VIEWPOINT | A NEW HOLISTIC TOOL TO ENABLE TOTAL VEHICLE FUEL EFFICIENCY

Today's carmakers are pursuing every avenue to enhance the efficiency of tomorrow's cars and trucks. That means looking for and assessing new approaches to everything from aerodynamics to rolling resistance and manufacturing to powertrain and lightweight materials. But which options are best? How does a solution in one area impact another? Which tradeoffs produce the most cost-effective result?

These are questions that Ricardo plc, the U.K.-based global technology consulting firm, help clients answer every day. Now the firm has developed a powerful new software tool called IGNITE that companies can use themselves to quickly determine which combinations of product changes will deliver the biggest efficiency benefits. Thomas Apostolos, president of the company's North & South American unit, Ricardo Inc., describes how the new software program can help product developers find and focus on the most productive improvements.

How would you describe the industry's challenge today?

Automakers are working hard to meet the EPA-mandated future fuel economy standard, while maintaining brand identity and giving the consumer cost-competitive, exciting products. To achieve success, the most likely outcome will be a combination of integrated vehicle improvements.

They continue to pursue specific enhancements at a component level, system level and vehicle level, such as downsized and boosted engines or lightweight body structures. But they recognize it requires a holistic approach.

What is IGNITE?

It's a desktop computer program that integrates many of the modeling and simulation tools Ricardo has been developing for many years.

These tools have been centered around the powertrain, but IGNITE expands them to include the complete vehicle. It's a simulation tool embedded in a Ricardo process we call Total Vehicle Fuel Efficiency. It went into beta testing in early 2013 and was made available to our customers in August.

Realizing that model complexity can quickly spin out of control, we made two key decisions when we designed IGNITE. First, we want a clean user environment without sacrificing power and flexibility. We created a workspace with a lot of white space, and we introduced layering. We embraced an industry open source framework, which allows IGNITE to flex to the user's requirements, whether it's fast concept-level studies or high-fidelity transient vehicle dynamics. Second, we embedded advanced design-of-experiments (DOE) and optimization features, an industry first.

IGNITE is very agnostic from a technology standpoint. It applies models without picking favorites. It enables the user to apply any combination of technologies and parameters. It shows the trade-offs between economy, performance and costs. It doesn't tell you how to achieve results, but it does show you the best places to look. It's all math-based, and we're very confident it can deliver the number it says it can.

How does IGNITE work?

It starts with building a vehicle model from a library of components or by customizing one of the vehicle templates in IGNITE. Once the virtual vehicle is built, the user can run various scenarios on the desktop. If aerodynamics improved 3%, what would happen? What about lower-rolling-resistance tires? There are thousands of parameters the IGNITE user can investigate.

IGNITE can tell you very quickly what to do to achieve the biggest improvements. It helps an organization allocate its resources to get the best possible bang for the buck. This is especially important these days, because all the obvious and isolated ways to improve vehicle efficiency have been done. Now it's a question of aggregating small improvements.

We believe IGNITE will be especially powerful in bringing improvements to the niche vehicles in a company's lineup. Maybe it's a high-performance car or one specific powertrain combination that's challenging. It's not a high-volume model, but it needs improvement to help contribute to the company's overall fuel economy target. These are the primary types of projects we expect IGNITE to be used on.

What has the reaction been to IGNITE?

The reception has been extremely positive, and not just among vehicle manufacturers. Tier one suppliers can use it to see how the components they make contribute to overall vehicle efficiency. It enables a supplier to show how an enhancement to its own product can contribute to overall vehicle efficiency.

Some customers are even using it to help them reduce assembly and production costs.

Do you have success stories?

We've been working for several years on the U.S. military's Fuel Efficient Demonstrator vehicle, a modified Humvee. IGNITE predicted we could improve fuel efficiency 70% using conventional fuel and existing technologies, and we did it. The vehicle has a supercharged 4-cylinder engine, modified drivetrain, low-rolling-resistance tires and aluminum chassis.

We also worked with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to model the auto industry's ability to achieve the agency's proposed 54.5 mpg fuel economy goal. When we later applied IGNITE, it found the same solution much quicker.

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