Four major technological trends in the automotive industry in 2014

Car Intelligence Leads Trend Giants to Play Cross-border

The automotive industry has been developing for centuries, and the automobile has changed from a purely mechanical structure to a mechanical and electrical integration. In today's increasingly intelligent car, many companies are struggling for the share of this field. From 2012 onwards, by 2014, the topic of intelligent cars has gradually entered a climax. Whether it is Bosch, Delphi, China and other first-class component suppliers; or Infineon, Freescale, STMicroelectronics and other semiconductor manufacturers have continued to exert force in the field; even Google, Apple and other IT companies also play across The community joined in.

In many domestic and foreign industry surveys, intelligence is the most important trend of the future automotive evolution. Compared to new energy sources such as batteries and charging facilities, there are "hard injuries" technology, smart interconnection is due to the rapid development of smart hardware and the Internet of Things in the world and the continuous emergence of consumer heat waves and application hotspots.

According to statistics, over 90% of the innovations in the automotive industry in recent years have been related to the automotive intelligence system, and this surprising proportion has greatly exceeded the trend of new energy vehicles. Countries and car companies have started to develop and practicalize technologies related to car intelligence and car networking.

In 2014, new technologies and applications continued to emerge. New players crossed the border and new commercial cooperation models were introduced. Smart Internet has become the newest wave of technological development. It is expected to extend to the next decade and become a car. The main theme of technology update and change.

The more realistic innovation rises with active security

This year, BMW, Audi, Mercedes-Benz and other car companies have announced their respective auto-pilot completion schedules. Some well-known auto parts giants have even begun to test self-driving cars on China's roads. However, automated driving is not a technical bottleneck. It is a matter of laws and regulations, responsibilities, and costs. Therefore, active safety is a more practical technology than relatively distant automatic driving.

When it comes to active safety, consumer awareness is still limited. For the person in the industry, what we think of first is its basic system, the ESC. Based on this, combined with cameras and sensors, adaptive cruise (ACC) and lane departure warning (LDW) systems were born. With the technological advancement of component manufacturers, the detection distance, detection accuracy, and anti-interference ability of sensors have become stronger, and the success of active safety systems in preventing accidents has become higher and the cost of the system has decreased. This laid a more solid foundation for its next step.

According to a recent survey released by Gasgoo.com, nearly 31% of participants believe that the proportion of active safety products assembled by OEMs will be around 50% to 80% in the next five years. “The active safety assembly rate of high-end cars is currently about 14%. It is expected that the active safety market capacity of Chinese cars will increase threefold over the next five years, far exceeding other technologies.” . In addition, the active safety system will be required in the new version of CNCAP next year, and this version of CNCAP will be implemented in 2018.

In fact, in the "2014~2017EuroNCAP" new regulations issued in Europe this year, the safety assistance project has been greatly strengthened. Vehicles that do not have safety assistance systems will not be able to obtain five-star assessment. After 2016, active safety products for pedestrians' automatic emergency braking will be officially listed as one of the evaluation indicators. Therefore, the development and deployment of active safety products has become an irreversible technological development direction.

Energy-saving and emission-reducing pressure soaring turbocharged

With the increase in car ownership, global pressures for energy conservation and emission reduction have soared. Countries around the world are working hard to do so, and the engine's displacement is becoming smaller and smaller. In order to reduce the displacement and maintain even beyond the original power performance, turbocharger technology has been gradually popularized, this year, it is even more red to purple. From the 2015 Ward Top 10 engine, we can also see that, with the exception of the BMW i3 motor and the modern Tucson fuel cell vehicle, which are powered by unconventional internal combustion engines, seven of the other eight engines have a “T”.

With the promotion of gasoline turbocharging technology, the coverage of turbochargers in the European market can reach about 67% by 2018. In the Chinese market, thanks to the active adoption of turbocharger technology in the gasoline engine market, turbocharged market coverage is expected to increase from 22% in 2013 to 33% in 2018. In North America, new cars equipped with turbochargers are expected to reach 31% of total car sales in that year in 2018, and India will reach 53%.

Industry-focused component companies in the turbocharger sector also made significant efforts in 2014. For example, Honeywell has introduced more than 100 new turbocharged applications in the global passenger and commercial vehicle markets, including more than 20 new turbocharger technologies; BorgWarner has recently introduced dual-passage turbines in recent years. New turbochargers in Taicang this year include new pressure controllers, adjustable two-stage turbocharging systems, bypass turbochargers, variable-section turbochargers, and three-stage adjustable turbochargers. The new plant has also begun operations; at the end of 2014, Bosch Mahler (Bosch and Mahler's joint venture) joint venture turbocharger project officially launched its first factory in China.

In 2014, the competition between turbo-charged manufacturers became increasingly fierce, and a turbo "warm-up match" was kicking off. In 2015, this contest will become even more intense.

Lightweight material changes Automotive plasticity is gaining popularity

The main role of the automobile emission and fuel consumption regulations is to encourage the technical progress of vehicle manufacturers and component manufacturers, especially lightweight technologies. According to studies, a 10% reduction in the weight of a car reduces fuel consumption by 6% to 8% and C02 emissions by 5% to 6%. Judging from the current materials used in automobiles, whether it is external trims, interior trims, or functional and structural parts, in addition to the light weight of traditional metal materials, the shadow of more plastic materials can already be seen, and the plasticization of automobiles is improving. It has become a major development trend in the international automotive industry today. Especially in 2014, this trend is intensifying.

In order to comply with this trend, related parts suppliers also made great moves in 2014. Celanese, Bogo, Yanfeng Biou, BASF, Omni Plastics and other companies that focus on this area have either introduced new technologies or built new plastic component factories.

According to recent survey data, 89% of the 3,450 people who participated in the survey are optimistic about the development of automotive plastics technology. There are many reasons. First, the proportion of plastics is between 0.9 and 1.5. The specific gravity of fiber-reinforced composites will not exceed 2.0, while the proportion of metal materials will be much higher. The A3 steel is 7.6, the brass is 8.4, and the aluminum is 2.7. Therefore, plastic is undoubtedly an effective way to reduce the weight of the vehicle body. Second, in addition to being lightweight, plastic design space, low manufacturing cost, and wide-ranging features coupled with continuous breakthroughs in technology have also led to more breakthroughs in safety and manufacturing costs for cars, and are therefore increasingly valued by car companies. And preference. In addition, industry experts pointed out that the body in the design of safety in the hope that through the deformation of the structure to absorb a part of the collision energy, the body made of plastic, as long as the structure is reasonable, the manufacturing process properly, and its safety is better than the metal body.

Although automotive plastics is confronted with technical obstacles such as the supply of high-strength and cost-effective materials, and the lack of appearance and dazzling appearance, it is definitely a technology that “produces more harm than good”. Among them, the problem of appearance has been greatly improved. As the technology matures in the future, the "profit" will also increase.