alfadriver said:...For each car, there are thousands of hours of engine dyno time, and thousands of miles of chassis dyno testing done. I just looked up one truck, and it has over 500 emissions test run on it....
Tangent: I wonder if some internal manufacturer push toward electrification is just to get rid of all the time & expense needed to do the type of emissions engineering, testing and certification you guys are describing for combustion engine cars.
In reply to nderwater :
Possible, but in the scheme of things, the testing cost is pretty minor. There would be more in developing a new battery than in our testing.
In reply to nderwater :
I'm with Alfa. There will always be extensive, and expensive R&D taking place. We do plenty of development on battery and hybrid stuff too, which uses less fuel, but more electricity, so costs really just shift. You can spend just as much testing and tweaking battery chemistry or fuel cells as you would a new manifold design or EGR programming.
I think the push towards electrification has much more to do with meeting tightening emissions standards, and avoiding expensive fines or loss of business than it does reducing R&D costs. I suppose it could potentially reduce warranty costs down the road, but I'd consider that to be more of an advantageous side effect than a motivating factor.
In reply to STM317 :
And by emissions standards that require electrification- that would be CO2. Otherwise, we know how to do the rest pretty well.
In reply to alfadriver :
You're right. I should have said emissions/fuel economy standards.
STM317 said:...You can spend just as much testing and tweaking battery chemistry or fuel cells as you would a new manifold design or EGR programming.
Continuing that thought... once a company's entire range is electrified, engineering exorcizes in battery chemistry, charging tech, heat management, etc. would be directly applicable to a much broader range of vehicles than ICE drivetrain tweaks, right? I'm thinking about the myriad of powertrain+chassis combinations that a company like Toyota or GM has to test today.
Electric powertrains are much simpler, I have to imagine the development costs at scale would be far less. It's not like the motors themselves require much R&D and the batteries are heavily dependent upon suppliers.
Mazda has targeted the generation of engine after the forthcoming Skyactiv-X to have CO2 emissions comparable to an electric car powered by coal generated electricity. The current ND2 engine might not be skyactiv-X, but it certainly demonstrates Mazda's commitment to sweating the details.
Mazda has targeted the generation of engine after the forthcoming Skyactiv-X to have CO2 emissions comparable to an electric car powered by coal generated electricity.
Still a laudable goal after all this time, which may be news to some. I can't count the number of times i've heard the "hybrids and EVs get their electricity from coal anyway!" argument thrown out by learning-resistant types since the invention of hybrids. Coincidentally (...) the 10 hottest years on record have occurred in this same time period. Sure, it's true that it's not ideal, but it's still better than your average ICE car overall, even though those cars' emissions are far more regulated than the coal plants! It would be great irony if those same people were bemoaning the losses in the coal industry and supporting some kind of contrived market distortion from the government to prop that industry back up while they elsewhere decry big government. It's a little too late considering Chinese Solar has achieved price parity with American Coal. If one wanted to, i dunno, make America great again, one idea would be to go back to the time right before Reagan took the Carter-era solar panels off the White House and give him a talk about the utility for the greater economy of subsidizing advanced industry even if it's (gasp) not "defense related". Hell, maybe just make it sound like it is and slip it through. Would have been less scandalous than the Contras.. Maybe then we wouldn't have wasted so much money on rocket fuel flying batteries up to that Hubble thing they built back then (wait a second...). Maybe then we wouldn't have American energy policy correlating so closely with the definition of cognitive dissonance. Maybe Mazda's new goal would be to get their customers to limit the caloric intake of their vehicles because they'd made them just as fuel-efficient as the human body and the cars were all gaining mass from overfueling. An epidemic of efficiency! 
Mazda is a bright spot in a sometimes stupid world.
Snrub said:Electric powertrains are much simpler, I have to imagine the development costs at scale would be far less. It's not like the motors themselves require much R&D and the batteries are heavily dependent upon suppliers.
Mazda has targeted the generation of engine after the forthcoming Skyactiv-X to have CO2 emissions comparable to an electric car powered by coal generated electricity. The current ND2 engine might not be skyactiv-X, but it certainly demonstrates Mazda's commitment to sweating the details.
Electric power trains are more simple. But the OEMs would put just as much effort into making them (and the supporting architecture) more reliable, more efficient, etc.
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