Vehicles with all-wheel drive can provide more traction and stability, but how exactly do these systems achieve that? In an oncoming era of electrification, what are the differences and synergies between traditional all-wheel drive systems for gasoline-powered cars and e-drive systems? When we see terms and phrases like torque transfer, traction motor, and inverter, what do they mean? And what, if any, is the relevance of all-wheel drive and e-drive systems to larger-picture topics like sustainability?
AutoVision News Radio host Carl Anthony visited GKN Driveline North America in Auburn Hills, Michigan, to gain additional insight and perspective. While onsite, Carl met with Ben DeLand, Director of Electrical Hardware Engineering at GKN Automotive. Ben takes Carl through the essential specs of an all-wheel drive system and outlines how GKN's engineering process is formulated with sustainability at its core.
Additional Resources:
GKN History & Heritage: https://rb.gy/wo5w2
Soybean Laboratory at Greenfield Village circa 1936: https://rb.gy/j3hyf
The BMW Century Chronicles Germany’s Greatest Two & Four-Wheeled Machines via Tony Borroz for Automoblog: https://rb.gy/gmqcy
17 Sustainable Development Goals via The United Nations: https://rb.gy/tfgys
AutoVision News LinkedIn: https://rb.gy/lqjp6
[00:00:00] My name is Carl Anthony and I work in the automotive industry in Detroit.
[00:00:06] Sometimes that work encompasses future vehicle technology and that's what we
[00:00:11] talk about here for the most part anyway. This is AutoVision News Radio.
[00:00:16] Something I think is neat is when you discover that a particular company in automotive actually for guests, keen and nettlefolds. That combination of names originated in the early 20th century and went on until 1982 when it was shortened to GKN. The company's full history involves the railroad, the transition from iron to steel, and the leadership of Lady Charlotte Guest who challenged Michigan. The automotive business is quite a bit younger, of course, starting in the 1950s. G-Ken took their knowledge of ironworks and steel and started developing side shafts and constant velocity
[00:03:01] joints for vehicles. With that, business became quite a dominant leader in side shafts and drive transfer, torque management to torque generation, and we're one of the only companies that can provide that full solution from the generation of power and powertrain fully out to the wheels through the driveline. There were three key terms that Ben mentioned, torque transfer, torque management, and torque
[00:04:21] generation.
[00:04:22] And since anything with the word torque in it sounds awesome, I asked Ben to take us
[00:04:27] through what each of them mean. business or traditional transmission business, but we are in the electric powertrain business. So we have the ability to design and produce what we call three-in-one systems for electric drive systems. So that would be an inverter, attraction motor, and a gearbox, which is replacing the traditional
[00:05:44] combustion engine and transmission in the electric powertrain versus traditional combustion engine and transmissions. So there's a lot of changes ongoing there as well and a lot of innovation. So that's been the backbone of our business. And finally, we are electric powertrain partners
[00:07:04] for our customers.
[00:07:05] So this is something we've been doing for over 20 years. that is connected directly to the inverter. The job of the inverter is to invert that DC voltage and make it an AC waveform output that drives the traction motor. The traction motor is taking the AC waveform from the inverter and internally creating
[00:08:22] an electromagnetic field that generates torque
[00:09:26] 2021 was also the same year GKN created its sustainability strategy, which aligns to six of the 17 sustainable development goals outlined by the United Nations.
[00:09:31] And I quote the UN now, the 17 sustainable development goals are an urgent call for action
[00:09:38] by all countries developed and developing in a global partnership.
[00:09:42] They recognize that ending poverty and other deprivations must go hand in hand with strategies that they can be much more sustainable. So the key design aspects for us are achieving the highest efficiency, the best performance at the best cost possible for our customers. The process for achieving that is within G-CAN a full system approach.
[00:11:00] We've transformed our engineering organization
[00:11:04] to be fully system oriented. different motor technologies. We're looking at how the motor is interfacing with the inverter, reducing any losses that we can from resistive losses in the copper, the efficiency with how the motor is things. Depending on where our customers want to be with traction and stability and agility, we can offer them a wide range of different products at different trade-offs. And the trade-offs are, of course, cost,
[00:13:40] and the second being packaging.
[00:13:42] We need to have this wide range of product offerings, the same thing, but generating the torque itself. As you step through those, you can feel the packaging and the cost differences from an open differential up to a dual motor eDrive system. So for us, the key is really understanding the final vehicle that's being built and
[00:15:02] what the customer is really after and attacking that with the right product. more torque to the wheel with better traction. That can be done mechanically with some clutch plates in the limited slip differential, which is very good for packaging but lower performance, or it can be done electronically.
[00:16:21] Electronically means we have a clutch that is operated by an actuator, typically a motor high traction performance. Stepping away from all-wheel drive, you get into the eDrive products. We are making full three-in-one systems as as AutoVision News, I spend a fair amount of time going through press releases and product sheets. I actually enjoy doing this, but you do come across a lot of phrases and terms, or if you're
[00:19:01] looking at it from an SEO perspective, keywords.
[00:19:04] And sometimes they can all kind of get jumbled different, but fundamentally you're talking about the same actions there. But the prop. It's the case then that G-Can automotive for combustion engine vehicles has a lot of disconnect devices that's providing I have three young children. Two of them can get in the station wagon with all of their accoutrements.