Last November, I put an all-electric, four-door sedan’s rear with BMW test driver in the seat and 24 -hour racer Jens Klingman Behind the wheel. This was a cool day at the performance driving center of BMW at Greece, SC, and the five-point harness, roll cage, and under heavy camouflage, Klingman had an unexpected co-pilot: a small black box that “heart Off joy is called “. ,
This was an strange name for an interesting suit of technology features that gives strength to my brief three-lap stent on the 1.7-mile performance track. The heart of the heart represents an interesting future for the German brand that is still known as the “final driving machine” in the electrified future.
The vehicle in which we have boarded the vision driving experience (VDX), especially designed to test this alleged magic black box, as well as more upcoming facilities BMW Neau Classes PlatformVDX uses fans to suck it on the track for better traction at speed. They are loud inside the fan vehicle, when we are hurt around the track at a speed of 90 mph, it becomes impossible to hear much more than a thunder, even though the car itself is mostly a silent EV Is.
In the skilled hands of the Klingman, the tires are whisper as they reach the limits of their grip. There is especially low BMW brake squil as we work small black boxes with injuries around the track.
The Heart of Joy is an ECU that adds both driving dynamics and powertrain control to a computer. Eight inches to about eight inchesThe box will work as a control module for upcoming Neue Klasse electrified vehicles that will begin to roll out at the end of this year.
It was developed in-house by BMW engineers, which is unique since most manufacturers, which combine hundreds of off-the-shelf components together and write software codes so that they all have the original form with each other. Can be communicated with As a result, various brands have a symmetry of driving experiences because most brands use the same suppliers. So BMW assigned its engineers to think about how to separate its EVS from the competition by coming with a new, single computing system, which can provide electricity to various types of driving dynamics in BMW lineup – from SUV To sports cars.
“The question is, what does driving bliss look like in the era of electrification?” BMW Senior Driving Dynamics Engineer, Christian Thalamier said. “It combines the sheer power and torque of electric motors, with the ability to slow down and break a vehicle for those motors, and the option to be more than one power source.”
On the track, VDX is a rocketship, and even if we are coming directly in contact with 90 mph, Klingman barely touches the brake and simply closes the accelerator to bring the vehicle to a more sensible speed for sharp hairpin. Does.
“The question is, what does driving bliss look like in the era of electrification?”
BMW did not share all the glasses of the VDX Test vehicle, besides its crazy 13,269 LB-Foot torque, and an increase in efficiency for integrated brakes and energy repetition by 25 percent. But he shared that Khushi’s heart is ten times faster than the ECU together on the market.
BMW, one of the major features focusing in development, was braking and stability control. The system can actively use regenerative braking to bring BMW vehicles into a complete break without a driver to touch the pedal. The company says that this feature will cause greater stability on the range as the system can break each individual wheel to make a better grip, resulting in recurrence 60 percent more efficient.
Because a single computer system manages everything from driving dynamics to individual wheels from driving dynamics to individual wheels, there will be less delay in vehicle response, and you get less wear and tear less on brakes and tires. Thalmier said that the new ECU system could move power and recession from the back to back and the vehicle to achieve maximum repetition and stability from the vehicle, an event that he calls “the joy of stopping”.
The Heart of Joy was developed in only three small years and is currently done through more than 7,500 hours of testing, both in the hands of experienced engineers and race drivers such as Clalmen. The objective, of course, to get the future BMW to drive more like BMW, and do not like, say, KIAS, which uses suppliers-to-programing models for their EVS. Single computer also, easily, makes over-the-air updates much easier for BMW.
It is not new for BMW to bring development into home, but it is relatively unique in an industry that often sees outside suppliers for everything from voice identity to infotainment. For example, ECU is outsourced for other companies such as Magna Stere.
BMW CTO Frank Weber explained how the automker’s close failure to launch the 7-series 25 years ago gave the company the ability and confidence to create a new heart of joy. “It was a bad dream,” Weber told me in CES earlier this year. “We almost didn’t launch the car … Today, I can say, perhaps it was the best thing that happened with BMW. Because it was very difficult, we had to develop more strong procedures for those advanced digital techniques. , Which were long ago than others, and then we prepared it over time. ”
“We almost didn’t launch the car … Today, I can say, perhaps it was the best thing that happened to BMW.”
This assured the company that it could deal with the difficult task of bringing ECU construction into the house. Weber said, “Being able to work with controllers is something that our driving dynamics had already done long -term, but they did it with suppliers.” “Here, we had knowledge, and we developed algorithms with suppliers … we have to do it ourselves, because we can do with this new controller, when we see everything, it’s just unbelievable.”
As Vabber said, from the worldwide supplier sources, from emissions to emissions to make everything regional, a growing push has been made. The auto manufacturer supply chains are integrated deeply over the borders, and is very difficult and expensive like globalization. See the incredible amount of President Trump’s loss Proposed 25 percent tariffs can be on American vehicle manufacturers aloneWith strict estimates American vehicle manufacturer may be closed within a week Should they go to place. As mentioned by Weber, regionalization that is used to implement boundaries between countries, is something that threatens the entire motor vehicle industry. BMW, BMW, In-House, by bringing part of the company’s production, the company, in least some ways, may reduce that risk.
If the brief but thrilling experience I had in VDX is any indicator, Joy’s new heart, BMW’s “Ultimate Driving Machine” underlines, roots and really dynamic, all-electric driving promises future Is.
