Achates' Amazing Engine Breakthrough - Autoline After Hours 412

1860 Ford was too wide for some states when they came out whether they were at all like New York or someone had like a maximum if they overshot and like they had to get a special rider to be able to sell Fords there we had to get deviations state-by-state for some of the running boards and that was one of the not one of them there's one of the ingredients in why you want to retractable running boards so you can make the truck wider and still have any board stick out four foot so so all these little longer it's the stuff like this that makes me a small government guy so it's a 350 a dually or is it just you know you don't have to have a 350 do dually a separate option so I don't think you get a 450 as a single though okay at what point is is that anything too wide for a car wash Dooley I don't know I'm I don't know if that my I don't think I do Lee we'll go through the walk no but I mean would it I mean would an 80-inch wait yeah rappers go through so it's a you know there's not a car wash standard any anybody can set up a car wash any way they want and there's we've got a car that's too narrow for some of that stuff a smart oh yeah well the racks are like oh okay hold on I got to talk to the audience because we got to get the show going I want to thank everybody who's already tuned in I know most of you already know we're gonna be talking about the achates engine get ready for a deep dive and if you got any questions shoot us an email send its a viewer mail at outline TV and a number of you have already sent in questions will also take phone calls and the number is up on the screen now six to zero two eight eight six five four six and we'll get going momentarily watch online after hours live at auto line TV every Thursday at 3 p.m. Eastern Time that's 12 p.m. Pacific you can subscribe to this podcast for free by searching for auto line in iTunes stitcher or YouTube auto line after hours is brought to you by Bridgestone tires your journey our passion and by lear a global leader in automotive seating and electrical systems all right another glorious outta line after hours mister vassal ash good to have you here how are you I'm doing pretty good good you know this this week I was out driving the RAM and a brand new Ram brand new Ram a couple weeks ago on auto line this week we had Jim Morrison and Ryan ago day the head of her AM brand in the chief interior designer and I saw those guys this week and they were very complimentary about the show but you know I really got this sense from them that there's a certain confidence that they have now a ram in and I thought that was that was refreshing it's like they no longer have something that they need to prove yeah yeah we need to talk about that a little bit later in the show because I'd like to follow up on that but first we got to let everybody know Frank Marcus is back in the studio from Motor Trend magazine great to have you here as always always happy to be here yeah and we especially appreciate your technical expertise because our special guest today is David Johnson the CEO of Achates power and we want to talk about the cicadas engine so David well welcome back to the show thanks for having me glad to be here really great and I like to talk about it so no problem as you know ok this is I think what the third or fourth time you've either been on this show or on the TV show when the hell is this damage and going to be at a spot when I can drive it this one yeah Wow ready of them so ok so so you know we're in the engine business generically not just automotive right so there are applications this is actually our small engine that were talked about today but our biggest engines in production now so that's with Fairbanks Morris they make off-road power engines a 5,000 horsepower engines for power generation no kidding I didn't really they're in production in use production mining equipment sale right so they launched a Powergen in Las Vegas on December 5th and they've got an all-new opposed piston engined get this 12 cylinders 24 Pistons 24 fuel injectors 2 long crank shafts making 5,000 horsepower what's the peak rpm on that baby they run at 900 or rpm at a thousand rpm so it's 900 per you know 60 Hertz and a thousand 4 50 Hertz yeah power dinner the tachometer only moves on a little bit yeah so the Navy uses these here's used for backup power used for power generation oil gas exploration in places where you can't get other licensing this from they've licensed technology from us we signed the agreement back in 2013 so that kind of gives you the idea of the gestation period right from getting in getting together and starting a project to when it's available for production and sale ok and their production cycle is on the order of a year so sign up now and you get an engine for year to know what kind of engines of that replace and how does that sufficiency compare so the really cool thing for us about Fairbanks Morris is that they've been make an opposed piston engine since the 1930s right so we just collaborated we had been doing all this technology development to modernize the opposed piston engine they had an older opposed piston engine said we modernized ok that's that that's the simple way of saying it the reality of it is we redesign the whole engine in collaboration with them I don't think there's a part of the engine that's the same as it was before so everything that a little modification to bring it to modern state development and they're advertising that product there's new best-in-class in the market worldwide and the efficiency was there a percentage you can see a 25% improvement in efficiency they went from tier 2 emissions to tier 4 emissions and they also improve the power densities of power output the engine went up too so a really big change for them and it's it's made big waves and in the power gen market so you can get one right now John no problem but the automotive you know automotive is a little more challenging with all the transient operation and fit in the vehicle and things like that and you know the companies were working with there aren't any automotive opposed piston engines that are in production that we can simply modernize so we are talking about a transformation takes a little longer but we're real happy with how the how the company is developing how the technology developing the results in the test cell are good so we got a lot of great things be proud of ok so you're actually testing the engines dead and so let everybody know we've got a Ford f1 for in here within a katie's and good-looking truck but it's only a demo right the engine doesn't really run does it well the engine that's in that truck has not run but it's kissing cousin that's in our test cell of San Diego runs every day okay right and we've got we built five prototypes and so we'll have them running on various test stands and you know there's work to be done in the development cycle you know you engines aren't just design it and put it into production there's a lot of development activity that has to be undertaken and so that's what we're doing now and I mean so far so good it's really proven to be a great great design and now we do the development it's very interesting and development for engines to see you know where you start and where you finish and how much you can improve through the development cycle okay you had this truck with that engine on display at the Detroit Auto Show everybody in town must have walked by what are they telling you yeah so 800,000 people went to the show and I think you know 799 thousand of them saw the engine this is okay but I'm not concerned I don't care about the public in this case what about the powertrain people GM Ford Chrysler Toyota Nissan Hyundai all the people who were in town here yeah we were a popular stand with those people too so we had a lot of traffic from all the right people and we're excited about you know those projects that are already underway and what are you gonna sign an agreement with one of the major automakers well so I have this problem John that I don't get to talk about such things I would really like to talk about the agreements I've already signed and tell you about which agreement will be next and you know frankly it's a little bit of my I got to keep the secrets of my customers okay in 17 at the North American Auto Show you said the company had signed to produce it was that were you then referring to this power generation outfit or is that was that a light duty