Vehicle Energy Management Farm
A car has many performance attributes and all are of equal importance.
Sure – depending on priorities, one might find some of those attributes more interesting than the others, but mostly I believe we agree that a proper automobile needs to be safe, quiet, comfortable, tractable (so take the occasional sharp turns without flipping over), and accelerate at an un-frustrating pace.
Right?
And it needs adaptive cruise control (that stuff is a blast!)
… all the while not consuming too much energy, of course!
Thing is: most carmakers are roughly there.
Today, your average car is a good car.
Regulations guarantee that any hazardous motorized DIY-projects are kept off the (main) streets and so customers are happy to base their purchasing behavior on economics and looks, rather than the performance attributes.
With economics at the top of the list, (and also, perhaps, with the planet “running on empty”…), energy efficiency has become a 21stcentury priority.
It’s not like I’m saying it trumps most of the other performance attributes, but really I am.
George Orwell once put it more delicately I believe, saying something like “All performance attributes are equal, but some are more equal than others”.
Caption: “sure, autonomous drive is the new hot topic, but for now, energy efficiency is still the boss.”
So let’s turn serious for a minute now, because this actually is.
Most OEMs are massively investing in alternatives to fuel, on the one hand, and in overall vehicle energy management on the other. Some OEMs (you know which one I’m talking about..) have even made the energy issue the singular purpose for their brand’s existence.
As a solid partner to the automotive industry, Siemens PLM Software is doing its part as well. Next to providing the very software that is crucial to frontload the energy topic to very start of the development process, it has built an exclusive energy-dedicated test bench in Villefranche, France. They are moreover making arrangements with several Chinese automotive customers, as well as the Chinese government, to build additional ones.
Therefore, Siemens PLM Software, and more specifically the Simcenter portfolio, is uniquely positioned to assist OEMs with regards to technological innovation. In the first part of the movie below, Jan Leuridan, CEO of Simulation and Testing Solutions, explains exactly why.
In a second part, VEM specialist Gaétan Bouzard talks about a groundbreaking project that was kicked off recently by Simcenter Engineering and Consulting services. Basically, Simcenter is benchmarking a pool of representative, or exemplary vehicles on the market to help OEMs with their own target setting and requirements, going really deep in each subsystem efficiency characterization thanks to custom in-vehicle instrumentation.
If I were an OEM, I would get in on this right now.
