VW will introduce a pair of “environmentally friendlier” engine technologies by 2015, and suggests a Human Machine Interface will warn drivers of oncoming road hazards and spontaneously rearrange instrument panel displays.
The first technology VW recently unveiled was a combined combustion system (CCS), which mixes fuel and air “homogeneously” inside an engine (similar to that of a diesel powerplant), and reportedly “removes any trace of soot and reduces nitrogen oxide emissions”.
However, for CCS to provide maximum benefit to an engine’s operation, it needs to run on new kinds of synthetic designer fuel currently under development by VW. There’s SynFuel, which is made from natural gas, and SunFuel – produced from plant matter known as biomass, or by processing straw. SunFuel is cleaner than petrol and diesel and is, we quote, “CO2 neutral because the plants it is made from absorbed greenhouse gas when they were growing.
In turn, GCI, or gasoline compression ignition, combines the fuel economy of a diesel engine with the low emissions of a petrol engine. According to a report, it works by switching between the spark-plug ignition of a petrol engine for starting and hard acceleration, but relying on sparkless compression ignition, like a diesel powerplant does, during low load situations, such as freeway cruising.
GCI-enhanced engines can operate with both petrol and SunFuel, and the next stage, reported, was to combine the technology with VW’s TSI engines, which are equipped with both superchargers and turbochargers.
Although new biofuels are in their infancy and VW experts expect it will be 2015 before they go on sale in any quantity, both CCS and GCI will be introduced into production cars by 2015.
And, there’s no reason that only owners of top-of-the-line Audi models should be able to improve their cars’ handling and dynamics on the move… The Volkswagen Group plans to introduce steering and suspension systems that can be reconfigured with just a push of a button across the spectrum. There should also be options to sharpen throttle-, dual-clutch gearbox- and braking system responses.
Lastly, Volkswagen is developing a Human Machine Interface (HMI) system that will rely on video cameras to monitor the road ahead and send a signal to the driver to warn of oncoming hazards. According to , HMI will also actively rearrange the display of a vehicle’s instrument panel so that the driver only sees the most vital information relative to particular on-road conditions.
