Global viewpoints: Europe embraces the AT-factor
Ford sees bigger role for lightweight materials
 Ford's StreetKa concept is set to enter production. |
The Ford Motor Co.'s European product lineup is remarkable by any standards. It spans the Th!nk electric car produced in Norway, mainstream models including the Focus (now the company's most successful global platform) and Mondeo, and the upmarket designs of four of the five members of its Premier Automotive Group (i.e., Jaguar, Land Rover, Lincoln, Volvo, and Aston Martin). Richard Parry-Jones, Ford's Group Vice President for Global Vehicle Development and Quality, is very closely involved with all of these products. He has firm beliefs of what he expects Ford products to deliver in terms of quality, performance, packaging, and aesthetics, with ride and handling a high priority.
The marked improvement in the capability of European Ford and Ford-associated products over the past eight years owes much to his philosophy, but he is under no illusions about some of the challenges ahead, not least the effect of rising levels of complex technology that are part of almost every modern car design. Parry-Jones believes that technology will become more complex to achieve desired results. "To extract more function and performance from mechanical and electronic systems, we are having to be ever more clever about forcing those systems to behave in a nonlinear way when they would naturally prefer to behave in a linear way," he said. "This adds complexity to the engineering task and, in most cases, to the hardware and software we put into products. Much of the complexity is beneath the surface, so customers do not know what we are doing with systems; most of the car is now a 'black box.'"
However, there are some highly complex systems that do interface with the driver—ABS and traction control are examples—although the behavior of both is modified so that when operated, they simplify, rather than add to, the driver's burden of control. Said Parry-Jones, "If drivers were to get that operation slightly wrong, they would not make full use of the physics available to them at the road surface, so we have added sensors, computers, actuators, software, and logic systems to make sure the systems perform their modified, nonlinear functions in the desired manner."
An ever greater number of human interface technologies, however, do require specific and detailed control of their operation and application by the driver. These are mainly comfort or driver-support features, but operating them can increase workload. They need to be managed intelligently, said Parry-Jones, and more are on the way, with telematics a recent addition to the list. Parry-Jones has his own view of the emerging situation. "Imagine a triangle," he said. "At one corner is the customer, at another the car, and at the third offboard services—or infrastructure. Put arrows pointing in different directions on the lines joining the corners; these indicate opportunities to conduct transactions. It is important that the infrastructure supporting the driver is not overloaded by asking him or her to do lots of things that consume additional mental capacity that then would not be available for the priority tasks of control. However, I am satisfied we can achieve that."
Rain-sensing wipers and auto climate control are workload reducers—but voice activation is the really promising technology, believes Parry-Jones. It is already available on some cars, including the Jaguar S-Type and X-Type. "It can make the control of subsidiary tasks much easier than having to look at something and using the fingers. One of the challenges, though, is vocabulary," he said. To meet this demand, 400-1000 words might be stored onboard, but offboard, an extended vocabulary could be accessed via computer power and a cell phone. That link could also access a mass of other services. "Better than everyone needing to carry a Cray in the car," said Parry-Jones.
 Richard Parry-Jones, Ford's Group Vice President for Global Development and Quality, said engineers must be clever to make systems behave in a nonlinear way. |
While Parry-Jones' appreciation of, and belief in, technology is almost total, he qualifies the need for a company to lead in all aspects. "It must always be within context," he said. Safety and environmental systems and their correct application would plainly be essential areas in which to lead in order to satisfy and educate the customer, he noted. Technology can also deliver certain differentiating qualities that are right for a specific brand: "refinement for Jaguar; even more safety for Volvo; driving quality for Ford in Europe," he said.
Because technology is now spread across the broad band of the automotive industry, priortizing one element is difficult, but when asked to do so, Parry-Jones opts for control engineering. "There is a significant technological discipline relating to control and dynamics," he said. "It is the ability to synthesize, simulate, and control complex electronic and mechanical systems. Electronics is not our core business; that is the business of electronics manufacturers, and it applies to many products. The core competence of an automotive company is how we use and exploit the capability of electronic controls and sensors to integrate our understanding of electrical and mechanical systems to produce a superior control result. It is vehicle control systems engineering technology, and our skill lies in how to use it." Parry-Jones cites other key technologies as environmental chemistry, including new materials needed to further reduce emissions, and flexible manufacturing systems.
