The New FACE of CAFE
By Tom Murphy Ward's AutoWorld, Feb 1, 2008 12:00 PM

All eyes turned to the powertrain community on Dec. 19, when President Bush signed new corporate average fuel economy legislation mandating 35 mpg (6.7 L/100 km) for all new cars and trucks sold in the U.S. by 2020.

True, powertrain engineers occupy the front line when squeezing more energy from a gallon of gasoline or retooling vehicles to run on alternative fuels or in hybrid-electric configurations.

But even the brightest stars on any powertrain team are stumped by the challenge of producing affordable gasoline V-8s for fullsize SUVs and pickups capable of towing a mobile home, while achieving 35 mpg. In those conditions, even 15 mpg (15.6 L/100 km) would be achieved only on a downhill slope.

Instead, the new CAFE law rests not just on the shoulders of powertrain teams but on the entire product-development process and on the industry as a whole. Vehicle bodies must be lighter, aerodynamics paramount, rolling resistance minimized and alternative materials exploited. Holistic hand-wringing is in order.

The new CAFE rules impact Americans as directly as they affect the world's auto makers. It will take years to notice, but cars eventually will get smaller and more expensive — especially gas guzzlers.

The Ford Verve concept, on display at the recent North American International Auto Show in Detroit in 3- and 4-door body styles, is a good preview of what tomorrow's family car will look like. Later this year, the 3-door model goes on sale in Europe, followed by a 2010 launch of the 4-door in North America.

Ford predicts global B-car sales will grow from 23 million units in 2002 to an estimated 38 million by 2012. Sales of small cars in the U.S. are expected to jump 25%, or 800,000 units, to a record 3.4 million by 2012, Ford says.

Ford officials have hinted the Verve could receive a 4-cyl. application of its EcoBoost engine technology that, through the use of direct-injection and turbocharging, increases the power of a small-displacement engine.

But what about brute power? Does it disappear? Since Dec. 19, disgruntled automotive bloggers have been writing obituaries for the muscle car, contending CAFE will drive the Mustang, Corvette and others out of the market because they will become too pricey. So the revived Chevy Camaro and Dodge Challenger may arrive just in time to say goodbye. Smoke 'em while you got 'em.

Some auto makers targeting premium-segment vehicles view the CAFE legislation — as well as similar mandates in Europe to reduce carbon-dioxide emissions — with a hint of bravado, saying attempts to improve fuel economy must not water down brand equity.

“We will not reposition our brand,” Ralph Weyler, Audi AG's head of global sales, tells Ward's at the Detroit auto show.

“We always will be a brand that offers an RS4 or an R8 or an A8, so we will not be a green brand,” Weyler says of Audi's high-performance cars. “But we will offer the latest technologies fitting to the expectations of the customer.”

The public debate over CAFE has raged since the U.S. government adopted the standards in 1975.

Within OEMs, the law will continue to separate engineers, who fret over the practicality of compliance, from free-spirited designers, who see CAFE as a potentially liberating force, says Pat Schiavone, Ford Motor Co.'s design director-trucks.

“It's the old joke: The optimist says the glass is half-full; the pessimist says the glass is half-empty; and the engineer says the glass is too big,” Schiavone tells Ward's. “They would say, ‘It would cost too much money. We would have to reorganize all our processes.’ For us it's like, ‘Yeah! Tear it up, baby. Let's go!’”

From a design standpoint, Schiavone anticipates a steady rollout of features and styling tweaks to help meet CAFE.

Initially, design staffs will attempt to integrate “belly pans” along the under carriage to make the vehicle more aerodynamic, he says. And as new vehicles prepare to launch, designers will smooth out body panels, hoods, roofs, grilles and decklids to further improve aerodynamics.

“Then you're probably going to see a lot more body-lowering,” Schiavone says. “That's a fairly easy engineering feat.” A number of luxury vehicles already have adaptive air suspensions that lower the chassis at high speeds, to improve handling and reduce wind resistance.

