Recently in Boxberg , Germany: Robert Bosch GmbH, world's largest auto components supplier, sets great store by the diesel engine. The company believes that this year, nearly half of all vehicles produced in the world will be diesel-powered, compared with 40 per cent in 2002 and 20 per cent in 1997 - a trend, incidentally, to which India will be no exception.
This trend augurs well for Bosch, which has been in the vanguard of technology development for diesel engines, be it the common rail, or unit injectors or exhaust gas treatment.
"We are profiting from the boom," noted Dr Bernd Bohr, Chairman - Automotive group, Bosch, at a press conference in Germany last week.
However, Bosch's R&D establishment, which spent euro 2.4 billion (Rs 12,600 crore), or 9.4 per cent of sales, has on hand several projects in non-diesel area too, the leading one perhaps being researches into petrol direct injection. Thus for Bosch, while diesel is `in', petrol is not out.
The benefits of consistently high research spends are captured in one piece of statistics: over the past 30 years, the average value of Bosch products per vehicle increased five-fold and stands at euro 400 (Rs 21,000).
As R&D efforts continue, Bosch has several new technology offerings to be launched commercially over the next three years.
Last week, Robert Bosch GmbH, opened its R&D war chest to a select international media and displayed some of the key weapons: advancements in engine management, emission control and safety systems - products of its R&D efforts.
These latest generation technologies seek to address the key challenge faced by a vehicle manufacturer: How to make a vehicle more powerful and yet less fuel-thirsty and safer.
Bosch is a pioneer of the Common Rail System (CRS), where the fuel is kept at a high pressure in a common rail over the cylinders and injectors push it into the cylinders. At the frontier of the CR technology is one key question: how to inject more fuel into the cylinder?
This can be done by raising the pressure at which fuel is held in the common rail, or by boosting the pressure at which the injectors spit in the fuel.
Today's CR systems feature injection pressures of 1,800 bars, but Bosch is trying to develop hydraulically boosted injectors that can generate injection pressures up to 2,500 bars.
Meanwhile, Bosch has started selling the more advanced `piezo injectors'- which use sensitive piezo crystals that expand when an electric field is applied to them. For several technical reasons, the piezo injectors are fast whereby it is possible to reduce the intervals between injections and split the quantity of fuel delivered into a large number of separate injections for each combustion stroke.
Diesel engines become even quieter, more fuel-efficient, cleaner and more powerful.
In 2004, Bosch sold 60,000 CR systems with piezo injectors; it expects to sell 420,000 units this year. The company sees its sales of all high-pressure injection systems to go up to 8.4 million units this year, compared with 7.2 million last year.
Also on the anvil is a new kind of particulate filter for treating exhaust gases, scheduled to go into commercial production next year.
The ever-increasing demand for bringing down emissions is creating a niche in the automotive world - for hybrid vehicles. Bosch, which expects the niche to be a substantial business opportunity, has created a Hybrid Systems Project House for developing different hybrid designs. It expects production to commence in 2007.
At the press conference, Bosch also outlined the advancements made in Gasoline Direct Injection - the latest in petrol engines. Petrol-powered engines have now evolved from carburetted engines (where fuel and air are mixed in a carburettor) to multi-point fuel injection, where they are mixed in the intake port above each cylinder.
However, even in MPFI engines there are limits to fuel supply response and the combustion control because the fuel mixes with air before entering the cylinder. In contrast, in GDI engines, fuel is injected into the cylinder as is the air - they mix inside the cylinder. This enables extremely precise control of fuel supply, leading on to fuel saving, better combustion and less of emissions.
At Bosch, the second generation of GDI systems will go into production later this year, with improved features to help high-pressure injection. Also under development are piezo injectors for this purpose. Bosch believes that by 2008, one in every five petrol engines will have direct injection; around half of them will have a turbocharger.
Apart from these, Bosch has a clutch of `Electronic Stability' technologies. One, for example, helps enhance braking response by bringing brake pads into contact with brake discs the moment the driver lifts his foot off the accelerator. Another keeps wiping the brake disc off any moisture - a big help while driving in rain.
Yet another technology, called `hill hold control', prevents a car from rolling backwards unintentionally while climbing a slope.
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