Honda and Fuji Heavy Industries launch new hybrid vehicle

    New cars that will overturn the old view that hybrid cars are just about fuel efficiency will be launched in June. Honda and Fuji Heavy Industries have improved their systems to make hybrid cars more efficient than gasoline cars. As the competition for environmentally friendly cars intensifies, each company will use "driving" performance as a selling point to expand its market share around the world.

    Honda President Takanobu Ito announced on May 16 that the company will return to the world's highest level F1 racing. As for the reason, Ito said, "This is to extend the technology accumulated in the racing field to mass-produced cars."

    Honda will first realize this concept in hybrid cars, the representative of environmentally friendly cars. The Accord Hybrid, which will be launched on June 21, was designed by technicians who once developed F1 racing engines. The F1 racing cars they participated in developing were in service until 2008. Honda hired racing talents to create a new hybrid car with good fuel efficiency and the ultimate "driving" performance.

    The person in charge of developing the powertrain system, including engines and motors, is Yusuke Hasegawa, the head of the 5th Technical Development Office. From 2002 to 2008, Hasegawa worked on the development of F1 engines and other projects, and raced on major tracks around the world. According to Hasegawa, "The driving data analysis methods cultivated in F1 development were fully applied to system development."

    This time, Honda has developed three hybrid systems, including the one used in the Accord, which will be equipped in new cars launched in 2013.

    Japanese companies have always been leading the world in hybrid vehicle technology, with Toyota playing the leading role. Represented by Toyota's "Prius", hybrid vehicles have always been promoted as "good fuel efficiency". Honda named the hybrid system it developed this time "hybrid sports car". Before this, Honda also produced hybrid vehicles, but its sales volume ranked behind Toyota and was not very prominent in the market. This time, the company intends to use driving performance as a weapon to catch up.

    Honda previously equipped its small car "Insight" with a hybrid system called "IMA". This system has a simple structure and is equipped with only one motor to assist the engine. The company developed IMA in the hope of improving fuel efficiency while minimizing the cost gap with gasoline vehicles, defeating Toyota Prius in terms of cost competitiveness, and thereby winning the market.

    Honda's newly developed system is characterized by greater reliance on electric power. It can generate strong torque at low speeds, making full use of the motor's characteristics of responding to throttle operation more sensitively than the engine, achieving a maneuverable and flexible driving performance.

    The impression of hybrid cars in the past as "smooth driving" seems to have been swept away. The system is divided into three types according to the number of motors equipped.

One motor for acceleration and one for power generation

    Among them, the first to be launched is the "i-MMD" equipped with the Accord Hybrid. The i-MMD is equipped with two motors, one for acceleration and one for power generation.

    Its characteristic is that it only uses the acceleration motor when accelerating, and does not rely on the power of the engine. During this period, the engine drives another generator motor, and the electric energy generated by the motor is supplied to the driving motor. The remaining electric energy is stored in the battery. Compared with engine acceleration, the acceleration performance and energy saving performance are both superior.

    The Accord Hybrid also uses an electric servo brake that can regenerate energy more efficiently during deceleration. Combined with the power of the highly efficient Atkinson cycle engine, the fuel efficiency has soared to 30km per liter, surpassing the Toyota Camry Hybrid, which competes with it.

    SH-AWD is a top-of-the-line system equipped with three motors in total. It is scheduled to be equipped in the RLX of the premium car brand Acura and will be launched in North America in the second half of 2013.

    In addition to acceleration, the system also makes great efforts to achieve fast cornering.

    SH-AWD has a unique structure, with one motor installed in the front to drive the two front wheels, and two motors installed in the rear to drive the left and right rear wheels respectively. The system controls the speed of the two motors in the rear wheels. When the driver turns the steering wheel at high speed, the driving force of the outer wheel increases and exceeds that of the inner wheel. Even if a strong centrifugal force acts on the vehicle, it can smoothly complete the turning action.

    Looking back on the development process, Director Hasegawa said, "It is very difficult to adjust the driving method of the two-wheel motor." If you turn the steering wheel like driving a normal car, the car may turn too hard under certain settings. Therefore, in order to allow the driver to enjoy the fun of driving without feeling uncomfortable, the company repeatedly made subtle adjustments and experienced many failures.

