When Henry Ford revolutionised the auto industry more than a hundred years ago, CO2 was not an issue, neither was fuel efficiency. With 1.2 billion vehicles projected by 2020 on the planet, CO2, end of life of vehicles and fuel efficiency challenges are staring us in our face.
CO2 is measured in grams per kilometre generated by a vehicle. In various regions of the world, regulators are working on different vehicle platforms for limits of 140 gm per km upward, with a phased-in approach of getting it down to 90 gm per km over the next three-plus years. Many governments levy taxes at point of purchase, if a vehicle does not meet prescribed limits but also provide an incentive to purchase vehicles that have lower CO2. This strategy works well in taking older vehicles off the road. Many experts recommend that state and central governments should limit tax breaks to greenfield sites and R&D concessions only for design and development, and manufacture of products that will meet radical regulatory limits of CO2. Only Leeds ratings of manufacturing units will not cut it anymore.
Some automakers holistically look at the challenge to include design and development, standardisation and rationalisation, recycling, manufacturing, distribution, servicing, marketing and sales, cost of ownership, supply chain, spares and disposal of the vehicle.
At every stage it is imperative to ask, how does each action contribute to the reduction of CO2 and improving sustainability. Before beginning a vehicle programme, one of the major organisational actions should be to outline the CO2 walk, so it ensures each system and function is assigned a percentage of CO2 reduction in the overall walk.
Similarly outline the recyclable material walk for each subsystem. Define and agree with the vendors on the content of recycled material that will be used to make new components. Consider the example of vehicle chassis design from basics. After reviewing customer requirements, vehicle attributes and lessons learnt, review software for design, processing time, computers to run this software, infrastructure required to host this equipment, time to process design, the extent of virt- ual engineering before a prototype is built etc. Then there is the vendors? capability to meet limits, upfront participation of vendors in the deve- lopment process and of course the chassis? integration with other syst- ems as it goes to the assembly line. Other business function drivers have to be defined in a similar manner.
As 9.4 billion humans are expected on this planet by 2050, handling the CO2 challenge needs an innovative astuteness. The luxury of being able to choose whether or not to go green is unlikely because pundits say that it is only a matter of time that consum- ers will make buying decisions by reading product CO2 labels to avail carbon credits in addition to helping this world become a better place.
The author is vice-president, technology, Eaton Corporation & head, Eaton India Engineering Centre