In the beginning – which is to say in September last year – Delta Motorsport’s highly flexible new S2 autonomous and electric car chassis, one of the star exhibits of this year’s LCV Show, was only going to appear as a notional prototype, born in a computer and destined to stay there forever. Under the original plans, this all-aluminium, skateboard-style EV chassis design – which now sits proudly in three dimensions at the centre of a specially designed stand – wasn’t even due to show its screen-based face until this time next year. Then everything changed. In a remarkable last-minute turnaround, Delta’s two founders – engineering director Nick Carpenter and operations director Simon Dowson – decided their S2 project would be more timely and have a far bigger impact if shown this year as a live concept. As project leaders they hurriedly consulted partners in this Innovate UK-backed project – Titan (by-wire steering), Alcon (by-wire brakes), Warwick Manufacturing Group, Potenza Technology (digital safety know-how), Cranfield University (limit handling studies) – and, with everyone’s enthusiastic approval, and working alongside GCE (structure design) and Tecosim (CAE specialists), they set to work at top speed. The chassis you see here was completed just days before the show opened. It was a true feat of execution, although Carpenter, Dowson and partners seem entirely unfazed by their achievement. It goes with the territory in their high-pressure world of technical creativity. “Being part of a small organisation with a limited budget is a really positive thing,” Carpenter explains. “The bigger you are, the more prone you are to paralysis by analysis. There’s huge pressure to find exact answers when there may not be any. In a small company, you just don’t have time.” What’s the reason for the S2 project’s sudden change of pace and shape? Carpenter has a more eloquent explanation, but it boils down to the fact that there are currently platoons of promising researchers in the nooks and crannies of vehicle-focused autonomy and electrification, all with theories or processes that urgently need to take next steps. Trouble is, appropriately engineered test vehicles are expensive and in extremely short supply. S2 can do much to fill the void. At the same time, Delta and its partners see a golden opportunity to prove, progress and then earn from their own technical expertise – and their well-proven car-building capabilities – while greatly aiding others in parallel fields of automotive technology: sensor designers, for example, or creators of vehicle infrastructure and even start-ups working on new forms of ‘mobility as a service’. “S2 is a flexible chassis system with a much broader capability than the production-based machines our industry usually has to make do with,” explains Carpenter. “When you ask colleagues with a promising project what they’re going to do for a test vehicle, they’ll often tell you they’ve bought a Ford Mondeo or a Chrysler Pacifica and are going to automate it to make a test mule. It isn’t the car they really want. It’s just what they can get.” By contrast, S2 can be configured comparatively quickly and easily to handle a huge variety of tests and customer activities, says Carpenter, and practically every use furthers the causes of Titan, Alcon and the other partners. “Let’s say you’ve developed a promising piece or process but it’ll cost £5 million and two years to convert a mule to take it further. You’re never going to do it. But if the cost is £200,000 and six months, you’ll probably give it a go.” On the face of it, skateboard-style chassis aren’t particularly new. Plenty of players in the EV business have already employed the concept of locating motor, ancillaries and power electronics at the extremities of an electric car and connecting them with a low, rigid platform chassis that carries the traction battery-set below the cabin floor. It’s the logical way to do things. What makes the skateboard revolutionary are the far greater levels of designed-in flexibility than those of previous offerings, to the extent that Delta is describing it to clients as ‘skateboard 2.0’, justifying the S2 name and deliberately built to take account of lessons thrown up by predecessors. It uses a self-supporting structure of fabricated aluminium, designed by GCE and Tecosim, and depends on compact box sections for its rigidity, with the double-wishbone independent suspension systems carried on the chassis longitudinals at both ends. As well as being almost infinitely flexible in wheelbase, track, overall length, overall width, bulkhead dimensions, crossmember positioning, seating positions and ride height, it can accept a huge variety of powertrains, both hybrid and pure EV. In theory, it could also handle hydrogen fuel cell applications, and even a petrol-only version should anyone ever ask. In fact, it’s so flexible that Carpenter is reluctant to say it has a
