Under the Hood, Improvements Add Up

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The two wheeled, electric mobility machine General Motors Corp. and Segway Inc. showed off at the New York Auto Show last week is the latest in a long line of whimsical show-mobiles designed to persuade the public that the legacy auto industry can think out of the box.

Way out of the box, in the case of the GM-Segway "Project PUMA" vehicle, which looks like the fruit of a night-time encounter between a rickshaw and a high-tech wheelchair.

Meanwhile, more than 100 contestants, not including GM or any other major Western auto maker, have entered the race for a $10 million prize to design a practical vehicle with fuel efficiency equivalent to 100 miles per gallon of gasoline or better. The teams signed up to run for the Progressive Automotive X-Prize competition represent a wide range of technologies aimed at radically reducing hydrocarbon consumption, from tiny Indian electric vehicles to sleek three-wheeled electric cars to rock veteran Neil Young's electrified pink 1959 Lincoln Continental, the LincVolt.

What all these efforts to reinvent the car have in common is that they have little connection to what consumers will see coming to showrooms over the next two to five or even ten years.

Our old friend the internal combustion engine will be with us for a good while longer. But as the Beatles sang so long ago, "It's getting better all the time." Under the hood, mainstream cars are about to benefit from a wave of new technology that's just about to hit showrooms, offering fuel efficiency that's 10% or better than comparable vehicles on the market today -- without requiring big compromises in the size, shape, performance or comfort suggested by the GM PUMA vehicle.

The big problem with current automobiles is that only about 15% of the energy contained in gasoline gets to the driving wheels, says Eric Fedewa, a vice president with the automotive consulting firm CSM Worldwide. The good news is that boosting that ratio even a few percentage points represents a big overall gain from the low starting base.

Big car makers have learned the hard way that it takes as long as 10 years to get significant new technology ready for mass market deployment, Mr. Fedewa says. "If they try to shorten up that cycle they get technology that's not as robust in the market," he says.

So instead, mainstream car makers are pushing incremental improvement of what they know.

"Gasoline direct injection," or "GDI" is a technology just about to break the surface in the automotive mass market, although it's been available in a relatively small number of vehicles sold in the U.S. Over the next five years, GM and Ford Motor Co. plan to roll out direct-injection technology across their lineups.

"With direct injection, you see a 3-4% increase in fuel economy," says Sam Winegarden, executive director of engine engineering for GM. Injecting fuel directly into the cylinder -- and controlling the resulting combustion processes with sophisticated electronics -- "gives me an emissions benefit and a power benefit and a fuel economy benefit," Mr. Winegarden says. "It's not that often I get a three-for-one."

Most of these new GDI engines will also use electronics to save fuel by shutting down cylinders, varying the operation of intake and exhaust valves, and driving accessories such as coolant pumps, air conditioning fans or power steering without relying on inefficient belt drives.

Another tactic, says GM's Mr. Winegarden: "We'll...make a small engine look big." Using advanced turbo chargers, GM (and other auto makers) will be able to use a four cylinder engine where once they would have used a six-cylinder, and a six where once they would have used an eight. Ford also will make a big push with turbo-GDI technology.

Next, there will be more advanced transmissions -- six speed automatics or "dual clutch transmissions" -- essentially manual transmissions that don't require you to use a clutch -- can bump fuel economy another few percentage points, up to 10%, Mr. Fedewa says.

Here's what really sells incremental improvement of the internal combustion car over Silicon Valley-style "paradigm" changes: Incremental is cheap.

Mr. Fedewa estimates auto makers can deliver 10% or better fuel efficiency improvement for about $500 a vehicle. By comparison, a strong hybrid system, such as the one used in the Toyota Prius or a Ford Fusion Hybrid, can add $3,000 to the cost of a car. At $2 a gallon, demand for high-cost, high mileage cars is flagging again -- a big worry for all auto makers that have invested billions in hybrids.

Detroit's auto makers may eventually need to convert their fleets to battery operation, or offer personal mobility in entirely new forms. But first, they need to make enough money to survive, and avoid a repeat of the technology stumbles that wrecked their brands in the 1980s.

Email: joseph.white@wsj.com