engine that you were talking about yes so I can tell you that the the customers that we had signed included the one that's now in production but there are others that are on their way so unfortunately I mean it's a tooling listen do you have a potential licensee for an automotive application like you've got the engine in this truck like it yes so supposedly general supposedly General Motors is going to make some big announcement about an unconventional kind of engine that's good for them okay yeah is a good job just reading your body yeah no I mean so I mean I worked at Ford and GM and and and basically you know these companies they talk about what is for sale or just about to be you for sale so that's that's their normal business that's the way they've got a role and yeah so it's yeah sorry okay unsatisfied okay so the engine in this is is a two seven right 2.7 liter 3-cylinder and so tell us why say Ford might be interested in having that engine in the f-150 rather than the six or the eight that they have or the forthcoming diesel so yeah glad to thank you for the question Carrie basically he's like I drop of John's oh thank you so you know this engine running on gasoline as we're developing it right now for under arpa-e grant it was a nine million dollar grant we got two years ago to design and develop this engine on gasoline this engine on gasoline will deliver 37 miles per gallon comparing cafe combined right so it's a huge it's a huge number right so this is 32 percent higher than the comparable gasoline engine from the Ford f1 10 what transmission does that assume okay so we have all this assumes that you don't change anything in the vehicle from what you started with right just swap the engine out so all the things you can do in terms of optimize the engine you know so our engine rejects less heat to cool it so you can make the radiator small maybe the aerodynamics gets better you can it's a whole bunch of things you can do to optimize the vehicle system including ours including you can hybridize it so there's no hybridization on this the 48 volt that's on the ramps not on this truck so there's a whole bunch of things you can do in addition but does their 37 4 10 the 10 speeds which came in kind of late so you may be started with an earlier transmission and I you have told me that you don't need 10 speeds as much with this engine because of the flexibility of the you know so forth that our fuel map is flat right so basically you you you change gears to get to eight they call it the sweet spot of the of this of the fuel map right our sweet spot is bigger flatter so we don't need as many gears I don't recall if top my head which transmission we use for the analysis at the time but it was a this vehicle with this transmission take out the engine put our engine in same transmission so there was the 8-speed Ortez B I don't recall so 37 miles to the gallon you don't have to hybridize it or anything what about cost if I'm an automaker trying to determine how do I hit this 2025 fuel economy standard for trucks do I go electric do I go mild or strong hybrid DS what well what's your cost like guaranteed to be significantly cheaper than all those things you were just mentioning in terms of electrification the hybridization or other wild things right there is no way to get 32 percent improvement in fuel efficiency more cost-effectively than this when we do the analysis of the engine system which and I say engine system engine by itself not so interesting without the after treatment you know there's a lot of cost in the after treatment we've already done and published results showing that we can get 30% of the cost out of the after treatment system that's a big movie right plus we've gotten rid of the cylinder head and valve train now we they add a few things you get two cranks instead of one but they're shorter so you know kind of we do all this stuff now there's a whole bunch of commercial aspects right you go off to your BorgWarner your honeywell or whoever's going to do your this that the other thing and you have the negotiation around the price so what we really look at is you know how much mass is there how much how many parts are there you know significant parts reduction and so we think the cost is going to be parody or better better than the condenser cooling system is a little small or too cool so it's all these little optimizations that can be done and for the most part we're not factoring this and its really the after treatment and really the elimination of the app of the valve train okay so you're talking about fuel efficiency but if if I'm a truck guy yeah I want torque you haven't talked about I mean so we could have a very small 2 engine in a truck and you could say oh I get 50 miles per gallon but it'd be like driving a slug yeah that's right that's right that would be an unfair comparison we don't make any unfair comparisons right so what I say 37 miles per gallon this is same power and torque and actually as we design and develop this engine we're actually higher in power and torque than all of those 3 liter diesel engines that GM and Dodge Ram are offering right to 300 v6 and one in line 3 3 liter engine and our power and torque could beat all three of them you mentioned last night Mitch not talking double anything a lot fewer parts but that's a big engine it's a tall engine in fact Bradley wrote in to ask why aren't the cylinders horizontal so it's vertical so it's a little bit off vertically okay it's a little bit off vertical so basically what we did here was we architected an opposed piston engine to fit where one shouldn't be right I mean that vehicle is architected around V engines has been since 1996 right all the engines v6 is in v8 since 1996 the i6 went away the four-nine went away in 95 right so that that's what you're given and so we architect the engine to fit in that I guarantee you we can make a better engine still working with a four-door Toyota or whomever to actually optimize it in that case flat it's a good idea but flat means you're gonna change things in the vehicle and we wanted one that just dropped in this one drops in so basically we did as you took the the inline cylinders move them over by about 30 degrees now you've got basically a 60 like a 60-degree v6 right and then we put all the air handling on the other side of the engine and so it it ends up looking like a V engine because it goes into a V hole right if I take it up the old engine would it fit if it were flat I mean that engine if you guys had made it flat or as the engine bay just not configured we didn't ever study it we didn't never study it I can tell you the project we're doing with Cummins for the army which is a big thousand horsepower engine it's going in flat and it's replacing a V engine but you know military vehicles are quite different than on-road vehicles so we do specific package studies around the specific vehicle that we're talking about so we meet with an OEM and they go hey I got to have that engine their first decision is in which vehicle first and then that's what we do and and so the first step is make something that fits and frankly you know we have this longer dimension from crank to crank that conventional engines don't have they're shorter in that dimension but we have the length of the engine which tends to be shorter than a conventional engine so it's just a different aspect ratio which causes some challenge but as you can see not an insurmountable challenge totally solvable and then doing that 37 miles per gallon so that sounds pretty interesting are you at all worried about truckers being you know v8 v8 you're gonna say a three cylinder oh my god no way I could go do a six but I have three cylinder so I think Ford has completely debunked that with the EcoBoost right there v8 rates are way down when I was at Ford you know we had the four point something 4.2 liter v6 it was like 10% mix so it was 90% v8s back in the day I don't know what the rate is now maybe 25 30 % EcoBoost doing really well so I don't think anybody has any problem with it now I gotta tell you everybody since I 3 sounds weird right no question about who wants that right so but that's an i3 four-stroke which is not inherently balanced our engine is actually balanced as a single cylinder because the opposed Pistons right so so just one cylinder by itself is balanced you put three of them together it's silky smooth yeah basically even though it is a three cylinder engine there are still six Pistons cracks right so and also six injectors