Origin: How Delta Motorsport has reinvented the test mule
reinvented
How Delta Motorsports has reinvented the test mule
In the beginning – which is to say in September last year – Delta Motorsport’s highly flexible new S2 autonomous and electric car chassis, one of the star exhibits of this year’s LCV Show, was only going to appear as a notional prototype, born in a computer and destined to stay there forever. Under the original plans, this all-aluminium, skateboard-style EV chassis design – which now sits proudly in three dimensions at the centre of a specially designed stand – wasn’t even due to show its screen-based face until this time next year. Then everything changed. In a remarkable last-minute turnaround, Delta’s two founders – engineering director Nick Carpenter and operations director Simon Dowson – decided their S2 project would be more timely and have a far bigger impact if shown this year as a live concept. As project leaders they hurriedly consulted partners in this Innovate UK-backed project – Titan (by-wire steering), Alcon (by-wire brakes), Warwick Manufacturing Group, Potenza Technology (digital safety know-how), Cranfield University (limit handling studies) – and, with everyone’s enthusiastic approval, and working alongside GCE (structure design) and Tecosim (CAE specialists), they set to work at top speed. The chassis you see here was completed just days before the show opened. It was a true feat of execution, although Carpenter, Dowson and partners seem entirely unfazed by their achievement. It goes with the territory in their high-pressure world of technical creativity. “Being part of a small organisation with a limited budget is a really positive thing,” Carpenter explains. “The bigger you are, the more prone you are to paralysis by analysis. There’s huge pressure to find exact answers when there may not be any. In a small company, you just don’t have time.” What’s the reason for the S2 project’s sudden change of pace and shape? Carpenter has a more eloquent explanation, but it boils down to the fact that there are currently platoons of promising researchers in the nooks and crannies of vehicle-focused autonomy and electrification, all with theories or processes that urgently need to take next steps. Trouble is, appropriately engineered test vehicles are expensive and in extremely short supply. S2 can do much to fill the void. At the same time, Delta and its partners see a golden opportunity to prove, progress and then earn from their own technical expertise – and their well-proven car-building capabilities – while greatly aiding others in parallel fields of automotive technology: sensor designers, for example, or creators of vehicle infrastructure and even start-ups working on new forms of ‘mobility as a service’. “S2 is a flexible chassis system with a much broader capability than the production-based machines our industry usually has to make do with,” explains Carpenter. “When you ask colleagues with a promising project what they’re going to do for a test vehicle, they’ll often tell you they’ve bought a Ford Mondeo or a Chrysler Pacifica and are going to automate it to make a test mule. It isn’t the car they really want. It’s just what they can get.” By contrast, S2 can be configured comparatively quickly and easily to handle a huge variety of tests and customer activities, says Carpenter, and practically every use furthers the causes of Titan, Alcon and the other partners. “Let’s say you’ve developed a promising piece or process but it’ll cost £5 million and two years to convert a mule to take it further. You’re never going to do it. But if the cost is £200,000 and six months, you’ll probably give it a go.” On the face of it, skateboard-style chassis aren’t particularly new. Plenty of players in the EV business have already employed the concept of locating motor, ancillaries and power electronics at the extremities of an electric car and connecting them with a low, rigid platform chassis that carries the traction battery-set below the cabin floor. It’s the logical way to do things. What makes the skateboard revolutionary are the far greater levels of designed-in flexibility than those of previous offerings, to the extent that Delta is describing it to clients as ‘skateboard 2.0’, justifying the S2 name and deliberately built to take account of lessons thrown up by predecessors. It uses a self-supporting structure of fabricated aluminium, designed by GCE and Tecosim, and depends on compact box sections for its rigidity, with the double-wishbone independent suspension systems carried on the chassis longitudinals at both ends. As well as being almost infinitely flexible in wheelbase, track, overall length, overall width, bulkhead dimensions, crossmember positioning, seating positions and ride height, it can accept a huge variety of powertrains, both hybrid and pure EV. In theory, it could also handle hydrogen fuel cell applications, and even a petrol-only version should anyone ever ask. In fact, it’s so flexible that Carpenter is reluctant to say it has a
