Visteon e-Bee: tech shop of the future

Visteon Corporation recently showcased its vision of future mobility with its hi-tech ‘e-Bee’ concept car in Chennai on September 6. The e-Bee is essentially a heavily modified Nissan Leaf, retaining only the exterior shell of the top-selling electric car. On the inside, however, is an amalgamation of all thoughts and ideas of a couple of hundred industrial designers and innovation heads of how the future of mobility will pan out.

The car is envisaged to be the common mode of transport, as Visteon puts it, in 2020. The e-Bee is foreseen to be a car that will be shared among the motoring public of 2020 and hence has customisable Human-Machine Interface (HMI).

The e-Bee uses touch display-based controls and cloud-centred profile storage to be immediately familiar and intuitive for each individual user. Enumerating this, Bertrand Stelandre, head of innovation and design, Visteon Europe, says, “The car is now something that disrupts a driver’s ‘always connected’ lifestyle. By 2020, we don’t see that remaining the same.”

The e-Bee comes packed

with technologies that have either never been seen before or are already in production across the world. For instance, personalised HMI allows for automatic driver recognition and enables personalisation of interfaces, graphics, services and data using preferences stored in the cloud. Durable control panels offer driver-focused orientation, providing a safer and simpler method to interact with the vehicle.

There is also, according to Visteon, potential for advanced car-to-car communication that can allow a driver to receive warnings from other drivers on traffic and diversions, among other things.

Climate in a box!

Notably, however, the biggest visual change on the e-Bee compared to today's cars is the absence of a cockpit before the front passenger. This space, usually occupied by the HVAC unit, is free to be used by the OEM, thanks to a new ‘Climate-in-a-box’ solution developed by Visteon. The solution sees the entire HVAC unit, that is usually placed, in part, behind the cockpit, all moved towards the front of the engine compartment. Locating the integrated climate system module outside of the cabin allows for new cockpit styles, says a statement by Visteon.

Aimed at electric vehicle applications, it consolidates all refrigerant system components together and integrates the HVAC unit into a single relocated module outside of the cabin. This provides energy efficient heating and cooling. The novel heat pump technology allows for an improved drive range, something that is of utmost importance in an electric vehicle, by upto 35 percent.

The integrated HVAC is capable of functioning this efficiently thanks to an all-new electric compressor. Halla Visteon’s compact and lightweight full-electric compressor is designed for applications from mild hybrids to full electric vehicles, though Stelandre says, “It can be modified to suit even petrol and diesel cars.” The modular design of this compressor family can be used in applications ranging from 90v to 450v DC electrical systems.

Given its independent operation from the drivetrain, it allows for what Visteon calls ‘pre-conditioning’ of the car. With this, the user can remotely enable cooling or heating in the car even before he or she enters it so that the car is at the desired temperature when the driver enters it.

“The car is connected to the cloud and it knows that at 8am on a Monday morning you need to go to work. It will prepare itself or you can remotely control it using your phone,” says Stelandre.



Tomorrow'stech today

Sticking to the individualisation theme, an innovative concept in the e-Bee is that of sound bubbles, which are used to effectively limit the scope of the audio transmitted. This helps in keeping the audio limited to a certain area. Using this technology, Visteon has allowed the users of the e-Bee to enjoy audio of their personal preferences. “The audio that the driver is listening to will not disturb someone who wants to take a nap in the back seat,” explains Stelandre. “Only the driver can hear it. Similarly, we can make four occupants of the car listen to four different songs or pieces of music,” he continues. The sound bubble for the driver can be linked to the heads-up display to give both visual and acoustic feedback of navigation and other essential statistics during the car's operation.



The e-Bee also focuses on reducing the overall weight of the car. Thin film overmoulding and Visteon-injected expanded polypropylene enable a 40 percent reduction in weight according to part shape. Another technology that the company has concentrated on is an in-vehicle wireless charging solution. The user simply needs to place the device on the automotive-grade, dual-standard charger and power is transferred wirelessly. The charger contains intelligence that can determine if an object is in close proximity to the charger and if the object can be charged at all.