so it's very so so when you compare our three cylinders six Pistons six injectors to a v6 now Ford's v6 has 12 injectors so we actually have six less but a lot of v6 is just have six injectors so it seems like a fair comparison and that's where we kind of say hey on that piece piston cost about the same injector cost about the same you guys also had a big announcement this week the California Air Resources Board is granting seven million dollars to fit one of your engines into a Class eight semi right that's right and I'll give you another little piece of news that goes along with that we're really excited about this project we're gonna put another demonstrator vehicle on the road quite the other end of the spectrum from this one right all we have to class 8 truck but we've also got two million dollars from the local air districts in California so places like the south coast air district which includes the LA basin and Riverside and so forth and the San Joaquin Valley in California have non-attainment zones for for NOx and so they're really interested in lower NOx and this project that we're getting kicked off nine million dollars excuse me seven million dollars from carb two million dollars from the air district's nine million dollars in total grant funding will produce a truck with our engine it that has 90 percent lower NOx than today's federal standard and 15% lower co2 so 15% better fuel efficiency than the current standard so better a better diesel engine because the ultra low NOx standard as you know is being achieved with natural gas engine spark ignited you drained off some performance and you had a whole bunch of cost and you can get to ultra low NOx but it doesn't really deliver what the trucker's need if you haven't announced which or are you working with a class 8 oh yeah we have a great set of partners and I would love to be in a position to announce that but that announcement is a few days away so watch watch near news feed okay so this is this is gonna be a truck in fleet use by 2020 that's right two of them X you're gonna build two so John in 2020 California no no I want to go drive this video get your CDL let's go probably has one no hey I also on the truck that we've got here in the studio you got some interesting stickers on the side of the truck you've got delphi technologies Argonne National Laboratory and Aramco so clearly I'm guessing are they sponsor supporters funders why do you have them associated enterprise that's a great question thanks for asking so I'm really happy the stickers the trucks turned out beautiful we're taking this truck next week to Washington DC to the rpe Energy Innovation Summit they have this annually to go through all sorts of projects and have discussions around energy and how to get to the next level so arpa-e is really the funding source for this project for that for the the I would say for the engine and specifically gasoline compression ignition so that wasn't a word we got two years ago from RPE and when we applied for that project to RP Delphi and Argonne National Labs are our partners so Delphi is providing the fuel system for this and I'll give you a new word cram shaft so on our upper crankshaft we have a couple of cam lobes that drive the fuel pumps from Delphi for our fuel systems so it's a crankshaft than a camshaft all in one so that they're our partner doing great work for us they're a leader in GCI technology they've been working on it for years under de grants and on their own and so we basically took I kind of its kind of like Reese's Cups right so peanut butter or the chocolate makes you better so so what there's skip fire technology looking at that from Delphi to Allah technology right so basically turning off injectors is something we can do skip fires are very interesting technologies very exciting for them we don't have to have the active fuel management the variable valve timing turning off that so so there's potential there but no I can say we haven't looked at it didn't mean to interrupt you talk about argon what are they argon National Labs has these massive computers and great competency and combustion CFD so I I pride myself on our company case power we have that capability too but they've gotten a few orders of magnitude greater than ours in terms of total capacity so they basically did a lot of the combustion modeling that got us to the GCI combustion that we're now running in the test cell in San Diego so it's better really Pharma I know your piston dome shapes are really kind of intricate where they do that come out of that research from their very close collaboration between my team in San Diego but in Delphi and Argonne National Labs because it's it's the shape of the combustion chamber and it's also the shape of the fuel spray and the shape of the airflow and the cylinders so it's this combination of factors that comes together to make the combustion system work and and really we couldn't we couldn't done it without all three of us together because really the piston is what makes the swirl or tumble right you're drawing the air in so early on and then it's whatever's happening to it's because the Pistons are doing it so the Pistons pay an important part is no question about it we have this great feature of two Pistons making one combustion chamber so they work together to make that happen we call that the tumble portion but actually it's the liner itself that creates the swirl so when the pistons are out beyond the cylinder ports it's the shape of the port geometry exactly that creates the swirling motion that then gets converted to tumble right when the Pistons come together so it's quite a dance of the air to bring it all together but that's not a schematic of that running right now yeah so that's right so when the Pistons are at their long portion that travel out you can see the ports open up it's the ports that create the swirling motion that we're trying to show there with the blue and red lines of blue being fresh air and the red being exhaust gas is the liner have some pattern machined into it or is it a straight line er well it's a pretty straight line ER because what the Rings to conform really well but I mean there is a bore hone that's very important but it's a proprietary bore hone and yeah so we don't end up talking a lot about that I'm gonna buy an engine and but that causes sanema bro can tell you about tear down specially nono so the ports the port geometry Kate's the swirl so it's the air rushing into the cylinder actually pressurized by the supercharger and turbocharger going through those veins that creates the swirling motion okay one last stick around the car a ram come onboard well what we found was we kind of bumped into each other over the years and they did those who don't know where Ram Coe is the Arabian oil company Arabia know every Saudi Arabian oil company they make one out of eight barrels oil they've got 80 years of reserves they're the biggest oil company in the world great people but they're in the business also of finding better and cleaner ways to use their oil so they've got a research center just around the corner from you here John up in Novi and they're setting about or they had said about trying to say what can we do to improve the internal combustion engine and they had a list and one of those things on their list they found was the opposed piston engine they've done their own research their own analysis said post piston engine and they said but there's that company at Katie's power so we got together and we walked him through we'd already did what we've already done and decided that really we had very aligned objectives and very keen interest to do similar types of thing and yet we had complementary skill sets so the kind of lad that they have in Michigan we don't have the kind of capabilities they have with respect to controls and after treatment we didn't have they've got a chassis dyno we don't have so there's a really good complementary aspect of the two companies come together so that's working really well for us really excited about that partnership and you know there's that there's a knock-on effect to that eventually we'll get around to how do we adjust the fuel to make the fuel and the engine up to them together yeah because I know other automakers GM and Ford are calling for much higher octane gasoline than what we have right now yeah so I think that's good for spark ignition not so interesting for me hey Neil from Normal Illinois wrote in to remind us that when we had John jury got on the show a