An Eye For Innovation

Sydney Morning Herald

Friday January 16, 2009

Clive Hopkins

New technology is about to change the way we drive.

Want to know what the car you'll be driving 10 or 20 years from now will be like? Richard Marshall is the man you should ask.

The new director of energy and environment at GM Holden, his job is to incorporate emerging technologies into the vehicle manufacturing process. Marshall and his colleagues assess high-tech innovations and determine which will be useful, cost effective and safe.

Cars built from lighter materials, which allow greater machine/human interaction and can even avoid crashes, are all on the horizon.

"If you have enough money, you can do anything," says Marshall, a 20-year Holden veteran. However, in the real world, where money is limited, he says it's essential to focus on affordability.

GM's Australian research and development operation is part of a global R&D network. Different GM research labs around the world specialise in different areas. Israel, for example, focuses on night-vision technology, while India looks at software and materials science.

In Australia there are two primary focuses. One is on using light metals in auto construction, something that makes good sense given this country's natural abundance of aluminium and magnesium.

The second focus is on flexible manufacturing and computer-aided engineering. Marshall points out that it's one thing to build a front-end out of magnesium and aluminium but the challenge is then to find a low-cost way of integrating this into an existing body shop.

No manufacturer today does all its research in-house and Marshall's department collaborates with organisations such as the CSIRO, RMIT and Monash and Queensland universities. A key part of his job involves going out to talk to individual researchers and find out what they are working on.

In particular, Holden has an ongoing 15-year relationship with the Monash University Accident Research Centre (MUARC).

In the past, this has led to innovations such as the introduction of airbags into the VR Commodore, the first Australian-built car to feature this.

"I worked on that," Marshall says.

Much of the work Marshall and his colleagues will do during the next five years will be in the area of human-machine interaction. The holy grail here is to build vehicles that don't crash. "A big ask but it is possible," he says. The technology already exists for vehicles to communicate both with other vehicles and with infrastructure such as road signs.

A huge cost and effort go into making a vehicle as safe as possible. If crashes are taken out of the equation, cars can be lighter and cheaper and easier to manufacture.

Another challenge for engineers in human-machine interface is how quickly innovations can be incorporated into designs, particularly with respect to older drivers. Line-departure warnings and blind-spot protection features are being introduced on high-spec vehicles but as Marshall points out, as these systems become more widespread, they place a higher workload on the driver.

The incorporation of mobile phone and MP3 technology into modern cars is bringing a new dimension to an old problem. Driver distraction, still a significant factor in accidents, can now be the result of motorists scrolling through their phone books or music lists.

The ideal solution - controlling the scrolling through voice recognition - is problematic, as it is affected by the ambient noise of a car on the move.

Marshall envisages voice recognition being backed up by gesture identification, with devices that respond to hand movement, all supported by old-fashioned button pushing. The long-term future of the car, though, is surely bound up with reducing our dependence on oil.

The twin challenges of energy efficiency and energy diversity will be keys to Marshall's new role this year. On diversity, Marshall believes "there's no single solution to this and a range of solutions, like bio-fuels, electricity, LPG and compressed natural gas, will co-exist". One hope for the future - the pollution-free, hydrogen burning fuel cell - is still a long way from becoming a cost-effective commercial proposition.

All are tough challenges but Marshall is clear about what satisfies him most.

"What we do this year will have a fundamental effect on the vehicles we'll be driving in the next 20 years," he says.

© 2009 Sydney Morning Herald

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