“The next thing you need to do is block off the grille at speed,” he says, referring to Class 8 trucks with big grilles covered by zippered flaps to improve airflow.

Other aerodynamic gains will come from deployable front spoilers and sleek, narrow wheels.

Schiavone remains confident the new legislation will not preclude attractive design, although he admits cars and trucks will look different.

“Is there a completely perfect aero shape? I don't think there is,” he says. “It would depend on how tall the vehicle is and how wide it is — like birds, in a way. (All) birds are aerodynamic, but none of them look alike.”

But a car with optimal aerodynamics is not esthetically pleasing, making the job that much harder for stylists, says Laurens Van den Acker, general manager-design division at Mazda Motor Corp.

“It has small wheels; it tapers to the back,” Van den Acker says as he sketches a design for Ward's (see p.40). “It has a rear overhang that's cut off straight. It's cut off so the air doesn't create any turbulence.”

That said, OEMs will consider some wild designs in the coming years as the 2020 deadline approaches. At the Detroit auto show, Mazda showed the bizarrely shaped, futuristic Taiki concept 2-seater.

As the Taiki program progressed, Mazda engineers were convinced the car's aerodynamics were all wrong and suggested changes. But Van den Acker convinced the engineers to test the vehicle in the wind tunnel before making alterations.

It logged a phenomenal drag coefficient score of 0.27. “They couldn't believe what they were seeing,” Van den Acker says of the stunned engineers. “Everything they predicted turned out to be wrong.”

The Taiki's “outrigger” style rear wheels are the key, allowing air in between the wheels and body. “It functions like a vacuum,” he says. “We had zero lift, which is perfect for a sports car.”

Lightweight materials also will play a role in CAFE compliance. But OEMs will tread lightly, as expensive, exotic materials merely will drive up vehicle prices.

“You can increase, for instance, the use of high-strength steel or just a little more aluminum to get the kind of improvements we need,” says Thomas Lane, corporate vice president-product planning for Nissan Motor Co. Ltd.

“We're not at the point where you have to make a carbon-fiber vehicle to get to the weight we need,” he says. “I can't see that kind of radical solution. There's so much more you can do with the basic materials and good engineering.”

Bill Reinert of Toyota Motor Sales USA Inc. agrees some lightweight materials not only are too expensive but also do little to reduce CO2 emissions.

The production of 1 kg (2.2 lbs.) of steel, for instance, generates 2.5 kg (5.5 lbs.) of CO2, while the production of 1 kg of carbon fiber yields nearly 30 kg (66.1 lbs.) of CO2, Reinert says in a presentation at the Automotive News World Congress.

Meanwhile, plastics, such as nylon, polycarbonates and polyurethanes, generate between 3 and 6 kg (6.6/13.2 lbs.) of CO2, he says.

“You've got to be careful about plastics,” says Reinert, Toyota's national manager-advanced technologies group, noting that some plastics are more recyclable than others. “It doesn't do you a lot of good if those plastics just add to the environmental burden in the landfills. You've got to design everything for recycling.”

Reinert remains confident Toyota and most other auto makers can continue selling V-8 pickups and SUVs beyond 2011, when the new legislation begins to phase in. “I think as you get toward 2020, the technology you bring to bear starts to make the cars a little bit different — maybe lighter, smaller,” he says.

By 2020, Reinert says he believes Toyota still will be able to produce fullsize pickups, although he would anticipate a “highly turbocharged V-6” could supplant the current V-8 offerings.

Likewise, General Motors Corp. is interested in turbocharged V-6s to replace V-8s in the future, as well as smaller turbo I-4s to replace V-6s

GM already has canceled the replacement of the Cadillac Northstar V-8 as a direct result of the 35-mpg mandate, and a new family of V-8s is not planned, Vice Chairman Bob Lutz says.

But that doesn't mean V-8s leave the GM product portfolio.

