POWERTRAIN
ACCELERATED LEARNING
The Institute for Advanced Automotive Propulsion Systems (IAAPS) at The University of Bath in the West of England is benefi ting from a £70 million investment. Sam Akehurst, Professor of Advanced Powertrain Systems, outlines his vision of the future
P
owertrain innovation is at the heart of the transport sector’s response to the environmental imperative,
but the industry is discovering that processes that are fi nely tuned to ensure reliable evolution are not well placed to deliver revolution. Throw in the need to accommodate trends such as mobility-on-demand, model fragmentation and the growing diversity of global markets and you have unprecedented demand placed on already stretched engineering resources. Recognising this challenge, The
University of Bath is developing a new type of innovation and education centre. International Transport
Manufacturer spoke to Professor Sam Akehurst about the new approaches he feels are needed and how these align with the fast-changing automotive powertrain technology roadmap.
DOES THE INDUSTRY NEED TO CHANGE? For a hundred years, innovation has been a double-edged sword: on one hand, it allows us to meet challenging new regulations and to increase competitive advantage; on the other, it is expensive to deliver and even more costly if the research is not adopted or an error in development results in anything from a late-stage tooling change to a major recall. Accelerating innovation exponentially increases
Q
The Institute for Advanced Automotive Propulsion Systems will focus on collaboration and education
these risks and can also have unwelcome impacts on costs and timescales. A vital addition to the technology
roadmap is therefore a fresh understanding of how these innovations are going to be delivered without aff ecting our industry’s outstanding achievements in quality and reliability. The second part of the answer is that
whatever process is used, it will need more fl exible and transdisciplinary skills. The constraints on advanced engineering departments are not only cost, timescales and risk: there is also a lack of skills across our industry. On every continent, we are still educating too few engineers with
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