    The other type of system is the same as previous hybrid vehicles, with only one motor. However, the principles of the two are completely different. In the previous system, the engine and the motor are directly connected, and the motor provides auxiliary power during acceleration. In the new system, by expanding the area where the engine is cut off and only the motor is used for driving, driving performance and fuel efficiency are taken into account. This system is scheduled to be equipped in the small car "Fit" to be launched in 2013.

    Let's look at Fuji Heavy Industries. The company developed its own system and is preparing to enter the hybrid vehicle field with the "Subaru XV Hybrid" launched in June. This car also focuses on driving performance.

Lower the center of gravity and stabilize the cornering performance

    Fuji Heavy Industries President Yasuyuki Yoshinaga said that the characteristic of this new model is that the motor replaces the turbine. Recently, more and more models, represented by Germany's Volkswagen (VW), have improved fuel efficiency by reducing engine displacement and equipped with turbochargers to improve power performance.

    However, the turbine needs to compress the exhaust gas and inject it, and the structure is very complicated. There will inevitably be a delay from the time the accelerator is pressed to the time the effect is shown. Using an electric motor instead of a turbine can improve the response speed to the accelerator and stably generate high horsepower at low speeds. Not only is there less delay, but also good acceleration performance.

    This time, in order to further improve the acceleration performance, Fuji Heavy also used a device called "torque converter". This device may lead to worse fuel efficiency, so it is rarely used in hybrid systems using one motor. However, in order to achieve the purpose of enhancing acceleration performance, the company was determined to use it even if it sacrificed a certain amount of fuel efficiency. It is difficult to install a torque converter on ordinary cars with horizontal engines, but fortunately, the company uses a longitudinal engine, which is designed to be easier to install.

    Fuji Heavy Industries' measurement results show that at a speed of 40 km/h, when the accelerator pedal is depressed about one-quarter, the acceleration is faster than other gasoline vehicles of the same level within 0.5 seconds.

    Fuji Heavy Industries' focus was not just on acceleration performance. The company also improved the design to lower the car's center of gravity, significantly improving stability when turning.

    Hybrid vehicles need to carry a lot of heavy objects such as batteries, which can easily lead to a high center of gravity. When the center of gravity is high, the body of the vehicle tends to shake when turning, making it difficult to maintain driving stability. The center of gravity of the XV hybrid vehicle is 585mm from the ground, which is one of the few SUVs (multi-purpose sports vehicles) with a height below 600mm. Satoshi Maeda, deputy director of Subaru's technical headquarters, said, "We did not miss even a 1mm or 2mm, and we considered the battery configuration method, etc."

    Since this was the first time the company was developing a hybrid vehicle, it sought help from its capital partner, Toyota, a veteran in hybrid vehicle development, in order to make up for its lack of experience.

    During this development, Fuji Heavy Industries mobilized all its staff, dispatched technicians to Toyota's research institutes frequently to learn technical experience in improving reliability, and also gave its own flavor to driving performance. Ordinary office workers were asked to test drive the car on the company's test road to ask for their thoughts and opinions on driving. Finally, this hybrid car with Fuji Heavy Industries' characteristics and pursuit of driving performance was developed.

    The challenge is to expand the European and Chinese markets. The competition for eco-friendly cars that help reduce fuel costs and curb carbon dioxide emissions is intensifying around the world. Currently, hybrid cars are the mainstay in Japan and the United States, while diesel cars and turbocharged cars are the mainstream in Europe. The two camps are fighting fiercely to expand their influence. In China, the world's largest automobile market, hybrid cars have not yet been widely used. For the hybrid car camp, expanding the Chinese market has become a major issue in the future.

    If driving performance can be used as a selling point in addition to good fuel efficiency, it will be possible to promote it to a wide range of customers, including those in Europe. In fact, Toyota has also launched a hybrid car with good acceleration performance. In addition, there are also German BMW's "ActiveHybrid 3" and German Audi's large sedan "A8" hybrid cars. All European companies use driving performance as a selling point.

    Fuel efficiency is of course also a factor in determining the competitiveness of a car. However, the appeal of cars is not limited to this. How much potential can be unleashed in hybrid cars? In the battle for supremacy in environmentally friendly cars, this may be the key to the future development of Japanese companies.