Car manufacturers are under pressure as never before. On the one hand, demand for the car has never been higher with new markets opening up in China, South Asia, India, Latin America Russia and Eastern Europe offering untold opportunities but on the other, they are having to address the near-universal worries about climate change, emissions and the worldwide demand for fuel.
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While there is some debate about just how much the internal combustion engine contributes to polluting the environment compared to other man-made sources, the fact is that they are seen by many governments and legislative bodies around the world as one of the prime culprits.
These are the short- and medium-term issues that the vehicle manufacturers are having to address, but there are also some very dark clouds looming on the horizon that many of the vehiclemakers are acknowledging, even if they are reluctant to talk about them publicly, and that is the threat of diminishing oil supply.
OPEC (the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries) has forecast that world energy demand will grow an average 1.7% per annum between 2005 and 2030. It expects oil to remain the leading source of energy worldwide during this 25-year period, with oil’s share of total world energy demand declining slightly from a current 39% to 36.5%.
Meanwhile, the International Energy Agency has forecast that oil demand will rise 34m barrels per day (mb/d) to 116mb/d by 2030. The US government has put that figure at 118mb/d by that time.
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By GlobalDataMuch of this demand is being driven by the increase in global vehicle production. Over the next quarter-century, it has been estimated that the emerging markets are going to drive up vehicle production far beyond anything seen to date. By 2030, total annual global production has been forecast to be around 106m units with China and India accounting for 62m units and 20m units respectively. The projected 116mb/d or 118mb/d will simply not meet this level of production. Some estimates have put this figure nearer to 140mb/d as the realistic alternative.
This, though, is a level that some senior people in the oil industry believe is unsustainable.
Christophe de Margerie, the CEO of Total, has already publicly stated that it will be difficult to reach even 100mb/d which he already considers to be “an optimistic case”. The International Energy Agency predicts that demand for oil will rise by 2% annually to 2012 – the year that the 100mb/d figure is projected to be reached.
The implication is that ‘peak oil’, the point at which global oil production goes into gradual but irreversible decline, may be just a few years away.
This is the medium-to-long-term scenario that the more longsighted of the world’s vehiclemakers are already trying to address, but it is emissions, specifically CO2, that has full attention in the short term. This is because of increasing pressure from government, regional, state and even city regulators as well as the social pressure to produce vehicles that produce fewer emissions and are more fuel-efficient.
As a consequence, three major powertrain trends that have emerged globally – advanced spark ignition (SI) engine technology, clean-diesel and hybridisation of the powertrain with electric assist and advanced battery technology. Hybrid-electric propulsion systems that include plug-in technology, electric vehicles with a better range and eventually hydrogen fuel cell powerplants are all considered to be viable alternatives for the medium-to-long-term future.
The dilemma for manufacturers is choosing the best combinations across a diverse vehicle portfolio. Diesel engines have historically been relied on for their high efficiency characteristics but are being challenged by strong emission legislation changes in different regions of the world while the variable fuel quality in different parts of the world is still a major issue.
At the same time, high-efficiency SI engine options have been eroding the efficiency gap that has existed between the two engine configurations. Adding hybrid-electrification to the SI engine further closes the gap and raises the question about just what is the preferred propulsion system of the future.
Whichever technology becomes the dominant one in the future, ‘downsizing’ is already proving to be an attractive short-term solution. The key issue, though, is that while the engine may be smaller in terms of cubic capacity, it has to deliver the same power and driveability of a large-capacity engine. Although there is no fixed formula, the cubic capacity of the downsized engine is 70% that of the full-sized one.
The question is how this can be achieved and the answer is simple: it is the turbocharger – a mechanical device that was all the rage in the 1980s when it was seen as a cheap and efficient way of boosting an engine’s power output. In those days, though, it had one major handicap – something called turbo lag, the length in time between the driver pushing the throttle and the engine responding. While the lag was reduced as the technology was developed, it was never completely eradicated.
In its current guise, though, these and many other issues have been addressed. The questions, though, are which engines are the most applicable to be turbocharged and in what markets.
More on this: Global market review of automotive turbochargers and superchargers – forecasts to 2014