few weeks back he's the director powertrain for Hyundai Kia very familiar are aware of the Achates engine but he had questions about being able to reach a know X levels and so Neil wrote in to say ask David Johnson that concern yeah it's actually oh it was very exciting for us we basically solve this problem for diesel fuel in 2010 and we've been publishing results since then so the 2010 results were steady-state results but you know very compelling where we had if the emissions that you need to have on both NOx p.m. hydrocarbons and Co no fair to just do one you got to do all four right and better efficiency so that was kind of a watershed moment figures it out or that's engine out and we all know in the industry so on an engine out basis what do you have to having tails are now before the after treatment system oh okay so you can measure that some somebody some people call it feed gas right so it's it's that level of emissions that's coming out of the engine before it goes to that a little chemical factory underneath the we call after treatment right so so we know what level we all know in the industry what love we have to get to for like a heavy-duty trucks about three grams for current standards for light duty vehicles about one gram an ox and we've done that measure that that's done we've also done an in transient tests and then really exciting actually part of our announcement and our work on the heavy duty class 8 truck they've just announced recently the carb funding is we're actually gonna meet this ultra low NOx standard which is nearly a full order of magnitude lower it actually a full order of magnitude less 90% less 0.2 to 0.02 grams so yeah we have a really a good system for addressing NOx where we're lean combustion and keep the temperatures down and good results so we have lots of data so I'd be glad to go through that with John no problem yeah alright we had we had another viewer who who sent an email and this is an interesting point he said that there was an engine the khamar TS three cylinder engine from the 50s you mentioned Fairbanks Morris has been doing this since the 30s why is 2018 a good time given the fact that there's all this history yet as you pointed out there's no single car out there right now that's running with an engine of this type I would say there's there's two key factors first of all the engines that Fairbanks Morris had in the 30s and the engines that the roots Lister ts3 and the Napier deltac and the Junkers Jumo all these historic opposed piston engines none of them met emissions right and and and they weren't I would say of modern standards right so in terms of durability reliability quietness all these things that we expect to interest do today they didn't do so that's actually what we've been working on at a katie's power is taking these historic engines that had benefits for fuel efficiency and emissions give me fuel efficiency and power density and making them meet emissions and delivering even more fuel efficiency and and lower emissions and the reason we're able to do that is we're actually taking all the technologies that have been developed for four-stroke engines modern turbo charging modern common rail high pressure fuel injection closed-loop combustion control and feedback algorithms and engine control units that weren't all that technology that's been developed in four-stroke engines and applying it to the opposed piston Tuesday it's a packaging boon compared to that comer Q which I think had rockers and a single cam crankshaft underneath and it was a gigantic crazy package yeah someone called it a folded crank which sounds like a really bad idea and is yeah yeah so we actually so one of the things we did we started the companies we looked at lots of different architectures and the architecture that we settled on the ones in this truck is I would say traditional we call a Yonkers uomo so the German style with two crank shafts and two Pistons and I saw you had done Runkle on here it's not like that at all so we don't have very country we go along great and he's a great guy but we don't have that architecture and I would say that architecture I think Don mentioned it was you know really problematic for Echo motors we have a very standard architecture with a ton of innovation modernization on top of it and so that was really think and then and then Gary I would say the other thing is you know today to be relevant in the marketplace you gotta meet emissions and the most stringent standards so to your three level e low levels and your real-world emissions are coming we've got an advantage for that too and then you've got to have something that you can offer because just meeting in emissions is is not a product it's not something that customer wants to buy it's a requirement right that's a price of entry but then you've got to have something that the market wants and what the market wants right now more than anything else at least we're regulatory standpoint and depending on where you are in the world from a customer standpoint is fuel efficiency and that's what we offer in spades so big gains in fuel efficiency speaking of that Dave Tuttle wrote in to ask what about using it as a range stander why not yeah one of the things we like very much about this three cylinder engine and opposed piston engines in general is that they're balanced as a single cylinder so a three cylinder 2.7 liter engine for an f-150 like this one can be a 1.8 liter 2 cylinder engine for a Taurus or a Escape and it can be a one cylinder range extender engine no problem perfectly balanced and bag by the way build out on the same manufacturing line so huge economies of scale from manufacture and in a two cylinder front-wheel drive you could actually turn it around probably and fit it under a lower hood we can do all sorts of interesting things that's right and I think there's there's real big opportunities to really TechEd and reimagine the vehicle powertrain packaging and really take advantage of this engine you know we look at actually Subarus and portions that have boxer engines which is the exact inside out of ours right two cylinder heads one crankshaft we've got no cylinder head to crank shafts and fits lovely in those vehicles so you know you mentioned manufacturing so global automakers have a lot of sunk cost into making conventional internal combustion engines what happens to that investment should they decide to go with your product significantly reused so example you know we're doing a project right now for the army for Cummins exceed before with Cummins for the army this is an all-new engine to replace the Cummins V 903 which is made there Seymour Indiana plant and they're gonna reuse that plant and make the new you know achates power come in as opposed piston engine for the army in that plan and so they'll reuse a lot of the tools so listen cast-iron forged steel cast aluminum machining assembly wiring harness sensors actuators hot Texas what we do today just what we do today and by the way not only is it the same basic manufacturing it's also the same supply base right federal-mogul Pistons alright BorgWarner Honeywell turbochargers Delphi fuel injection right so so we use to say oh by the way it goes in the same vehicle goes in right goes in the same vehicle right and goes the pump feels the same fuel or next generation biofuels or winter all that stuff no problem gas or diesel whatever yeah okay rapidfire go ahead here now because I want to get to a lot of people have written in we're not gonna be able to get to them all but Willie person says why do you need CGI in the blocks for size and durability he says CG I wonder if he means do not that graph right by your VGA so so with respect to material selections on our engine I would say it's not any different than the other engine so out there in the marketplace four-stroke engine you've got gray iron and you get CG iron blocks and there's a there's a cost and a weight and a packaging and a cast ability and there's reasons I mean basically it has better material properties it cost you a little bit it saves you some weight ok we got a number of questions on this I'll say it from George from Sunnyvale did the straight cut gears that connect the crank shafts create loud gear whine I would say no we have we do have a challenge with respect to the gear train that we've we've significantly solved and that is the gear rattle basically so we have torsional on the gear train so everybody knows about this and we've done specific work to solve it that's actually