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Strategic Analysis of North American Advanced Automotive Gasoline Engine Technologies
Frost & Sullivan, June 2005
Vehicle Makers’ Enhanced Goals Improve Business Prospects of Advanced Automotive Gasoline Engine Technologies
Vehicle makers in North America are setting stiff goals for themselves regarding their engines’ performance and other key characteristics. These include satisfying emissions regulations, reducing fuel consumption and manufacturing costs, maximizing reliability, horsepower, and torque, and minimizing noise, vibration and harshness. Advanced engine technologies help manufacturers meet these targets. For instance, certain valvetrain technologies can reduce emissions and fuel consumption even while boosting performance. Meanwhile, turbochargers and superchargers increase or maintain power output while decreasing fuel use through downsized engines. Electronic engine management technologies control engine parameters for best emissions control, fuel consumption, and performance, while air/fuel systems optimize an engine’s ‘breathing’. Gasoline-electric hybrid technologies can save fuel in urban driving cycles, making gasoline engine-powered vehicles more competitive than diesel-powered vehicles.
This Frost & Sullivan insight examines the status of North American advanced automotive engine technologies with a focus on their benefits, drawbacks, and future trends. The analysis has been segmented into valvetrain technologies, boosting technologies, electronic engine management technologies, air/fuel systems, gasoline-electric hybrid technologies, and other advanced engine technologies.
Vehicle Manufacturers Face a Quandary as Advanced Technologies Increase Cost, Complexity, and Weight of Engines
Vehicle makers face tradeoffs in their technology choices as they have several conflicting factors to consider. For example, they have to minimize costs as well as maximize reliability, while somehow satisfying the customer’s performance expectations, but technologies that reduce emissions and fuel consumption increase the complexity of engines and often harm performance. Engine builders evaluate technologies in terms of their benefit/cost tradeoffs, as they work to find the most effective and market-attractive technologies to deploy.
Although many customers demand less complexity and easy access to vehicle parts for maintenance, trends suggest that vehicle powertrains are only likely to get more complicated in the long term. More hardware needs to be incorporated into engines for emissions, performance, and other reasons, says the analyst of this research. Aerodynamic and styling requirements can also dictate packaging volume and hood lines and these needs are likely to cram the engine compartment more.
Leading Vehicle Manufacturers Drive Uptake of Advanced Technologies by Incorporating them in Engines
The Japanese ‘Big 3’ automakers - Honda, Toyota, and Nissan to a lesser extent - have been especially aggressive in incorporating advanced technologies in production engines for the North American market. BMW and Mercedes-Benz, two upscale European automakers, have also been at the forefront of implementing certain gasoline engine technologies. The North American domestic ‘Big 3’ - Chrysler Group, Ford Motor Co., and General Motors Corp. - have largely lagged in adopting most advanced engine technologies, observes the analyst. Other, lower-volume vehicle makers generally position themselves as followers rather than leaders.
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