VW's new tech: inside the secret laboratory
25 Jun 07 by: Jesse Crosse



CCS needs a new type of fuel

IN THIS FEATURE
The best bits of petrol and diesel
Multiple personalities fitted as standard
Half sat nav, half babysitter

Henry Ford once said: 'If I had asked my customers what they wanted they would have said, "A faster horse".' He had a point. These days they call it 'thinking out of the box' and without it that's just where iconic products like the Sony Walkman, the personal computer and the iPod would have stayed.

Volkswagen also thinks Henry had a point, and recently offered to spill the beans to 4Car on some of the innovations they have in the pipeline, from greener engines to enhanced driver enjoyment to child-friendly passenger compartments. Top of the agenda is climate change. No surprise there, but some of the ideas for combating it are far from obvious.

One is CCS, or Combined Combustion System. Almost identical to a diesel engine, the difference lies in the way fuel and air are mixed 'homogeneously' inside the engine to remove all traces of soot and dramatically reduce the toxic nitrogen oxides that constitute one of the main pollutants in car exhaust fumes. However, for CCS to provide maximum benefit, it needs a new kind of synthetic designer fuel currently under development by VW and others. SynFuel is made from natural gas, while SunFuel is made from plant matter known as biomass, or by processing straw.


Clean as a petrol engine, frugal as a diesel

SunFuel is cleaner than petrol and diesel and is CO2 neutral because the plants it is made from absorbed the greenhouse gas when they were growing. But these new biofuels are in their infancy and VW experts expect it will be 2015 before they go on sale in any quantity.

Another new engine design called GCI, for gasoline compression ignition, combines the fuel economy of a diesel engine with the low emissions of a petrol engine. It works by switching between the spark-plug ignition of a petrol engine for starting and hard acceleration, and the sparkless compression ignition of a diesel when cruising gently. GCI can burn both petrol and SunFuel, and the next stage is to combine the technology with VW's TSI engine, which has both supercharger and turbocharger. The prototype we tried drove smoothly, with only the slightest rattle giving away the engine's switch from petrol to diesel mode, a small computer screen in the dash illustrating which of the two you are in.

Among the projects aimed at making cars good to drive, three stand out. HORST, or Handling Online Research and Simulation Tool, is an A8 from sister company Audi fitted with steering and suspension that can be completely reconfigured with just a couple of taps on a laptop keyboard. It has rear-wheel steering, as well as fully adjustable suspension.


[B]The Touran CCS engineB]

Talk about Jekyll and Hyde. The most extreme personality the HORST can assume is that of a Lotus Elise, while the most benign is a Hyundai Sonata. The handling characteristics of any car can be 'learned' by the computer software, which then adjusts the HORST car's settings to achieve some dramatic changes in character.


CARmeleon: daft name for a very smart car

The HORST will never go on sale, but a CARmeleon might. Based on a Passat V6, the CARmeleon can also change its driving character completely. At the flick of a switch, the accelerator pedal, DSG dual-clutch gearbox and brakes all become more responsive, while the electro-mechanical power steering gains more feel. The 4Motion all-wheel drive is also adjusted, the suspension stiffens up and the seats become firm. Even the engine note can be changed inside the cabin, the V6 emulating a V8 burble thanks to a sound processing unit which interferes with the sound you hear via the CARmeleon's stereo system.

In a similar vein, the HMI Golf (Human Machine Interface) is packed with gizmos aimed at forging a closer relationship between you and your car. Using forward-facing video cameras to assess the conditions, the HMI car can communicate with the driver by feeding a slight tremor through the steering wheel or brake pedal to warn of hazards which the car's spotted but you may not have.

It can also reconfigure the instruments, displayed on a laptop-style screen, depending on what the car's brain decides is most important information at any given time. For example, in one situation speed might be critical, so the speedo gains prominence. In another, navigation might be more important, so the speedo shrinks as a navigation image pops up.

If you're a parent, that back-seat whinge, 'How many more miles is it?" will be gratingly familiar. In contrast with more serious matters like climate change, VW's R&D guys are also working on the Kid's Car project which looks at child-friendly interiors using a VW Touran and Audi Q7. There's a sat nav that includes a 'time worm' which 'eats' the route, Pac-Man style, and a virtual friend who provides screen-based entertainment and games.


No more staring at black seat backs

There are touchy-feely features too, like a rotating child seat base which makes it easier to get small children in and out. There's also a convenience centre with a drinks warmer and cooler, detachable door storage bins and even a flat directional speaker which can be hung on a baby seat. This is especially neat because the baby can listen to The Wheels on the Bus 100 times and you don't have to.


Seat base rotates for easy access

Think of My Music, an integrated digital entertainment system, as a sort of built-in iPod, onto which music or podcasts can be downloaded from your personal computer via conventional household wireless networking. The software is compatible with iTunes and each track can be labelled using an image in the same way, which makes choosing a track on the move relatively easy.

You can organise media stored on the drive into playlists and there are 'more like this' and 'favourites' lists for navigating to favourite sounds more easily. True, it might be a long wait before something like this finds its way into a Golf or Polo, but it's good to know that despite the burgeoning anti-car legislation, carmakers have not lost sight of the fact that driving a car should still be good fun. Thanks Henry.