what a Katie's power is all about is taking the unique challenges of opposed-piston two-stroke engines and solving them and then one by one we've done that so this engines package from the three gear gear train and we've we've run it a test cell we like what we hear very much Tom Lewinski wants to know how do you lubricate the upper crank and bearings a pressure Journal's same way you do the lower one Dave iron wants to know what kind of engine life could you expect out of this so engine life our application specific targets right so a military engine needs this life you know fairbanks-morse engine needs that life a Ford Motor Company f-150 engineering that life so you design for that and I would say that's no different than what we designed for on conventional engines is that's just a part of the engine design process okay last question I could ask from the viewers but it brings us back to my first questions at the very top of the show tigers mundo wants to know so after all the talk talk talk what date will the public see this if you saw at the Auto Show yeah so what are you gonna see at your dealer I know what you want to know and it's not soon enough quite frankly you know in five years ten years can you give us a it's in the it's in the early 2020s how's that cool how long you been working on this so the company has been around since 2004 or we've invented 400 different patents right to get 200 issues another 200 pending a lot of work done a lot of problems solved and we're real excited about this new development of gasoline it's really changing everything so it's a it's a really exciting time for us just yeah I gotta targetting it look it's really exciting to have you on the show this has been a great segment I hate to wrap this up it's been that good but we're gonna have to take a break here we've got other things that we're going to talk about David Johnson though I want I want you back but I want to be able to drive the truck the next time we have you back okay okay deal okay yeah even if it's a prototype I don't care you know sort of thing you can see it yeah but you know it's it's a good looking prototype so for didn't okay real good David Johnson so I have you on the show man thank you yeah we're gonna take a quick break right now and give a good shout out to our friends at Bridgestone okay we're back boy well you're you're the engineer in the in the studio here Frank what do you think about this engine you know I'm fascinated by it as an engineer I have always delighted in looking at oddball engines new different ways and there's the SAE show has one or two of these turn up every year most of them never go anywhere these guys came in like 14 I think I first wrote about them from the SAE show so it's really neat to see this one you know getting some some altitude using wind under its wings and the numbers certainly are impressive and all the science that backs them up all makes sense so I'm less inclined to go you know I'll believe it when I see it yeah Kerry what's your thoughts I I think it's interesting that you know he made the point that they're taking you know a classic engine design that didn't work very well with the technology that was available at the time in optimizing and every sort of reminds me of the the fit you know that da Vinci invented the helicopter but he couldn't make it because he didn't have the technology in order to make it work these guys are basically taking something that existed but using as you say Frank you know modern technology so whether it's from Delphi or the the computational fluid dynamics that they're having Argonne labs you know which which seems to me that there's a whole lot of potential it'll be great in these things it'll be really great because even you can make electric pickup trucks okay we could make that work over the road long-haul trucks Elon I just don't see it I don't see electric doing that job and so this kind of thing is gonna help solve that long-term ultra low NOx we need to climb big mountains and go for 500 miles in between fill-ups a lot more reliably I think then electrics going dude what do you think no I I love your point Gary dad you know they've taken an old engine you know that goes back to the 30s and said hey wait a minute let's put fuel injection let's put computer controls on it let's do CFD let's do all this stuff and yeah why not I I I think it's very clever of them to go back in history in fact I would recommend everybody in the auto industry how'd it go spend some time in automotive museums and look at what was done in the past because I swear to God if they didn't invent it they thought of everything by 1908 they just didn't have electronics or plastics or some of the metallurgy that we have today yeah and that right so more power to them III think it'd be brilliant if this thing absolutely comes to fruition meets all the goals and the light because I'm like you Frank I'm a little bit skeptical about electrics I I love driving electric cars I I will never call them zero emission vehicles though because the batteries are so energy intensive to manufacture and nobody knows how to recycle these things in volume so I'm not sure I'm not convinced yet that battery electrics are the environmental solution that they're being promoted as something like this could really give them a run for their money okay but I have a question for both you guys okay so let's say you are working at the executive level of an OEM and you are given a choice you either modernize your internal combustion engine plant or you install a new technology in order to make electric power trains and you're betting on the future where do you put your money again it's for the duty cycle I really you know he talked about maybe a two they're going in a unescape or something like that I'm much more bullish on on these big ones when you're going to try and get down even with the the 65 to 70 square foot footprint you know the the cafe requirements for trucks of this sort you're gonna spend a heck of a lot more electrifying to get there or doing something like that then you will this again because to retooling the manufacturing and all that it's really not a huge deal it's much easier than a lot of the other things so I'm pretty bullish on this this general idea mm-hmm what do you think ya know a look if I I'm the executive on all new technology that's unproven in the marketplace proven in the labs but you know so far the public has voted resoundingly they don't even want hybrids much less battery electrics I would absolutely go with this from a pure business standpoint and leave it to the marketing guys to sell a three-cylinder and a drug seriously that is going to be you know I I agree with what David said you know because there was all that question when Ford came out with the v6 EcoBoost not only is it what now 60 70 percent of the mix they charge two thousand bucks more for it and they saw them all day long I think it all just comes down to power and how it performs and if you get in that car and it burns rubber and you get incredible fuel economy the the perception will change overnight so that's what I and I do really hope that when you get in it and burn rubber and so forth you get somewhere near that 37 number because you know most of what point you have actually done so far has been it's very easy to imagine this stationary power generator doing 25 percent better than the old stationary they're both running at you know a thousand rpm or 900 rpm or whatever all the time that's a real easy case the transients you know because that's the same thing with the EcoBoost right I mean they have great EPA numbers but if you drive them you can either drive eco or boost and right most people choose boost and you don't get that's great so hopefully this won't be you know subject be quite that same variability and I have a lot of reason to expect it won't because so much of it is not or we've just downsized turbo take over no it's we're not losing all that heat into the water jacket we don't you know through the cylinder head and all that kind of thing so there's so much efficiency built into the thing does it rely these the turbo and the supercharger are not making a lot of boost those are there just for scavenging and get the air in there and whatever but it's not running 25 pounds of boost or anything like that for an engine like this I don't think so okay on to the next car part of the show which is time for dr. data okay so this one easy ish okay so so last night last week Dustin Walsh