Last week we discussed with Lee Kernich - the Mitsubishi Motors Australia head of product engineering - his background and that of his favourite locally developed products. This week we move onto coming automotive technologies - where he sees the industry going and which technologies will be most important to that progress.
As with all automotive engineers, meeting government targets for emissions and fuel economy are uppermost in his mind.
"There's going to be a lot of pressure - in the latter part of this decade especially - on fuel consumption reduction and it's going to be very interesting to see how the industry copes with that, given that Australians love their large vehicles with large engines. Holden is building a new engine plant at the moment to make the new V6 engine, so the on-going commitment to large V6 engines in this country is pretty strong."
"I think that the use of new materials to reduce the weight of cars is very important, because the safety features that are being added to vehicles is making them heavier. Perhaps not so much in the use of radical new materials, but more clever use of existing materials is going to be an important factor in the future. I think that more clever use of steel in more carefully designed body structures, taking advantages of manufacturing techniques which are now becoming mature - tailor-welded blanks with two or three different thicknesses [of sheet] , and hydroforming. The tailor-welded blanks enable larger stampings with fewer overlaps and fewer spot-welds. All that can increase body strength and rigidity and reduce weight."
"I think that cylinder de-activation has some real possibilities to reduce pumping losses by using wider throttle openings at lower loads. A similar thing can be achieved with direction injection by use of large amounts of EGR [exhaust gas recirculation]. There is a lot of work going on overseas - I know that Lotus is working on hydraulic valve actuation in a camless engine. That would enable them to easily deactivate cylinders and have cylinders running at very low loads. [Such an engine] could even use compression ignition, meaning that spark ignition and diesel engines could merge in their characteristics. Under certain operating conditions, these hydraulically controlled valve engines could use EGR for ignition rather than sparkplugs. All of those technologies could merge in the future to give us a vehicle which is a lot more efficient with a lot more features."
"One of the things that will come into effect are more hybrid style vehicles. In Australia we like a lot of power but we really only use it in bursts - and the bursts can come from a supplementary electrical source. Vehicles with combined starter/alternators and a high voltage electrical system - commonly called 42 volts - facilitate a lot of these features. I don't think that hybrid vehicles will [successfully] happen in Australia in the next five years. But if we can foresee a time when fossil fuels are much less freely available - or it's less sociably acceptable to burn large amounts of them - there needs to be a stepping stone between the current internal combustion engine and fuel cells, which are touted as the next big thing. Fuel cells are obviously still a long, long way off in terms of commercial viability."
"With the impending emissions legislation tightening-up - moving towards Euro II and Euro III and after that, on to [even] tighter emissions - there will be a standardisation of emissions-type technology for internal combustion engines. That's in terms of the throttle control and emission control strategies, [but] that won't necessarily include [petrol] direct injection."
"I read with interest what is happening with diesels and it seems that they make huge inroads in Europe but they will struggle to meet US emissions - particularly particulate emissions - and so just exactly where diesels will end up, I am not sure. Probably, we will see more diesels in this country."
Currently, no Australian domestic manufacturer builds a car with stability control - despite the system being available on some relatively low-priced imported models. Will it be coming to local Mitsubishis?
"I am sure that we will be seeing stability control on more cars in Australia in the future. I am not at liberty to talk about Mitsubishi products, because I don't want to reveal our future plans. But I think that stability control is one of the techniques that is enabling rear-wheel drive cars to approach the benign safe handling characteristics of front-wheel drive cars, especially on slippery roads. I am not saying that it has no application on front-wheel drive cars but I think that rear-wheel drive cars need it more than front-wheel drive."
"I haven't had the opportunity to evaluate brake assist but from everything that I have read about it, it sounds very interesting and quite promising. I gather that it basically judges that the driver is in an emergency situation and then without taking over gives him some assistance to achieve what he or she is trying to achieve in a shorter timespan."
Especially in complex areas such as electronics, suppliers seem to be driving much of the technological progress. Companies like Bosch and Siemens are making major breakthroughs which are then being adopted by manufacturers. Has the relationship between suppliers and automotive manufacturers changed?
"Mitsubishi is still very strong on in-house development and control of technology. But we - and our parent company - are working dramatically more closely with suppliers on development that we did five or ten years ago. I would say that the suppliers provide the know-how to ensure that the manufacturers who are involved with them don't get left behind, but still some of the initiative for new development is coming from the customer company themselves."
"For a number of vehicle systems the approach these days [is to have supplier provide turn-key solutions] but the customer - that is us - still has its own sign-off requirements and targets that have to be met by the supplier, so it's not a case of us saying 'please supply an engine management system' and walking away and getting what we get. It's still a Mitsubishi - it still has to meet Mitsubishi standards and that is what the supplier has to satisfy us that they have achieved."
Australia is currently in the grip of a power race - standard bog-stock Falcons now have 182kW and locally developed cars are now available with up to 300kW. What does Mitsubishi -with nothing even remotely as powerful in its stable, even in its sporting cars - think of this market trend?
"Well I think that those vehicles create a lot of publicity for those companies, and certainly they have a following as well. But it's not Mitsubishi's strategy to try to slavishly follow and compete with that because basically we're not in that power race. The standard vehicles from all those companies have quite adequate - in fact very delightful - power outputs for most users. [But] it's much more important to us to have an engine that operates in a very fuss-free and refined and controlled manner and still has quite spirited power output."
And finally, how does Lee feel as he heads into work each day?
"I started at the beginning by saying that this is a demanding business to work in and what keeps us coming back for more is that we love the buzz of being involved in the development of these products. In many ways the automotive industry is the manufacturing industry that others like to look to to see how to shorten lead times, satisfy market desire and introduce the latest in engineering development and manufacturing techniques. It's very exciting all of the time to be part of that."
"But it also carries with it great responsibility because we know that our customers are real people and that they have families, that they live in the real world of often adverse road conditions. They have to share the road with other users who may not be as responsible as they are, or driving vehicles as safe as theirs."
"What our customers want is a safe, trouble-free product and it is our responsibility to ensure that that's what they get."
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