Hyundai’s Work to Fire Up Competitor to BMW M, Mercedes AMG Gets Boost from Former BMW M Chief Engineer

For effectively over a year, Hyundai has contemplated how to tackle the efficiency vehicle segment after announcing its new “N” sport-model series. Every choice was on the table, from adding graphics and a louder exhaust to otherwise regular cars to using bigger engines from higher-positioned models, up to a complete-fledged work that would rival—at least in concept—BMW M GmbH, Audi Quattro GmbH, and Mercedes-AMG. It appears that Hyundai’s efforts are about to get a excellent sturdy kick in the shorts, as the automaker just announced the hiring of BMW M’s chief engineer, Albert Biermann.

To be stationed at Hyundai’s R&D center in Namyang, South Korea, Biermann will be accountable for the improvement of high-efficiency derivatives for the Hyundai and Kia brands he is also tasked with the common improvement of ride and handling, as nicely as safety and comfort, of mainstream Hyundai and Kia models. The Koreans have made fantastic strides in dynamics the past handful of years—look no additional than the newest Genesis sedan—but they still have a techniques to go prior to sporty competitors like Honda and Mazda have something to be concerned about.

That said, we are excited over the prospect of higher-overall performance models for the 2 Korean brands, which we fully count on to rival the offerings of the German competition, as effectively as Cadillac’s V-series and Lexus’s F models. “N,” by the way, is a moniker derived from the Namyang R&D center but it could also stand for “Nürburgring,” exactly where Hyundai operates a new testing center.

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But back to Biermann—clearly, Hyundai-Kia’s gain is BMW’s loss. With Biermann’s departure, BMW loses its second passionate auto guy from prime management ranks this month. Just 2 weeks ago, R&D chief Herbert Diess deserted BMW to head up the Volkswagen brand in Wolfsburg. Biermann, who is 57, apparently figured he wouldn’t have a lot of a profession left at BMW when the company announced that outgoing M GmbH chief Friedrich Nitschke would be replaced by Franciscus van Meel (48 years young) on January 1, 2015 (a move we 1st reported in May possibly 2014). At BMW, senior managers retire at 60, and it is a rule with couple of exceptions.

At Hyundai, Biermann will be the most prominent Western executive to be head-hunted soon after design chief Peter Schreyer abandoned VW for Kia. (Schreyer now heads up style for both Kia and Hyundai.) His hiring at Hyundai is serendipitous, for last year we were told that the automaker’s N models would attempt to emulate BMWs’ dynamics. To that end, Biermann’s crowning achievement at BMW might have been the current M3 and M4 with their downsized, turbocharged straight-6 engine and bespoke manual transmission and steering technique. We’d be okay with a little M3/M4 in some Hyundais. Would you?

Hyundai’s Work to Fire Up Competitor to BMW M, Mercedes AMG Gets Boost from Former BMW M Chief Engineer

AAA Study Says Hands-Free Voice Controls Boost Driver Distraction—Sometimes By A Lot

A new study on voice-activated infotainment systems has finally taken our rants and grumbles and turned them into cold, tough clinical analysis that says voice-recognition systems in all vehicles fairly much stink. In fact, they unnecessarily tax our brains and can pose much more of a danger than speaking on a cell phone.

The study, commissioned by AAA and performed by researchers at the University of Utah, involved 3 experiments with roughly 40 drivers aged 18 to 40. Every experiment — beginning with a blank computer screen, then progressing to a driving simulator and a public road course in Salt Lake City — assessed 9 different scenarios in varying complexity, from switching radio and HVAC to dictating and listening to emails and texts. To hold almost everything apples to apples, the researchers designed their personal voice control system modeled after a typical factory setup and compared human and computer voices, as well as a handsfree version that mimicked Apple’s Siri Eyes Free of charge. Random, frustrating errors have been thrown in the mix to maintain factors realistic. On prime of all that, researchers recorded drivers’ heart rates, brain activity, and reaction instances to braking and other inputs via a blinking light in their eye.

The outcomes: We get much more stressed dictating commands or messages than listening to them, and our mental capacity behind the wheel additional shrinks when a voice technique screws up, provides as well several alternatives, or takes also long to approach. Speech good quality from computerized voices didn’t seem to make a distinction. Siri, in spite of its reliance on natural language, was deemed the most complex and least intuitive of all. Similar commands at times achieved diverse results, dictated texts cannot be edited and call for the driver to commence all more than once more, and Siri’s “sarcasm and wit” wasn’t appreciated by the test drivers, especially surprising thinking about their typical age was in between 24 to 25.

