these problems, providing the benefits of fast, full-authority individual valve control without the compromises of earlier systems.
Because valve period, timing and lift are completely independent with IVA, the technology can provide variable duration at full lift, is not restricted to a fixed peak lift timing, and does not need to compromise lift to achieve early inlet valve closing (EIVC), a common strategy for increasing torque at lower engine speeds.
Which combustion strategies have been considered impractical that your IVA will make possible?
With IVA, it becomes much simpler to implement new combustion strategies, such as selective Miller Cycle operation, mixed two-stroke and four-stroke operation, or HCCI. Extending the inlet valve opening period to give Miller Cycle operation would be straightforward. The high response speed of the system makes two-stroke operation feasible at engine speeds below 3000rpm, in order to increase low-speed torque which is often a critical factor in engine downsizing. HCCI implementation could be made easier because at lower engine speeds we can accommodate multiple valve events during a 720° period, allowing us to follow the normal exhaust event with a separate, much smaller event during the induction stroke, which would induce the required volume of exhaust radicals.
Why do you think it has taken so long to bring the engine control system into the digital age?
The remainder of this interview is available on just-auto’s QUBE research service