Amongst other technologies in the e-Bee are a latest-generation cluster ion generator – which is mounted in the HVAC unit between the blower and evaporator to prevent odour caused by micro-biological growth on the evaporator and to provide fresh air to the cabin – and the fragrance auto diffusion system, which is connected to the HVAC unit to release fragrance into the air distribution section so it can be evenly distributed in the cabin. Even this is customisable in the car and the control logic intermittently opens and closes the device to maintain the selected intensity.

“The e-Bee shows a mixture of revolutionary and evolutionary technology,” says Mark Jarvis, innovation manager, design studio USA and India. “It is based on our understanding of where the market and the technologies are going,” he continues, adding, “we think that the future will be all about connectivity.”

The concept, which has already been showcased to OEMs in Europe and North America, is now doing its rounds in Asia. The e-Bee has been displayed to two OEMs in India; the reception is stated to be ‘positive’ and five more 'dekhos' are lined up. With ever-rising fuel costs and debatable policies of the government, it is prudent to think that it is only a matter of when – and not why – electric cars will gain traction in India.

INTERVIEW WITH BERTRAND STELANDRE, HEAD OF INNOVATION & DESIGN, VISTEON EUROPE



Can you tell us more about the ‘Climate-in-a-box’ technology?

The HVAC and climate system architecture is new. We have integrated everything in one box because this is the next level of Visteon’s innovation. With the electric compressor, one can really change the architecture of the system.

This went into production a couple of years ago. From a design perspective, we’ve been working on different concepts for a decade with a strong focus on increasing space in the cabin area. We’ve tried different concepts including a vehicle with HVAC on the floor. We are always moving the HVAC. We’re at a point where we will have some co-development with a customer. To get the benefits of our architecture, vehicle architecture needs to be optimised. We are in talks with OEMs and are looking at co-innovation to imagine a new car.



Can this new HVAC system be optimised for non-electric vehicles also?

While the new HVAC system is perfect for an electric vehicle it is compatible with electric, hybrid, or a normal vehicle as well. Even a stop/start vehicle will have benefits using this architecture. Except for the electric compressor, it is plug-and-play with all types of vehicles. The electric compressor comes in different versions for a normal car.



What is the main advantage of this electric compressor?

The big change is that now you can ‘pre-condition’ the air-conditioning or heating even if you’re not in the car. We reduce the power consumed by using a heat pump to heat the vehicle. In India, cooling is the issue.

When you work with hybrids or plug-in hybrids, the objective is to use as much energy as possible from the plug and not from the battery. So you retain 100 percent of the energy to move the car and not to cool it or heat it.



What changes have you made to the interiors?

We have fewer and lighter materials in the cockpit. This not only reduces the weight of the vehicle but also means lesser materials to cool down. It’s easy to cool the air of a car, but one also has to cool down kilograms of plastics and materials because they act like radiators for hours.



Have OEMs shown interest in any particular technology or for the entire architecture as such?

Everyone is interested in electronics and HMI. The big trend — on one hand, they want to sell millions of cars of each model but on the other hand, people want not only personalisation but individualisation too. We are our own interaction designers who can arrange and design desktop or apps or software. We expect the same in cars. We want the ability to 'optimise my HMI for my car'.



How did your design centre in Pune contribute for the e-Bee?

The Pune centre helped at the research level. We don’t want to focus on what people want now but their requirements in the future. We want to create different personas and to imagine different scenarios.



With the e-Bee you’ve essentially mutilated the cockpit and interiors. You’ve totally demolished them and these are two important business divisions for Visteon.



How did your colleagues take this?

I guess I should be fired (laughs). Visteon is moving from a hardware components manufacturer to a system integrator. That’s a big trend. It’s not that we want to promote it, but if this is the future, we want to be the first and to drive our innovation.

What is really scary for us is trying to improve a product that will not exist in the future. When we make a concept, we want to go far in the vision. We want to show that the future is different from now. On one hand, we have less of the cockpit and on the other, there is more space within the car.

The seat behind the driver and passenger seat is available for a second HMI. On the floor, we have less carpet and more interior materials. We want to move from a components supplier to a full interior systems supplier with co-development with customers. We want to move from thinking about design at a component level to a system