Origin: How Delta Motorsports has reinvented the test mule
Tires, headlights, seats — every part of the car is being reinvented to be autonomous
The Michelin Vision concept tire uses 3-D printing to create a honeycomb texture, with the tread printed onto the edge. The car industry is reinventing the wheel to prepare for autonomous vehicles.Japans Sumitomo Rubber Industries Ltd., whose roots stretch back to when Henry Ford was building his Model T, is developing a smart tire that can monitor its own air pressure and temperature, and eventually respond by itself to changes in road conditions.Yet its more than just tires that are being changed. Koito Manufacturing Co., AGC Inc. and Lear Corp. are putting semiconductors and sensors inside headlights, glass and seats to make them as intelligent as the cars driving themselves.Alphabet Inc.s Waymo LLC, Intel Corp.s Mobileye NV and Baidu Inc. dominate the core technology for autonomous driving, yet suppliers still count on finding their own space in the business. Parts for advanced driver-assistance systems and autonomous driving are expected to become a US$57-billion market within a decade, according to BIS Research, and old-school companies born during the early days of the automobile know they must either adapt or risk extinction.Though the deployment of highly autonomous commercial fleets isnt expected to begin until at least 2022, the looming threat is that the increasingly sophisticated designs of those cars will render some ordinary parts and their suppliers unnecessary.For example, why would a self-driving vehicle that uses cameras, lasers and sensors to get around need headlights or mirrors? An artist’s rendering of a “smart headlight” Koito Manufacturing The response from century-old Koito Manufacturing is to reinvent the headlight. The Tokyo-based company, which traces its roots to making lenses for railway signal lamps in 1912, is adding sensors and artificial-intelligence chips to lamps it plans to introduce by about 2025.Positioned on the four edges of the vehicle, the lamps will be able to process information and react, such as by illuminating poorly lit crossings, signaling pedestrians that its safe to cross and raising an alarm to surrounding drivers by flashing a specific color.The companys current customers include Toyota, Volkswagen AG and General Motors Co., according to data compiled by Bloomberg.Autonomous driving will change the role of lamps, said Yuji Yokoya, who recently retired as executive vice president of the Tokyo-based company. We see them not just as lamps, but more as corner modules.An overarching challenge is to convince carmakers that the smarter and more expensive components make economic sense. Not all parts manufacturers need a radical transformation to keep up with autonomous and electric vehicles since theyve been evolving gradually as the industry takes shape, said Deepesh Rathore, an independent automobile analyst based in Bengaluru.A car is a car, and the shape of the tire doesnt change, Rathore said. I can imagine some of those companies having to reinvent everything especially those working with engines and gearbox technologies. Even components that arent facing an immediate existential threat are evolving. Sumitomo Rubber is researching tires that can transmit data about road conditions to the car as well as to other vehicles.The next step will be a tire that automatically adapts to road conditions. When the tire detects water, it will change the structure of its surface into one that is optimal for wet roads, said Kozaburo Nakaseko, an official in the research and development division of Sumitomo.Tires need to become smarter, Nakaseko said. We cannot move into an autonomous car society without information about the roads we drive on.The innovations arent just limited to Japan. In the U.S., Lear Corp. is equipping its car seats with biometric sensors to detect stress, drowsiness and changes in heart rate, and then activate treatments in response. The seats also can transmit data to a doctor or family member if necessary, the company said.Other functions include controls that let users create individual micro-climates where they are sitting, and noise-canceling features in the headrests, the Southfield, Michigan-based company said.All the mechanical stuff will just slowly go away, and there is a lot of electronics coming in instead, said Egil Juliussen, principal auto analyst with IHS Markit. You have to change in order to
Origin: Tires, headlights, seats — every part of the car is being reinvented to be autonomous
All about car 