Despite government attempts to stimulate the industry, many leading brands have had no choice other than to reduce or in some cases stop production of many of their models. The only vehicles that are holding up in terms of sales volume are small environmentally friendly cars. It is clear to most people in the industry that even when the current financial crisis is over, the future automotive market will have changed permanently and that fuel efficiency is now a qualifier rather than a differentiator.

The WIMRC strategy is reinforced by these changes. The time scale for introduction of environmentally friendly vehicles, with built-in intelligence enabling them to be driven in a more efficient manner, has undoubtedly been reduced. Alongside this, the major car manufacturers’ financial problems, caused by the slump in sales, means that they are increasingly reliant on organisations such as WIMRC to perform longer term research, as they have been forced to concentrate more on short term survival.

This is compounded by changes in government funding priorities, such as the Technology Strategy Board (TSB) led ‘Low Carbon Vehicle’ initiative, where funds are being channelled more into support for next generation vehicles, rather than longer term more adventurous work. In parallel with the WIMRC IEV theme, nearer to market work at Warwick continues with a number of large projects working closely with automotive suppliers, ensuring that full impact from work previously performed within WIMRC is gained.

With world vehicle numbers set to grow from 600 million today to 2,900 million by 2050 the theme of intelligent and eco-friendly vehicles is not only an important research topic but also represents a large potential marketplace for UK industry to attack. Intelligence within a vehicle can help to reduce the impact of congestion, improve safety, assist drivers by decreasing their workload, increase comfort and also reduce the fuel consumption and emissions.

A key problem in introducing radically new vehicles to the market which have either intelligent driver aids, or completely new drive trains (such as hybrids), is making them desirable to the end customer. This requires that the driving experience is fun and safe. WIMRC has had two leading research groups working on Experiential Engineering and the Human Machine Interface (HMI) to ensure that new vehicles are designed around the driver and that the driver interface is designed for easy and safe use. The new vehicles will have increasingly complex wiring harnesses and communication networks to link all of the intelligent controllers. Our Systems Electronics team have been developing strategies that will allow vehicles to diagnose faults in these systems and where possible reconfigure them to keep running until a permanent fix can be achieved.

Hybrid vehicles with multiple propulsion systems offer benefits in terms of fuel economy if driven correctly. However, current products rarely live up to expectations as drivers fail to drive them in the correct manner. Our hybrid team has been developing driver behaviour models that reflect real driver styles so that realistic  valuations of these power trains can be made.

As well as making vehicles more intelligent there are other ways of improving their environmental performance. The use of sustainable materials in their production and as a source of fuel is a major aspect of work in the eco-friendly vehicle sub-theme. Our Wealth Out of Waste (WOW) project is developing solid state fermentation processes to convert agricultural waste products into usable chemicals. Already work has demonstrated that the serial use of different fungi with intermediate chemical extraction using water and solvent based leeching processes can extract a mixture of sugars, fatty acids and phenolics that can then be converted into chemical feedstocks and bio-fuels. Initial studies show that 10% of the mass can be recovered as high value chemical components and it is hoped that the next phase of experiments will increase this significantly.

The benefit of this work is that crops do not have to be grown specially to produce fuel and materials; rather the process uses the waste products from food production that would traditionally be composted down and returned to the soil. Projects are also on going to develop application technologies for these bio-materials.

Our sustainable motorsport projects (in particular EcoF3) have shown how organic fibres can be used to create components. Highlights include the use of carrot fibres and organic resins to produce a natural composite moulded steering wheel and the use of hemp fibres for body panel construction.