Car design looking down the road

INNOVATION:BMW is investing €300 million in the production of modular engines, or motor assembly Ikea-style, writes PADDY COMYN

WE ARE ALL familiar with Ikea at this stage. You buy some furniture that suits you – a wardrobe, say – and it is then easy enough to add bits to it. This modularity has accounted, in part, for the popularity of Ikea products.

Engine design using this approach would make infinite sense, but, as you might have guessed, the modern combustion engine is infinitely more complex than a set of flat-pack shelves. Now BMW says it has managed to incorporate modularity as part of its Efficient Dynamic strategy.

You might have seen “efficient dynamics” on some of BMW’s advertising or mentioned in these pages before. It might sound like the brainchild of a German Louis Walsh, but rather than referring to a Bavarian boy band it is a strategy of sustainability that squeezes the most fuel out of an engine, makes cars as light and as strong as possible and explores new methods of propulsion.

There is no doubt that it has been a success. Over the past 15 years the BMW Group has lowered the carbon-dioxide emissions of its new vehicle fleet in Europe by about 30 per cent: the BMW and Mini brands have 52 vehicles with emissions of 140g/km or less, putting them in tax band B, and 19 of these have emissions of 120g/km or less, putting them in band A.

BMW is developing a new family of modular turbocharged engines that it will eventually use across its range from 2015. The concept is that the firm has a single cylinder of “around 500cc” that can be used to form engines of different capacities: three will make up a 1.5-litre engine, four will make up a 2.0-litre engine and six will form a 3.0-litre engine. The engines will be mounted transversely for front-wheel drive cars and longitudinally for those with rear-wheel drive.

The petrol engines will put out 68bhp per cylinder, with 54bhp per cylinder for the diesels. This engine family can be used with electric motors in hybrid and be turbocharged for high-performance vehicles.

The company says this approach will reduce costs and allow for greater production flexibility, as it will allow BMW to respond to sudden changes in demand. It is hoped that any savings can be passed on to buyers too. BMW Group is investing €300 million in production sites in Munich and in Steyr, in Austria, by 2012 to carry this out.

A transmission that plans ahead

Another innovation coming our way from BMW is an eight-speed automatic transmission that can adapt gearshift demands given by the transmission-control system to each driving situation even more flexibly. Replacing the six-speed automatic transmission currently available, it will use the navigation system and dynamic stability control to monitor the road ahead and use the most efficient gearing.

The car’s navigation system can determine the radius of a bend before it is approached. The car uses this information to work out the best gear to be in to drive around smoothly and accelerate out of the bend. Cameras and radar sensors will also be able to monitor traffic situations ahead and act accordingly.

Hybrid models, as well as full electric vehicles and the implementation of so-called intelligent lightweight construction will add more technology to take away more emissions. The race to reduce is well and truly under way at the premium end of the segment.

More immediately, we will see new TwinPower turbocharged engines enter the market. A 2.0-litre four-cylinder petrol can produce 245bhp and 350Nm of torque. We tried it in the X1, which we probably won’t get here in Ireland, but expect to see it in other models, such as the next 3 Series.

There is also a new 3.0-litre six-cylinder in-line diesel unit, which uses the same twin-scroll turbocharging, and this has 258hp and 560Nm of torque. An all-wheel-drive 5 Series has emissions of just 150g/km, so we could guess that it could manage less in a rear-wheel-drive model.