“I think V-8s will remain, but I don't see much of anybody investing a ton of money into families of V-8s unless it's a small specialty company,” Lutz says. “But I would predict that pickup trucks and fullsize SUVs of the future will have a lot of diesel engines, and unquestionably the mix will shift to V-6s in fullsize SUVs.”

Lutz predicts GM will spend on average $6,000 per vehicle — or up to $10,000 in extreme circumstances — to meet the 35-mpg mandate, while maintaining the fleet mix basically as it stands today.

“But we'll have to restrict some choices,” he says, referring to the next-generation Chevrolet Impala replacement. The current model is front-wheel drive, and GM was considering a rear-drive architecture “with a longitudinal V-6 and V-8 engines. And now we've had to tell ourselves that is unwise” because fuel economy will suffer.

Further impacting OEM fleet mix will be the availability of alternative fuels, particularly ethanol, and the cost of extended-range electric vehicles.

During the Detroit auto show, GM announced a new partnership with Chicago-based Coskata Inc. for rapid commercialization of a unique technology the partners say affordably and efficiently makes cellulosic ethanol from almost any renewable source, including wood, garbage, manure, old tires and factory waste.

“If we can really use something like the Coskata process to get low-priced and low-cost cellulosic ethanol, then 10 or 12 years from now the vehicle mix could be exactly as it is today,” Lutz says.

Lutz and other executives interviewed raise the issue of a gasoline tax increase (or a carbon tax further upstream) as a way to boost fleet fuel economy by encouraging people to drive smaller cars. In Europe, where fuel is at least twice as expensive as in the U.S., that dynamic already has taken hold.

Lutz suggests the U.S. could have done the same with a $0.15 per gallon federal fuel tax per year over the past 15 years. “We could, over time without any federal fuel-economy regulation, use the market mechanism to gradually transition the American public into a vehicle mix that looks a lot more like Europe,” he says.

If fuel prices suddenly fall dramatically, Americans are bound to fall back into their old habits, wanting the big vehicles to which they've grown attached. “Then we would really be at war with the customer,” Lutz says. “You're not going to be able to stop the American public from wanting large engines and large vehicles again. That's what isn't going to work.”

A Chrysler LLC economist estimates consumers won't pay for more fuel-efficient vehicles until regular-grade gasoline reaches $13 per gallon, or more than four times today's national average.

The fuel economy debate has hatched a poorly coordinated patchwork of regulations, with different regions of the world setting different targets for auto makers to hit, auto executives say. Even within each region, there is little agreement over how to reduce fuel consumption and emissions.

In Europe, auto makers must juggle different requirements in the U.K., Spain, France and Germany, says Audi's Weyler. In the U.K., the London code differs from that deployed in Birmingham.

“This is the biggest challenge, not to meet one standard but to meet several standards in Europe, where we have 10 or 15 different regulations,” Weyler says.

The standards differ because each country's legislative body is attempting to protect their domestic auto industries, says Stefan Krause, a member of the BMW AG board of management, in charge of global sales.

As a result, the world's auto makers are at the mercy of elected officials — many of them with personal agendas that would seem out of place in a global economy.

“If no stupid legislation comes around, then I think we feel as a company comfortable to comply and to achieve the targets,” Krause says of BMW. “We're a little bit fearful, because it has gotten into the public debate. On both sides of the ocean, politicians want to win elections, and there are some unreasonable proposals out there.”

For instance, Krause has little regard for legislators who demand immediate results, with no regard for the industry's development cycle. “You can't in three years do a sea change of emissions reductions,” he says. “The technology cycle is a 7-year cycle. We don't mind tough regulations, as long as there's enough time built in to get to them.”

BMW will launch in 2009 a hybrid-electric version of its new X6 cross/utility coupe, although Krause says hybrids are not “the best solution” for everyone.

His expectations for the X6 Hybrid are modest because it will be expensive. “Right now, I don't think the manufacturers that are offering hybrid cars are making money on them,” Krause says.

