APRIL 2004 BROADSHEET - The Future of the Car
The CETC had another full room at TWI for our March seminar entitled “Future of The Car”, introduced by CETC committee member, John Batten, who was chairing the evening. We had two eminent speakers in Professor Richard Folkson, who is responsible for all Product Testing & Verification at Ford Motor Company and Eric Sampson, who heads up the Transport Technology & Telematics Division of the Department for Transport.
Eric Sampson outlined what Government and the Department for Transport were currently looking at. Eric managed to convey a considerable amount of interesting information, but without betraying any Whitehall secrets. His talk demonstrated how much the car debate has changed in the 20 years that he has been a mandarin at the DfT. He explained how widely Government has to look at a subject like cars, citing the demography of an increasingly aged population and the trend towards teleworking as relevant factors. The future, he suggested, is increasingly about “e-cars”, where the car, rather than the driver, does the majority of the driving – Eric enlightened the audience about “haptic controls”. From the State’s point of view, advantages of the e-car lie in areas such as traffic management, anti-crime and policing. From the State’s point of view policing means more efficient administration . From the individual’s point of view policing means “big brother” and “spy in the cab” implications. The Department of Transport is of course sensitive to these aspects, but it is an area where science fiction can obscure reality and lessen the quality of the debate. Eric also touched on integrated transport policies and spoke of the considerable steps already taken by some local authorities. All in all a fascinating and good-humoured insight into the policy makers’ views about the car.
Professor Richard Folkson sub-titled his talk “the car of the future”. Richard has worked for Ford ever since leaving University and his consequent experience and expertise were evident both in his talk and in his ability to answer questions on a wide range of car subjects. The audience were astonished to learn that there is more computer power in the average Ford car today than NASA had in order to put men on the moon. This advance has not been without its technological challenges; not least in how to accommodate all the extra wiring – which led Richard on to explain about the development of Controlled Area Networks as a digital substitute for large bundles of analogue wiring. Richard talked also of the enormous advances made in diesel car technology over the last 10 years or so. The theme moved on to fuels of the future, where Richard described the research and development being done under the banner of the “hydrogen economy” (which had been the subject of the CETC’s seminar in September 2003). He also mentioned “hybrid cars”, where a vehicle has two sources for its power, such as petrol and electricity. Richard highlighted the growing pressures created by the divergence in Government’s intentions and consumer pressure. For example, EU motor manufacturers have undertaken to reduce the fleet average CO2 emissions to 140g/km by 2008. However, the increasingly wealthy and demanding consumer wants bigger and better equipped cars, which by definition have higher emission levels. Richard reassured the audience about Ford’s safety standards, by explaining that new vehicles are tested for the most unlikely accident scenarios and that computers are increasingly being used to simulate vehicle crashes.
A one-page broadsheet can hardly do justice to the range of topics and wealth of detail that our two distinguished speakers talked about and fielded questions on. However, the length of the question and answer session was testament to the speakers’ contributions and to the participation of an interested audience. The CETC is most grateful to Eric Sampson and Richard Folkson for their presentations.
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