Of course, researching, developing, and producing all these things cost money, and facing cost pressures and achieving cost efficiency are facts of automotive engineering life. "The reason cost pressures exist is because that is what the customer wants," said Parry-Jones. "The customer will not pay for inefficiency (at least, not willingly) and in the presence of competition, doesn't have to. But efficient also does not mean rock-bottom costs. One can have customers delighted with higher-cost products and services, providing those products deliver such an improvement in value that the customer is willing to pay more money than it costs to enhance that value. So Volvo puts more safety technology into its products than do other makes, which represents good value to a Volvo customer. How do we keep doing that in the future when we know that cost pressures will never go away? By leveraging the scale of the Ford Motor Company. That is why we have seen the move toward consolidation of players within the industry. By scale and by sharing Ford's 'back room,' we can avoid reinventing the wheel. We can reduce engineering and tooling costs of products where they are transparent—sharing climate controls, alternators, and even controllers for telematic systems with different 'front ends' for various companies within the Ford group."
Members of the group can also share Ford's alternative-fuel philosophy. Parry-Jones makes the point that it is essential for Ford not just to concentrate on one aspect (e.g., fuel cells), but to have a broad portfolio of alternative-fuel technologies that can also serve as "a good learning laboratory" for development. Although the company will have a small fuel-cell fleet in operation by 2003 or 2004, Parry-Jones stressed, "We get cautious when we talk of the end of the internal-combustion engine as we know it, with fuel-cell vehicles becoming the norm. That is something we think is 15, 20, maybe 25 years away. It is important to understand that, because otherwise we may defer valuable actions to improve the internal-combustion engine and the fuel it uses while we await a Utopian solution. That's not very prudent."
Parry-Jones is also weight watching. In his office he has a weight vs. time graph that he regards as very significant. "Weight is rising inexorably," he said. Not the weight of the car per se, but of systems relating to safety, the environment, and comfort. "Despite the vehicles themselves being more weight-efficient than they were, we have not been able to offset this trend caused by functional upgrades." For car structures, CAE tools are used to place material only where it is needed, and tailored blanks reduce materials weight. "But we do believe, particularly at the upper level of the market, that there is a much bigger role in the future for lightweight materials, including aluminum, despite the problems of working with it." Parry-Jones would make no comment, however, about the possibility of the Jaguar XJ8 replacement following Audi's lead with the A8 (and small A2) by featuring an aluminum bodyshell.
 Ford Focus final assembly in Saarlouis, Germany. |
E-commerce plays an increasing role in Ford's European (and worldwide) operations in terms of transactions with suppliers and collaborative engineering, said Parry-Jones, "and our engineers may have Internet exchanges with customers to discuss what is or is not liked about our vehicles."
Government regulation is an area close to the automotive industry's heart, but Parry-Jones believes that there is now an increasing realization between governments and industry that a failure to agree followed by regulation rarely brings optimum results. "In a way, regulation is the failure of a process," he said. However, Parry-Jones also believes that there is more pragmatism and collaborative efforts between governments and the automotive industry today.
One area where pragmatism might be under pressure, though, concerns pedestrian safety. Parry-Jones is aware of the possibility. "We are committed to improvements in this area, although it is unlikely that customers will want to pay more money for a vehicle that will hurt other people less, but they would pay if it hurt themselves less," he said. "What may be needed are governmental fiscal incentives to offset the cost of socially more desirable products. Parry-Jones sees many other opportunities for enhanced safety, including developments in the area of pre-crash sensing.
Ford's involvement in motorsports has been established for decades, but as a route to enhancing car production technology, it "may be over-hyped," said Parry-Jones. He still sees motorsports as a crucible for the invention and rapid development of some technologies—such as control systems—and processes that could be applied to road cars. "But sometimes it is techniques and skills that may bring the benefits—learning how to do things in the most highly pressured of environments. You can then take that knowledge and apply it to other problems," he said.
In his position close to the top of Ford's global empire, Parry-Jones has a panoramic overview of the automotive industry, its opportunities, challenges, and serious problems. What worries him most of all? "It is making sure that society, governments, and industry are in step on the right measures at the right pace to address the global issues that face us," he said. "We need consensus, or alignment, on what society expects, what a customer expects, what government believes needs to be done—and what companies believe both needs to be done and can be done. Misalignment could set us back as an industry and possibly even fail to help us achieve the true goals of society. But we should not have to develop and build, by law, the type of vehicles that customers do not want—and are not prepared to pay for."