got it right off the bat and in that one I'm hoping that you guys will watch this but okay so Carmen could you please bring up the first item okay so this is so this is Detroit mano-a-mano or the somebody versus somebody okay so we have thirteen eighty and thirteen eighty eight so what might those two numbers signify okay and I'll give a bit of a clue and it has to do is with last month's sales okay its head-to-head yeah okay so something something sold great mano-a-mano so that's probably to Detroit automakers spelling a given model each that are going head to head and and that sold in lousy numbers well they so it's sold in in lousy numbers but within eight with an eighth of each other mm-hmm man Frank you got any guess it's probably too high for Bowl TV versus something from somebody else I don't know no I think that's that's no ball TV is I believe the number was higher than that Bank okay I don't know I thought possible okay it's not the bull feet it's not the ball TV it is what was their number it was like a closer to three thousand wasn't it like 28 bolt bolt bolt that's a January number why do I have to January number all right I've got it here somewhere okay no no bolt in February sold 1424 no that's all so so we had 1330 you know come on it's too low for a Mustang and Camaro I don't know all right you guys I'm not gonna okay Carmen please bring up the answer MK z AZ versus 80s which are comparable cars right and what a surprising thing that it's it's so close you're not surprised well here's the question I know that 80s sales were up dramatically I want to say like on the 40% range somewhere up there so that's a huge increase for the 80s but what was it true for the MKZ 80s sales were up thirty eight point one percent in February versus February of last year and the MKC sales noisy excuse me MK z were down thirty three point five percent so one went way up one went way down but they're within eight units of one another yeah so then I started looking at other other things so so actually Cadillac is doing pretty well they said oh great monthly so Escalade was at sixteen seventy five and navigator was at 1063 navigator still rolling out yeah we built up the stocks there all right MKC was 1550 and xt5 was 46 68 yeah kicked their butts so it's interesting what cts was down only a little bit they were down like 3% and CT six was up I think it was single digits though but it you put it all together I want to say Cadillac sales were up around 12 all right Cadillac sales were up 14% last month CT 6 was a 5.4 percent CTS was down 3% but so what I wonder cuz Cadillac has had they they've had a rough time of it in the American market China they're doing fantastic but I wonder if last month was the turning point for Cadillac has it finally bottom down because I was real impressed to see its passenger sedans sell so well ATS up so strong I mean maybe that's just a one-month aberration but again the real point is has Cadillac turned the corner I don't know what what the incentive landscape was that month well it does it does seem a little unusual I mean they got rid of their former sales guy a german you.we ellinghouse okay and now they just hired I think it's Debra wall or wall shear she's back she's been in the industry before but to change their advertising to so it's it's it's a bit more upbeat music wise and stuff like that I don't know it was is that enough to move the metal don't know Frank has no answer alright no although I did you know so you were mentioning John and about you know the the public not being interested in electrified vehicles and and I thought this was an interesting thing we didn't talk very much about February sales but so the rav4 hybrid was up 18.7% yeah in February okay and the Prius prime okay the Prius regular hybrid is is not doing particularly well the Prius prime was up 50.5% is that the plug-in the plug-in yeah so you know if you look at it from that way that you know so a people want SUVs in terms of hybrid type vehicles right and they want plugins they don't necessarily want the straight hybrid anymore yeah and that's more of a real plug-in this generation the last one was right end plug-in correct but I don't know if you guys saw it we did a thing on daily that showed RAM diesel pickups outsold all the electric cars put together all the battery electrics so there's 14 models a battery Electric's you can buy in the United States right now now their sales were up and they were up by double digits not ones steered away from a battery electric into good ring yeah yes electrics are growing and they're growing by double digits I want to say they were up 16% but they sold almost a thousand fewer all put together then the RAM diesel trucks they are not so I'm just saying that to put it in perspective but as soon as the model three comes up to five thousand you know a month you know those numbers are gonna change no no listen I I do believe Tesla will ultimately get there and I do believe it's really going to drive easy sales far higher than they've ever been before and speaking of that the just announced they're going to come out with a cargo version of the Chevy Volt Evi oh yeah you put the seats taken out yeah they they'll charge you three hundred and fifty dollars to not put a seat in the rear seat in though but John you know they've got a carpet that area and everything it's probably something you know handwork in contrast was with the Hellcat that it comes without the rear seat but they'll sell you the receipt for a dollar or something I mean that's a way to do it yeah hey look before we get into another topic we got to take another quick commercial break because we got to give a shout out to our friends at Lear Lear Connexus offers a parental controls application with geofencing that sends notifications regarding driving behavior and location including curfew alerts acceleration alerts and speed alerts all delivered to a smartphone application that includes vehicle location driver notifications and a report card of driving history including notifications when predefined geographic boundaries are crossed for more information visit Lear comm alright we're back talking all things automotive hey by the way been Penna wrote in to say love your show from Canada I'm only a third way through watching all the episodes been yeah that's great we've always had very strong following in Canada so thanks for your comments been much appreciated okay Gary what else is on the line right I I thought Edmunds came out with the 2018 loyalty report and it's it's it's got some some fascinating information in this thing and you know we're talking about cars and we're talking about SUVs and we're talking about trucks and so speaking of trucks and SUVs that for the first time they'd have they discovered looking at their data and so they're basically going back to 2007 and this is through 2017 that they found that for the first time that SUV owners are more loyal to SUVs than truck owners are loyal to trucks now admittedly this is only by one percent okay 70 75 percent of SUV owners buy another s margin of error well but up here apparently they find it significant enough to make the claim that it's now so that's just that's not saying that if I have driven a particular SUV I'm gonna go back to that SUV it's just if I've had an SUV I'm gonna buy another SUV correct more than a truck guys in a buy another truck okay yeah but so but then then they found that you know in terms of passenger cars so it's 75 percent SUV owners buy another SUV 74 percent of truck owners buy another truck of course you think about it I'm sure you truck guys are buying SUVs now too although I've got to believe that a you know what is the percentage of trucks that are sold are sold to people who use them for their jobs right I mean they're not gonna it's finally dawned on some of those people that they can rent one for 20 bucks for 75 minutes at Home Depot and only 57% of car owners now another thing that was interesting is is that in 2017 passenger cars accounted for 36% of all vehicles sold the lowest market share figure ever yeah no I'm predicting that at some point this year we're gonna have 70% truck market share in the US market yeah and and so another thing that was sort of interesting is is that they they look at people who are trading in vehicles for the same brand okay so if you you know if you have a Chevy and you go and you buy an other Chevy and you know and so on and so forth and what I thought was interesting it okay so we mentioned Cadillac