Engineering & Physics > AI
Powering through
Optimisation and next-gen AI are driving the automotive industry forward, writes Gemma Church
T
he automotive industry is accelerating into an uncertain future where increased design complexity
coupled with mounting regulations and customer demands are impacting not only tomorrow’s vehicles but the engineers developing them, today. Gary Brotman, chief executive officer at machine learning company Secondmind, said: “Today’s automotive engineers face a herculean task in efficiently and effectively modelling and simulating the systems that comprise today’s cars. The complexity of vehicle software alone is 400 % greater than the pace of development productivity – complexity driven by an increasing number of design parameters and constraints including tighter emissions and safety regulations, fuel economy, aerodynamics, drivability, cost and consumer desires, to name a few.” Brotman added: “There’s also the challenge of integrating multiple systems for hybrid and electric vehicles and achieving optimal performance in
development and throughout the vehicle lifecycle. And for traditional car makers, the growing pressure to reduce emissions means engineers must develop innovative, long-term solutions while optimising legacy ones, which is costly, time-consuming and makes it harder to maintain competitive advantage, let alone survive.” In short, automotive engineers are
expected to do more with less. Increasing vehicle complexity sits at the heart of the many design and development challenges that engineers face. This is because today’s vehicles have moved away from mechanically dominated systems and into multi-physics, fully connected entities, driven by data and powered by electricity. Zed Tang, technical account director
at Ansys, said: “The demand for designing more efficient and powerful electrified powertrains at a lower cost has incrementally increased. When we consider where a great source of cost savings and efficiency in the overall system can be found, the Electric Drive Unit (EDU) is it.” An EDU comprises the power electronics
consisting of the control software, the gearbox, and the electric machine – all of which must seamlessly work together to move the vehicle. “So, the designer must consider system performance instead of
22 Scientific Computing World Summer 2023
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