“We already know that drivers can miss stop indicators, pedestrians and other cars even though utilizing voice technologies due to the fact their minds are not completely focused on the road ahead,” mentioned AAA CEO Bob Darbelnet in a news release. “We now realize that existing shortcomings in these items, intended as security attributes, might unintentionally lead to greater levels of cognitive distraction.”

When comparing factory systems on a 1 to 5 scale of increasing workload, AAA found Toyota Entune was the simplest and least distracting at a 1.7 rating. Following have been Hyundai BlueLink (2.2), Chrysler Uconnect (2.7), Ford MyFord Touch (3.), and Mercedes COMAND (3.1). Chevrolet MyLink (3.7) scored the worst of the automakers, but it was nonetheless well behind Siri at 4.2. (Even though no test like this is completely objective, if you read the entire study here and right here, you’ll see how nicely they attempted to level the playing field amongst several diverse drivers and systems.)

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AAA recommends automakers put a maximum of 4 or 5 selections when asking drivers to pick from preset menus, speed up the processing, and, in general, quit already with the draining, multistep voice controls that just compel far more drivers to fiddle with their smartphones to get what they want. The National Highway Visitors Safety Administration, which introduced suggestions for infotainment displays last year, intends to specify equivalent guidelines for voice-activated systems, even though no specific laws exist on the books.

AAA Study Says Hands-Free Voice Controls Boost Driver Distraction—Sometimes By A Lot

Blowing Your Way to Savings: How Electric Superchargers Boost MPG

October 8, 2014 at 2:54 pm by Don Sherman | Photography by Michael Simari, Illustration by Chris Philpot

When you want a potent engine or a sturdy gearbox for your fantasy supercar, Ricardo ought to be your first call. This U.K.-based engineering firm has roots reaching back much more than a century and branches that cover Europe, Russia, Asia, and the U.S. of A. Ricardo’s expertise can be discovered across the business. Among its recent projects is the HyBoost, a Ford Focus fitted with an electrically driven supercharger. Ricardo constructed this HyBoost with 2 objectives in thoughts: topping Toyota Prius fuel efficiency even though skirting the expense, bulk, and weight of the Prius’s 2 electric motor/generators and battery pack. The experiment is a timely one—every carmaker sees 2025’s 54.5-mpg CAFE requirement looming, and most need to have help meeting it. To develop the HyBoost, Ricardo replaced the original 1.6-liter 4-cylinder engine with a 1.-liter EcoBoost 3-cylinder and augmented that engine’s turbo with a Valeo electric supercharger. 2 years ago [“A Genuine Electric Charge,” January 2012], we speculated that BMW may possibly use an electric supercharger to sharpen throttle response at low engine speeds. Even though that has yet to come to fruition, Audi has one particular under the hood of its RS5 TDI concept car.

Primarily a turbo’s compressor mated to a DC electric motor, this supercharger can spin to 70,000 rpm in significantly less than .4 second, supplying 77 psi of enhance ahead of the HyBoost’s bigger exhaust-driven turbo wakes up. Ricardo met its aim of rising the Focus’s fuel efficiency from 39 mpg to 59 in European test cycles. A switch permits acceleration testing with or without the electric blower operating. We employed 4th-gear acceleration from 30 to 50 mph and from 50 to 70 mph to gauge the supercharger’s effectiveness. Goose the HyBoost’s throttle and there’s a shuffle beneath the hood accompanied by a modest enhance in forward surge as this device goes to work. The key word is “modest.” The supercharger trimmed the 9.-second 30-to-50-mph run by only .3 second. In the upper speed variety, there’s significantly less advantage due to the fact there’s sufficient exhaust flow above 2800 rpm to spin the turbo. Regardless of the HyBoost’s poor displaying on the test track, we’re enthusiastic about the Valeo supercharger due to the fact it runs cool and can be mounted nearly anyplace under the hood. Count on seeing this device on production models soon.

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Hyaboosta: Ricardo’s mpg particular ditches the Focus’s 1.6-liter for a 1. and its 5-speed for a 6. It has an electric supercharger and a quit-begin method. The blower gets its juice not from a battery, but from 10 supercapacitors that capture power throughout deceleration.

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Blowing Your Way to Savings: How Electric Superchargers Boost MPG