The difficulty with classifying cars by size is
that they don't always remain within the same footprint from one generation to
the next — and presumably that's a situation likely to continue."Hopefully
not," Herrmann replied with a laugh, also anticipating the next question,
whether 'B' and 'C' segments will cease to have much meaning as cars inevitably
grow, something they have done in the past. "Effectively, the best
demonstration is when you look at the Fiesta — when you put a Fiesta next to a
Mk 1 Focus, it's almost the same size.
"The difficulty is really down to safety
regulations; that's the key driver — why we permanently increase the [size of]
the cars — but primarily, the passenger compartment is not really growing. "[There
is] quite a significant push in Europe on pedestrian protection. You have...
three zones: pedestrian protection, low-speed damagability and then you get to
the real back-up structure, the high-speed crash zone."
Pedestrian safety, Herrmann says, is leading to a
higher cowl height with each new generation of vehicle design. Our conception
of vehicle packaging could be entirely different from current thinking within
20 years, according to Gunnar Herrmann.
Herrmann is Ford's Vehicle Line Director for
Global C-Cars and was out here last week on a three-day flying visit to help Ford
Australia with the promotion of the LW Focus. During the drive program for the
new model, motoring.com.au spent some time in his company and asked how he
foresaw the future for small cars. We began with Ford's earlier claims (around
the time of the international launch for the Fiesta) that small cars would
account for about 30 per cent of global vehicle sales by 2030. "From a
cowl perspective, everything starts to move up if you can't push it down.
And... [in] the engine compartment, the height is effectively defined by the
engine architecture — and these are the long-lasting items that will not change
[less than] every five or six years."
Herrmann agreed that a company such as Subaru,
enjoying a unique selling proposition based on the low cowl height of its
boxer-engined cars, may see that advantage gradually whittled away by safety
legislation. "It's getting worse, actually. The power pack is maybe more
compressed. You could argue that you gain some space, but the biggest issue is
the battery size. The battery needs to be packaged in an absolutely crash-free
space. Again, if you implement this battery pack in conventional architecture —
like the Focus — you lose quite significantly on luggage volume..."
"This is really a subject for
next-generation platforms," Herrmann said, suggesting Mercedes-Benz's
sandwich floor would be a sensible solution, but "not really useable for a
mass-production battery vehicle". Herrmann anticipates such a design would
require wiring strewn all over the place under the floor to link the battery
packs spread throughout the car's floorpan.
Particularly on Ford's modular 'C' platform, the
company anticipates different wheelbases and hard points would make a sandwich
floor prohibitively expensive — and the cost wouldn't be amortised any time
soon, across Focus, Kuga, C-Max, Transit Connect and the other variants to
share the platform; 10 in all, according to Herrmann. Without the power of premonition it's hard to say
how cars will look 20 years from now, but if current large cars represent the
effective upper limit for exterior footprint, and safety and the environment
will be pushing smaller cars up in size, passenger car segments are likely to
merge. There will be little effective difference — other than price and equipment
— between light (B-segment) and small (C-segment) cars. It's a trend we've
already seen in small and medium cars locally... and it seems one that's likely
to continue for all conventional passenger cars.
Safety is going to lead to some
oddly-proportioned cars in the future by the sounds of it — and the future is
only two years away, according to Herrmann. Maybe if the trend continues we'll
see styling like American muscle cars from the 1960s; all frontal overhang and
long bonnets, with tiny little cabins at the aft end of the wheelbase.
"In Europe, currently the Peugeot 207 is the
only [B-Class car] larger than 4400mm; the rest stay [below that], but you can
assume that from 2013 onwards the majority will pass the [4.4m] mark... all
safety driven," explained Herrmann.Safety isn't the only packaging
constraint engineers will need to overcome. Styling is important, of course,
since car companies can't sell ugly cars, but confusing the packaging issue
further is the environment. "[Along] with the stronger safety
regulations," Herrmann continued, "you start to package active grille
shutters for improved real-world fuel economy... so actually, you start to
[place] expensive componentry even within your [crumple] zone — which you want
to keep away from the back-up structure to avoid damage."
European designers have been very committed to
aerodynamic design for decades, but environmental issues also impact on
drivetrains — and vice versa. There's a slow migration to alternative energy
systems, but Herrmann doesn't see electric vehicles offering more flexible
packaging options than current internal-combustion cars.
