Search Results

China has become the world’s largest vehicle market in terms of sales volume. Automobiles sales keep growing in recent years despite the declining economic growth rate. Due to the increasing attention given to the environmental impact, more stringent emission regulations are being drafted to control traditional internal combustion engine emissions. In order to reduce vehicle emissions, environmentally-friendly new-energy vehicles, such as electric vehicles and plug-in hybrid vehicles, are being promoted by government policies. The Chinese government plans to boost sales of new-energy cars to account for about five percent of China’s total vehicle sales. It is well known that more electric and electronic components will be integrated into a vehicle platform during vehicle electrification.

The growth of auto sales in emerging markets provides a good opportunity for automakers. Cost is a key factor for any automaker to win in an emerging market. This paper analyzes risks and opportunities in a low cost manufacturing environment. The Chinese auto market is used as an example and three categories of risks are analyzed. A typical risk assessment for cost reduction includes the analysis of environment risks, process risks and strategic risks associated with all phases of a product life. In an emerging market, emission regulations are a rapidly-evolving environment variable, since most countries with less regulated emission codes try to catch up with the newly- developed technologies to meet sustainable growth targets. Emission regulations have a huge impact on product design, manufacturing and maintenance in the automotive industry, and hence the related cost reduction must be thoroughly analyzed during risk assessment.

Today's engine and combustion process development is closely related to the intake port layout. Combustion, performance and emissions are coupled to the intensity of turbulence, the quality of mixture formation and the distribution of residual gas, all of which depend on the in-cylinder charge motion, which is mainly determined by the intake port and cylinder head design. Additionally, an increasing level of volumetric efficiency is demanded for a high power output. Most optimization efforts on typical homogeneous charge spark ignition (HCSI) engines have been at low loads because that is all that is required for a vehicle to make it through the FTP cycle. However, due to pumping losses, this is where such engines are least efficient, so it would be good to find strategies to allow the engine to operate at higher loads.