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Nissan


Jerry Hardcastle, Vice President, Vehicle Design & Development, Nissan


What social/economic/technological trends do you think will have the greatest impact on car design in 2018?

First and possibly the most important is the environmental issue and everything related to CO2 emissions. It’s clearly the one driving us now and will continue driving us onward toward 2018 without a doubt.

The other socio-economic trend is the expansion of India, Russia and China – the BRIC markets, and the fact that cars will be produced and consumed in those countries in much greater volumes over the next ten years. Cars will be designed for those markets, influencing our market.

All those markets are going to become more sophisticated. The demand for more personal transport; luxury transport – is going to increase. Their cultures are different: they’re likely to demand other designs, other styles and other practical usage. A Moscow winter is a lot more severe than most Western Europe experiences; that may have an influence.

The other economy not hitting us but will be on the horizon is Africa. Eradicate malaria, and the effect on that continent will be huge. The resource and the intelligence of the people there suggests that they could emerge very quickly and attention will turn towards to those countries after BRIC.

In what ways will the powertrain technology differ?

The electric vehicle will be – should be – a lot more prevalent by that time but that doesn’t mean the end of the IC engine. But gasoline and diesel have to become a lot more fuel efficient and lower emissions. DI and turbos will increase. CVTs matching power to the use of the vehicle, the 3-litre gasoline car using high efficiency turbos – that will all happen first and then the next step will be diesel and gasoline hybrids. Use of biofuels will expand but by 2018/2020 we believe that electric vehicles will be challenging the IC engine very seriously.

We see it and B and C segments. 2010/2012 for extensive controlled fleet use, mainly because infrastructure (charging) will restrict it but towards 2018 I think that as the range of batteries improves, we expect commuter usage in either B or C segments.
We’ve tried to accelerate Li-ion battery technology with our JV with NEC. With the Mixim we’ve said we could maybe take it to a top speed of 180km/h and a range of 250km with 20-40 minutes charging cycle. Our aim for that is 2018/2020. This is technology that is to expensive at the moment but there is a working prototype of some form which we believe can be developed into something commercial.

What materials will vehicles use – can we expect serious alternatives to steel to emerge?

I think steel, because of its basic cost balance and the fact that plants are set-up to make mass-produced steel bodies means a certain inertia and some difficulty to move away from steel. What’s driving us forward is that to reduce CO2 emissions we need to make lighter cars. To get that top speed and range from the Mixim we need to look at much lighter materials. Polymers, primarily a thermoplastic, would be good from a recycling point of view. We’ve used this technology for fenders with Nissan/Renault but it’s about making it commercially feasible. That’s always a difficulty – steel is so good from a cost balance point of view but that could well change with China consuming so much steel. This could drive us towards a different technology.

Steel is difficult to replace but not irreplaceable.

As I sit here today, carbon fibre is very costly. All engineers like to use it but using it in the volumes that you-d have to: at the moment, we don’t see it as being feasible but we will keep looking.

What technologies will be making the big advances in safety in 2018?

What’s going to make the difference in 2018 is vehicle to vehicle and maybe vehicle to infrastructure. The vehicle knows where it is and what’s around it. And it can be making some of the decisions that the driver makes now. For example, communicating speed limits into the vehicle.

I think that, sitting here today, the driver is ready to be told that he’s in a zone. Whether the driver is ready to be controlled is another matter. Everybody said people wouldn’t be controlled on the M25 but the variable speed limits work.

There may be classes of customer that can be controlled; people who drive professionally. Things like delivery vans may well be controlled first. We don’t want to take out the fun to drive but equally we have a corporate social responsibility. Our alcohol detector is one example. It can do it be either warning the driver, or the technology can be easily tuned to just shut the vehicle down. I don’t think that Nissan will necessarily decide that but the Government or the social conditions may well dictate.

How will automotive engineers’ working lives be different? What skills/specialisms will be important?

Certainly by that time in Nissan we will be wanting to work towards a full digital development process. So the number of physical iterations of development – practical builds of cars before the start of production will be reduced – we’d like to reduce it to one. So that design, assemble and test digitally. Then we press the button, build one, there is an amount of confirmation testing and then you sell it. Looking at our process now, we have a prototype lot, a development lot and then two production trials. The best we’ve ever done is going straight to two production trials. By 2018 we should be down to one.

The senior management of car companies now is still of a generation that didn’t have computers at school. They were introduced to them at University. The younger engineers that are arriving – the Playstation set – they’ve interacted with the world through computers form most of their life. So their ability to visualise and test things, manipulate views of things, is greatly enhanced and this speeds-up the development process.
That kind of knowledge is going to be key and there’ll be a mindset change as this generation moves through the automotive world. Mixim is a good example: we tried to design it for a different kind of customer. They’ll also have been brought up on computer technology. People don’t need a car necessarily to drive to the pub for social interaction. They already have all the social interaction they need through MSN messenger and video cameras and mobile phones so their usage of the car may well be different.

We were a generation brought up on fixing bikes and lawnmowers – practical mechanical engineering. Younger engineers get stimulated and challenged by electronics. I’m sure that because of that their ability to design will be different and won’t rely on what I was brought up with – spanners and bits of metal.

Younger people get excited about the launch of things like Nintendo Wii – I think that’s a step change in the way engineers will think and that’s why our working life will be different.
We’re seeing this difference in graduates we recruit now. If you ask them for a presentation they’ll use PowerPoint. If you asked engineers 20 years ago you’d get a flip chart. People who used drawing boards could print. Then you’ve got CAD engineers who’ve lost the ability to print. Now you’ve got electronics guys who can only publish with electronic publishing.

Their ability to see a 3D image on a screen. Older guys who when they want to read something have to print it. But younger guys can read everything on a screen or on a phone. It’s quite a cultural change and that’s happening now.

Their access to information is different. I’m of a generation that would say there’s no substitute for travel – you want to go to these places and work there, experience them.

If you ask a 45 year old what the car of 2018 is going to be like, I can give a view from a professional and knowledge point of view.
Ask a younger engineer and I imagine they’d be possibly more ambitious and possibly more challenging.

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