He estimates a full hybrid system carries “a true consumer cost of $10,000,” while most buyers are not willing to pay more than $2,000.

In the U.S., California sets the pace for environmental awareness and wants to enact an emissions code that is stricter than the new federal mandate. It would require 40.5 mpg (5.8 L/100 km) on vehicles under 3,750 lbs. (1,701 kg) by 2016.

A showdown looms as the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency attempts to block the California legislation. But the stakes are high, as 14 other states have adopted California's proposed law and four others are considering it.

“For the customers, it is better if all states do the same thing,” says Larry Jutte, senior vice president, Honda of America Mfg. Inc.

Individual state rules “make it more difficult for OEMs and customers, because there is expense that comes with having different programs in different states,” Jutte says. “We support the idea of secure energy in the U.S., and we certainly support the issue of fuel efficiency as long as everyone is being treated consistently.”

Toyota Motor Corp. CEO Katsuaki Watanabe says he has challenged his engineers to achieve the new U.S. standard “well in advance” of its deadline.

In Detroit, Watanabe says he believes Toyota can reach the 35-mpg target before 2020. Technologies due from Toyota include a diesel V-8 for the Tundra pickup and Sequoia SUV; a plug-in hybrid due in 2010; and two new HEVs, one each for the Toyota and Lexus brands.

Suppliers also play a role as OEMs wrestle with the fuel-economy mandate. During the Detroit show, Valeo SA met with five OEMs interested in using the supplier's stop-start “micro-hybrid” technology, which is in production for small European cars.

Derek DeBono, marketing and business development director for Valeo's powertrain division, says technologies will be shared globally. “Solutions in Europe today will come to North America, and those in North America will come to Europe,” he says.

OEMs want to improve fuel economy across the board, and not focus entirely on selling small cars in the U.S.

“We as an industry have to come up with solutions to allow people to buy what they want,” DeBono says. “If CAFE for cars must be 45 mpg (5.2 L/100 km) to compensate for (low fuel economy in) trucks, then we have to come up with that solution. Consumers won't see (vehicle) choices disappear. You won't see Hummers go away.”

Engineering specialist Ricardo Inc. is launching its Total Vehicle Fuel Economy initiative, which focuses not on one particular powertrain solution but taps all technologies — from vehicle engineering and controls to diesel, fuel cells, hybrids, electric propulsion and transmissions.

“Fuel-economy pressure is not going to fluctuate the way we have seen it in years past,” Ricardo President Dean Harlow says in a speech at the World Congress. “It's a tidal wave that will impact our technology plans for decades.”

Harlow anticipates a significant drop in the number of fullsize SUVs. “At some point, they will become such a small part of the market. They won't be worth producing,” Harlow tells Ward's. “Customers will pay more and get less in the future in order to meet these requirements.”

Take, for instance, Fisker Automotive Inc.'s Karma HEV. The sensual, ground-hugging sedan with exotic styling cues is expected to go on sale at the end of 2009, priced at about $80,000.

GM's Lutz is counting on America's love affair with stylish cars to weather any fuel-economy mandate.

“We are like a huge grocery supermarket,” Lutz says. “And just because we are expanding the organic vegetable section does not mean that the meat counter is going away.”
— With James M. Amend, Eric Mayne, Barbara McClellan, Byron Pope, Christie Schweinsberg, Mike Sutton, Drew Winter and David E. Zoia.

To read more about CAFE, go to:
Emissions Fight Imperils Ford's California Ambitions
subscribers.wardsauto.com/ar/emissions_ford_california/index.html

GM Partners With Coskata to Produce Cellulosic Ethano
subscribers.wardsauto.com/ar/gm_coskata_ethanol/index.html

Creating Market ‘Pull’ to Meet Tougher CAFE Requires Gas Price Hike, Chrysler Warns
subscribers.wardsauto.com/ar/cafe_gas_chrysler/index.html