okay so this so in 2017 31 percent of those who came in to a Cadillac dealer got another Cadillac but back in 2007 it was 43 percent so it's actually gone down Volvo you'd think that they're getting better right 26 percent in 2017 versus 33 percent in 2007 again it's gone down Jaguar which is also you know having a resurgence 24 percent in 2017 versus 30 percent in 2007 the markets more competitive as what those numbers say although Lexus 51 percent in 2017 49 percent in 2007 and so they they led in 2007 and they continue to lead today and you know and then you get into you know regular cars they made the point that Subaru has just like nailed it I mean they're in second place now so in in 2017 61 percent came in and bought another Subaru versus 45 percent back in 2007 ya know Subaru those guys man do they know what they're doing and and so didn't I just see Tom Dahl got CEO finally yeah you know he runs Subaru in the US and he was chief operating officer and I don't know why they didn't make him CEO years ago he totally deserves another year two years ago wasn't right yeah he's he's really driven the success at that company so John you made an interesting point there's there's more competition so so do you think that going forward there'll be even more churn as as people have less brand loyalty yeah I do because you know and you've been talking mostly in the luxury end now you've got all these Eevee startups trying to get in you know look at Tesla Tesla you know has has clobbered the over $100,000 price segment in the market you know we'll see a Faraday and and lucid and the rest of them show up but now there's biting there's a bunch of others I've set SF I don't know if they're gonna just be a ride hailing service or the like but that's the other thing that's going to come in is ride hailing where people just say I don't even want to own a car anymore or I want to only ride hail luxury one so yeah I think there's going to be less loyalty and a lot more consumer saying huh I'm gonna go try that one now speaking speaking before we get off this ride hailing thing we've been critical over the past several months let's say about uber and and I got to give a shout out to these guys this week they announced Buber health now a problem that a lot of people have is getting your doctor appointments because they don't drive or they're they're incapable of doing it and so they've established this new system that basically is not by the individual but it's by the healthcare provider so let's say it sits by you know Beaumont hospital and they realize that they have X number of people that are not gonna be able to get to their doctor's appointments and apparently the numbers in the millions of people that missed their appointment because they just don't drive and so what they've done is they're Buber is working with these providers and they're providing the means by which the vehicles can be scheduled to go get the people and bring them to their appointments and back and they've got this set up because you know there are these HIPPA requirements that you know you don't necessarily want somebody to know that you're you're going to the hospital for a procedure or for a service and so they've got this set up whereby these people it's not clear to the driver whether you're going to the hospital to visit a sick relative if you're going to the hospital to because you've got the bubonic plague yeah and so I think that that is that is a very clever thing because I mean you know that I think that's a big issue that we we don't necessarily think about and it's people getting there so yeah no I totally agree with what you're saying there Gary and that's what I the proponents of all this mobility as sad as as you open up mobility to more segments of society people are going to use it you know and especially once you get to autonomy and start driving the cost of these rides down and more people are going to want to have a ride in a car someplace yeah sort of just make it more convenient and and they're even realizing that you know that these people may not have smartphones that you know that uber is sort of based on and they'll send text messages so that people can you know even a flip phone will be able to get that so yeah anyway I thought that was very interesting so credit to them they deserve some some good news okay Amy C just wrote in to say I swear Frank Marcus looks and sounds like sam mcmurray okay and I asked who the hell sam mcmurray I don't know although the relative of Fred MacMurray tap your foot speaking of viewers we got a phone call here Carmen let's bring that out hi Jeff they invited guests this is data Leonard out of Cleveland Ohio this question doesn't apply to the achates engine but it's it's something I would like you're in Jerry's opinion on you know Ford has its transit connect and FCA is using the fiat version for their Promaster City instead of partnering with Nissan don't you feel that Chevy should have its own version of the smaller delivery van just something I've been wondering them out great show is always take care all right yeah thanks for the call Dale and completely agree with you except for the fact if they had Opel they may have won Opel was on its way out the door with all that was going on so yeah an even bigger puzzle to me and they just solved it was why Chevrolet was not in the medium-duty market you know Ford makes a boatload of money on its trucks in that segment so does RAM well they finally just announced their or unveiled their trucks this week that's probably where their money has been going is where you can make a lot of money I'm not sure how much money you can make on one of these little vans but I would agree you know they ought to build something maybe off the Colorado or some other platform I don't know what do you guys think well I mean think about it so so the Fords I think that they're building the small ones in Spain Valencia and the Promaster City comes out of somewhere in Central Europe I think so so they all come over with seats and windows they all get shipped back to go in another one coming over yeah so I just don't think that you know I think when they sold off opel/vauxhall they basically lost the ability to have that yeah and I think the profit margin is so small it makes sense to make them over there and bring them over here and the numbers that they're selling in and whatever and it's hard to make that pencil to start up a plant when you don't have anything a Colorado is way too big to compete with those things so yeah my bigger complaint about the whole thing is the Nissan nv200 in the chevrolet version of it are the ugliest damn vehicles out on the road god I don't know who signed on the styling of that they are ugly well given somebody at Nissan it's a Chevrolet the other yeah jeez what else you got Gary all right so we're sitting here but many of our colleagues are in Geneva right now and so there were lots of lots of cars came out this week that none of us will ever be able to afford except for perhaps you Frank oh yeah so so I think we mentioned it week or two issue could go on the show that the Polestar one that the new performance brand of Volvo so they they announced their their performance hybrid 2+2 GT coupe 600 horsepower and a thousand Newton meters of torque that's pretty good writing frame hmm and so this is gonna so they following Tesla are taking the deposit thing so they're taking a 2,500 euro will give you a fully refundable 2500 oh they're leaving money on the table there you go so so they're talking about a subscription model where you'll be able to subscribe for two or three years or they'll be able to buy them okay so I thought that was interesting to carp you know it has nothing on the new Bugatti how do you pronounce it sure own Sharon Sharon Sharon I think okay so it's a strong sport and so so basically this is a 1500 horsepower vehicle that is lighter because they have new wheels on it and so it's it handles better and this can be had for a mere 3.26 million dollars that's including transport customs duty what kind of deposits are they taking on that we're not taking deposits you got a buy one Frank it's got to be someone else was came out that was Supra I don't is it just me or am I just getting jaded about all these super high-performance super exotic way out of the price range of everybody it's like I don't care about them anymore am I just getting old maybe yeah but I that's my favorite thing about the Geneva show and I'm very sad I didn't get to go this year