Bosch's vision
of the future
FLAT ROCK - Fresh from early-morning,
bumper-to-bumper, stop-and-go traffic grind on I-96 and
I-275, my right foot is literally twitching.
Not from fatigue.
From fear.
Fear that the Bosch-built Adaptive Cruise
Control I am testing on a pricey BMW will let me down -
and pile us into the back of the minivan we're tracking
here at Bosch's 300-acre test facility.
("Uh, boss?
What's our deductible on business trips? At test tracks?
With someone else's BMW? When I was told not to touch
the brake or the accelerator?)
As the Beemer repeatedly
and smoothly braked and accellerated behind the minivan,
passenger Stefan Knoll of Bosch said my reluctance to
trust ACC was natural - and would pass.
"When you go
from a car with this to regular cruise control, you say
'Where is that switch?'" Knoll said.
Knoll uses ACC in the U.S. and Europe on test cars, in
real traffic, and he said it's amazing how much less
stressed you can be after a multi-hour trip.
In this case,
an illuminated dashboard display was showing three bars
of distance to the back of the minivan.
With taps on the cruise-control stalk, I shaved or added bars, right
down to one bar.
That causes the car to follow more closely,
and accelerate more briskly.
The radar showed when it had
the minivan in its sights, and only "lost" it
on a 90-degree turn at the proving ground or when the distance
stretched out.
After the turn, if the minivan was in
range, the radar quickly re-acquired the target and sped
up. And if the minivan was out of range, the car zoomed
up to my pre-set top speed and then re-acquired the van.
Out
back, the brake lights were tied into the system, so
the car behind - with or without ACC - could see what I
was doing.
Amazing.
Bosch's building blocks
The Robert
Bosch Corp. isn't out, exactly, to reinvent the wheel.
But
it is building systems that build on each other, talk
to each other, and play well together, said Dave Robinson,
president of the electrical and electronics division.
And it has to do it without breaking the bank.
"The
challenge to us is to deliver these technologies to a
customer at an affordable price," Robinson said.
The technologies are more evolutionary than revolutionary,
Robinson said.
That means Bosch systems compliment each
other, each one extending the safety and comfort envelopes
- instead of, perhaps, a single giant leap forward that
the market doesn't swallow, or doesn't want to pay for.
This
all tracks a sea change in the auto safety world, said
Reiner Emig, senior vice president for eletronic systems.
Automakers are now moving from passive systems - think
seat belts, air bags and anti-lock braking - into "active" systems,
that actually read data and make some command-and-control
decisions for the driver.
Not all. But some.
Stability first
One
of the basic building blocks is Electronic Stability
Control. With algorithms tracking vehicle dynamics, ESC
can step in and adjust braking and engine torque to prevent
dangerous skids.
And ESC sensors, tied to Rollover Mitigation
equipment, can prevent sport-utilities from tipping over
in snap situations. And those systems can be linked to
things like Adaptive Cruise Control - which enhances
both comfort and safety.
"Our long-term goal is to develop
crash avoidance (systems) that can interact with each
other, using sensors that are already present," Emig
said.
But Bosch understands there is a fine
line there, according to Becky MacDonald, a Bosch spokeswoman
and self-described "General Motors brat" whose
father once worked for Buick in Flint.
"Bosch's
position is not to take all control from the driver
- if you wanted that, you'd take the bus," MacDonald
said.
Instead, Bosch is looking to give automakers and
drivers high-tech tools that allow them to drive
with less stress, avoid accidents completely, or
simply reduce the severity of an unavoidable crash,
she said.
The unknowns
Is there a problem with all
this gadgetry? Maybe. Nearly to a man, all of the Bosch
technical experts were European.
Europe - where people still
use turn signals, don't camp out in the left lane, and
don't tend to use their vehicles as phone booths, diners
or reading rooms.
Or all three at once.
So, will ACC and
other systems make Americans better drivers? Or just
allow them to multi-task one more item into their already
jam-packed morning motion marathon?
One illustration might be anti-lock braking. When
that first rolled out, consumers either didn't know
they had it or didn't know how to use it effectively.
Initially, it didn't seem to change accident statistics.
But
as ABS technology penetrated the U.S. fleet, it did
- pardon the pun - impact accident severity and rates for
the better, Bosch officials said.
And outfits like Bosch
did learn a lesson.
More consumer training is needed at
the front end, so Bosch is already educating dealers
about Electronic Stability Control, so drivers know what
it can - and cannot - do.
Would ESC, ROM, ACC and all the
other acronyms the Bosch team batted around that morning
have made my morning I-96 slog better?
Well, here's what
I was thinking, driving back to Flint: Where is that
switch?
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