Why the auto industry may be focusing on the wrong game

In sports, there’s a phenomenon known as a “trap game.” It goes like this: a great team has two upcoming games on its schedule, one against an easy opponent followed by one against a more-powerful team. They often overlook the first opponent, because they are focused on the tougher game ahead. They fail to prepare for that first game, and they lose to a beatable team.

Right now, the automotive industry is facing a similar one-two punch of challenges. OEMs (original equipment manufacturers) are preparing for the very exciting game on the horizon: the shift to all-electric, connected, self-driving vehicles—as well as new paradigms for vehicle ownership and usage.

However, there’s a more immediate challenge that OEMs are in danger of ignoring. Stricter regulations around the world are holding them to tougher emissions and fuel-economy standards, and violations can result in billions of dollars in fines. Recently California, for example, recently mandated that “all new passenger cars and trucks sold in the state must be emissions-free by 2035.”

The future of vehicles may be electric, but mainstream market penetration for EVs is a decade or more away. In fact, General Motors’ Executive Director of Global Gasoline Engines Jeff Luke and Audi’s CEO Markus Duesmann have both recently discussed that internal combustion engines aren’t going anywhere anytime soon (see https://bit.ly/35qon2N and https://bit.ly/2IzXQqO).

That means gasoline-powered and hybrid vehicles must get far more efficient—and quickly. However, the lion’s share of spending and R&D efforts are going toward electric vehicles (EVs). As such, OEMs run the risk of losing a trap game: sales of gasoline-fueled and hybrid vehicles are their profit drivers for the foreseeable future, and those profits will be vital to funding EV development, cost reduction, and manufacturing.

So, how can OEMs score back-to-back wins? By addressing the short-term realities for gasoline-powered and hybrid vehicles, which will set them up for EV success down the road. Winning the fuel-efficiency and emissions-reduction battles will maximize profits, eliminate fines, and help the environment.

Of course, achieving new heights in fuel efficiency and emissions reduction isn’t exactly easy. That has been the goal for decades, and OEMs have made great strides in recent years with various approaches. Those include engine redesigns, transmission technologies, lightweighting, and even new lubricants. These approaches require costly R&D and manufacturing commitments, and there hasn’t been a universal solution to reducing fuel consumption and emissions for all internal combustion engines.

These solutions don’t explore efficiency and emissions gains at the most fundamental level: improving the efficiency of combustion. Combustion efficiency can be significantly improved by burning the fuel at a lower temperature using “dilute” air/fuel mixtures, which use less fuel and more air. However, traditional ignition systems struggle to achieve stable combustion of dilute mixtures, which is a bottleneck for new opportunities for fuel efficiency and emissions reduction.

Think of it this way: one of the only things in common between the Ford Model T of 1908 and the modern-day car is the spark plug. In fact, today’s cars use the same ignition technology as the cars of more than a century ago. Nearly everything else has changed, and unfortunately, those ignition systems simply aren’t very efficient. Advanced ignition systems can help fuel-burning cars achieve new levels of efficiency and eco-friendliness.

For this reason, you may see ignition systems replaced by far better solutions. For example, nanosecond pulsed power transient plasma ignition systems use incredibly fast and precisely controlled bursts of plasma to ignite fuel much more efficiently than a spark plug.

These ignition systems work in tandem with the other improvements developed by automakers, adding to the efficiency and emissions solutions they’ve created in-house. According to independent testing, they can boost fuel efficiency by more than 20% in highway conditions and 10-15% across a full drive cycle including urban driving. That could result in CO₂ reductions of more than 10% across all new vehicles!

Those are big leaps. If nanosecond pulsed power transient plasma ignition systems were used in every car in the U.S., they would generate:

Average fuel savings of $230 per year per new car owner, for a total of more than $3 billion.
18 billion lb fewer CO₂ emissions per year.
10 million acres of trees (roughly the area of Massachusetts and New Jersey combined) would be needed to remove this amount of CO₂ emissions from the air.
157 million lb fewer NOx emissions per year, which could greatly reduce health impact and smog levels in urban areas.

So, what are the barriers to widespread adoption? Quite simply, OEMs often look past combustion-engine innovation to that next big game on the schedule: optimizing EV production and technology. They often consider investments in combustion-engine R&D to be a “looking backward” approach instead of a key profit driver for the next several years.

Right now, the auto industry stands to gain from a sharper focus on the short-term—which doesn’t mean shying away from R&D, innovation, or alternative technologies. Instead, it’s about exploring innovation that can help achieve immediate efficiency and emissions goals. Cleaner and more-efficient fuel-burning vehicles will drive the profits that help EVs hit the mainstream more quickly.

Dan Singleton, Cofounder and CEO of Transient Plasma Systems, Inc., wrote this article for Futurride.