is you troll around that upper level up there and there's all these you know espana some Spanish supercar made in Barcelona we never see them or hear of them over here but they're all three turn up over there and I even wrote a column one time there's a couple years ago I went there and they had a couple of fascinating new technologies nano carbon in the batteries and so forth and you know so but there's always I've not heard of nano flow so that's the other thing you know these guys show up with not really good hair with really good hair and teeth and to me it's just an investor scam they put money in our company and we're gonna build these things and make a bunch of money and then you never see them again yeah well that's an interesting technology I wrote a column on that one too it's just not gonna happen because you you refuel it in in minutes and a station with fluid you know they never do they never say what that fluid was though well you can look it up and whatever it saltwater well it's two sides there's an old fluid you had two of these big tanks because when you're done end up with something that's not usable it has to be pumped back out like hard to see that infrastructure really catching not for vehicles I think for power generation there maybe you can plug it in and read associate it back into the tanks that's another option that takes a really long time so yeah I'm totally sold on that one but but Geneva is is is quite clearly a place where not only they have the Swiss bank accounts but they have these cars that you need to drain your Swiss bank account in order to lie and you know Detroit Chicago New York yeah but for regular folks the Toyota Supra you know broke cover in sort of a race car form there but you could kind of squint the wings and players off of it and see what that thing's gonna look like so when do you think that thing will be here as a car that you or I could buy oh sure you know when oh I don't know coming up though ya know look if it's racing it's got to be homologated right that tells me it's gonna be action within a year yeah it's the longest roll out since the TC by Maserati you know it came to about 14 Auto Show let's do before that thing came out so the super is the thing that that Toyota's working with BMW on yes and what is BMW doing with theirs z4 okay yeah and of course everyone is saying of that Roadster market is shrinking like crazy you know SLK isn't being renewed and so it's interesting to see these two guys kind of coming in with that button halo car you know Akio Toyoda you know he's a car hard to pencil the value of that in conventional terms so someone makes the decision we need it and there we go do they need it I think so but as you pointed out on daily about the the sales of Accord versus the Camry okay no that's done that so so Camry which you know it seems to me that that is more in I'm putting this in air quotes sports oriented in terms of the look it's a more diverse car then compared to the Camry right and so does that play into a success or do you think it's just all the leases going on we chose accord sales are down 21% Camry sales are up 22% so Steve Kincaid from Honda you know said hey luck Camrys got three times the incentives we do and somebody else pointed out and they're they're pumping up fleet sales but honda doesn't do any of those and they don't know that's right are there is that pipeline completely saturate a good point because camry has 44 days supply of inventory at dealerships a quart is a hundred and five days so that tells me the explanation is not just that camry has a bunch of incentives and fleet sales going for it there's something that's causing sales of the Accord to go down maybe it's the CRV maybe it's the the rav4 selling like crazy therefore is is you know III think we're gonna have to watch how this goes but I'd say the early signs are not good for the Accord which is really a shame because you drive those two cars back-to-back and there's just really no I thought that was very close for me it was a hard decision for a North American Car of the Year to go which do I go with I want with the Accord I liked the Accord at our car of the year testing everything from the door slam sound of the way it went down the road we just really preferred the but Kerry's got a good one right you know you guys are all enthusiasts and the people who buy those cars by and large specially for those who buy the camry i would not classify as got the safety and reliability nailed they got the resale value nailed I mean Honda is just top-shelf the gold standard on that stuff and yeah although I did swim because I had to look it up a court is only Top Safety Pick camera is top safety pick+ from a safety rating but it all right down to the headline okay but who goes into the dealer and says are you really top safety pick+ or are you merely tops I don't know I would suspect Honda and Toyota buyers are more likely to ask about that than others I think old Volvo buyers are more yeah yeah that's right okay we're getting down to the very end here we've got one more question here that I think we should get to and it's probably for you Frank free happy Bob wants to know well the 2019 ford fusion sport get the second gen 2.7 liter EcoBoost engine well I mean it probably makes sense you don't want to keep holding engines and new engines out there but I don't have any direct knowledge on that will this be the last fusion hard day you wouldn't wanna bet against that assumption no that's right yeah I mean Fiesta focus fusion what do they get rid of they got to keep at least one I would think wouldn't you keep the focus because it has good European sales more of a gold global car yeah maybe I don't know I don't know have you driven the EcoSport no I haven't no I mean either no really soft launches that's like the envision remember that thing snuck into the market no wonder all events I think you know they wanted to do it on the Qt cuz it's coming from China they didn't want all these articles from journalists so on but the Ford EcoSport just mind-boggling I mean it's coming from India it's coming from India but I mean they were in showrooms with no advertising no kind of support and on whatsoever although the sales weren't that bad I don't know if you got they sold a couple of dental sales and I know they sold twenty three hundred units that's not a bad number for something that's getting zero support yeah Orkut place none of us is driven it not right see just goes to show you there is one in the LA fleet we're getting one in in a couple of weeks look I Henry pain and the Detroit News just wrote a review on it so they're out there yeah wow this is this is shocking since you just mentioned that and I just looked at this 2,300 Echo sports but only 19 21 flexes yeah speaking of a car that was like never advertised 100 people in California love them well that's right well a few people in California loved I mean because I mean if you're selling less than 2,000 in among ancient car I think the two oldest cars on the market I'd love to look it up I don't have the data to find it though is the Dodge Journey and the foreign flex they are as old as the hills at this point so let's just see how the how the journey did so the journey four thousand seven hundred eighty-two so nearly more than double the sale if they would only refresh the damn thing they could sell ten thousand of them of course their sales were done fifty two percent but that's not quibble let's not quibble in fact let's just wrap the show up Frank Marcus thanks so much for coming on always good to have you here yeah no great show especially the part with David and Gary always a pleasure to do the show's mission ok good and want to thank all of you for having tuned in auto line after-hours is brought to you by Bridgestone tires your journey our passion and by Lear a global leader in automotive seating and electrical systems visit our website auto line TV where you can watch us live Thursday afternoons get your daily fix with auto line daily and in-depth analysis and interviews with auto line this week there's all that and much more at auto line TV [Music] they're gonna do January 2019

Channel: Autoline Network

Views: 56,480

Rating: 4.7848101 out of 5

Keywords: autos, cars, vehicles, automotive, automobiles, auto, car, automobile, vehicle, Achates, Achates Power, Engine, Geneva, SXSW, Mercedes, Edmunds, Toyota, Subaru, Honda, Dodge, Smart, Chrysler

Id: 8qmAlnIh4mk

Length: 70min 7sec (4207 seconds)

Published: Thu Mar 08 2018