HRH The Duke of York opens the Sir Harry Ricardo Innovation & Sustainable Transport Centre

SHOREHAM-BY-SEA, UNITED KINGDOM – October 23, 2008: Part of a £6.4M capital investment programme at the Ricardo Shoreham Technical Centre, this new facility underscores the company’s commitment to investment in the next generation of clean, sustainable and high performance transport and clean energy technologies

Ricardo has been actively engaged in the development of transportation technology for almost a hundred years, helping to improve the fuel-efficiency, durability, performance and quality of all types of vehicle whilst also substantially reducing the environmental impact of their emissions. The continued success of this strategy against a backdrop of spiralling fuel prices and widespread concerns surrounding the challenge of climate change was clearly apparent in the substantially increased annual profits and turnover reported by the company in September for its most recent financial year. The Shoreham Technical Centre site – at which Ricardo has been based since 1919 – has recently been the focus of a significant capital investment programme amounting to £6.4M over the past year, part of a rolling three-year programme of £30M invested globally by the company in its worldwide technical centres. In its most recent financial year Ricardo has also increased its annual spend on advanced technology research programmes by 13.5 per cent to a total of £10.1M. The investment at Shoreham has included a total of 1,700 square metres of new buildings, including design and engineering offices and test facilities. In addition to a new visitor reception area, the Sir Harry Ricardo Innovation & Sustainable Transport Centre building – opened today by HRH The Duke of York – provides a focus for the display and communication of the very latest technologies and innovations of Ricardo and its research and engineering partners around the world.

Commenting on the opening of the new facility, Ricardo CEO Dave Shemmans, said: “Ricardo has from its foundation been committed to the development of new technologies and innovations powering all forms of transportation, and has been at the very forefront of efforts to improve fuel efficiency and reduce harmful emissions. The investments that the company has made both here at the Shoreham Technical Centre as well as at many sites around the world has enabled us to stay at the leading edge of technology and help our customers and partners move towards a sustainable – and profitable – future. The Sir Harry Ricardo Innovation & Sustainable Transport Centre aims to communicate the latest work of the company while also celebrating its many past achievements. I would like to thank the Duke of York personally for formally opening this important new facility for us today.”

A sustainable strategy for uncertain times
The transition to a fully sustainable energy economy is potentially the most significant challenge to be faced collectively by humankind. Competition for finite energy resources is growing as the rapidly developing economies of countries such as India and China expand and their populations aspire to the type of energy-intensive lifestyles enjoyed in the West for many years. In its 2008 International Energy Outlook the US Government’s Energy Information Administration projected that world marketed energy consumption will by 2030 have increased 50 per cent compared with a 2005 baseline, with an increase of 85 per cent in non-OECD countries.

In parallel with the consequent increased use of energy, the fact of global warming is now almost universally accepted, and its negative consequences are increasingly apparent in all parts of the world. The need to mitigate the effects of global warming is thus already the focus of political action in the form of regulations aimed at limiting and ultimately reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, particularly of CO2. Transport currently accounts for 14 per cent of worldwide manmade GHG emissions – a figure which rises to 20 per cent in Europe and the USA. In Europe, Japan, USA, and Australia regulators are acting to increase fleet average fuel economy, reduce CO2 emissions and encourage use of alternative and more sustainable sources of energy than fossil fuels. But as the world strives to develop low carbon transportation technologies it is also important that the wider aspects of sustainability are fully accounted for. In the search for alternatives to fossil fuels as the principal energy source for transportation, for example, it is important that further stress is not placed upon already stretched global food and water supplies.

The challenge of migrating away from fossil fuel based transportation to a fully integrated and sustainable energy infrastructure, while urgent, will require time if it is to be overcome in a truly effective manner. It is clear that the most significant and realisable short to medium term solution for the reduction of transport-related carbon emissions is the optimisation of conventional engines and the increasing electrification of the new vehicle fleet through hybridisation, including plug-in hybrids and fully electric vehicles. Separately, on the power supply side, considerable efforts are required in renewable non-fossil fuel generation technologies such as wind and tidal energy. Ricardo is actively engaged in research and innovation in clean energy while also playing a central role in the development of longer term technologies such as hydrogen and fuel cells.

Innovation – improving the breed
Innovation is the vital ingredient in meeting the challenges of the future successfully and profitably. By developing the very latest in automotive technologies and creating solutions to some of the key vehicle design and engineering challenges, Ricardo aims to improve and optimise motorised transportation. A number of exhibits illustrating Ricardo achievements in this area were displayed at the opening ceremony. These included a demonstrator engine highlighting Ricardo’s highly fuel efficient ‘Near Zero Emissions Diesel’ (NZED) technology, which in the summer of 2008 achieved US Tier 2/SULEV/PZEV (Partial Zero Emission Vehicle) standards, the toughest of world wide emissions regulations. This represents an emissions reduction of approximately 90 per cent compared to the baseline vehicle, while also offering a fuel-efficiency improvement of 5-10 per cent.

Also displayed was the Ricardo ‘Drivewise’ vehicle, which demonstrates the company’s Torque Vectoring and steer-by-wire technology. This advanced chassis control system – which includes a mechanical back-up but steers fully electronically in normal circumstances – provides considerable safety enhancements in terms of improved handling performance, enabling the vehicle to execute manoeuvres in the most challenging of driving conditions. The two parts of the system operate in a fully integrated manner such that required instantaneous yaw motion can be blended by both sub-systems – each of which is, if necessary, also able to cover for faults detected in the other.

Some extremely high performance products were also on display, many of which emphasised the strong synergies between Ricardo’s efforts to deliver environmentally friendly vehicles for road use while also serving the needs of performance products and the highest levels of competitive motor sport. One such example was the JCB Dieselmax vehicle powered by its Ricardo developed engines, which took the FIA international diesel land speed record in 2006. These engines – the world’s highest specific power automotive diesels – incorporate a very similar Ricardo two-stage turbocharged low compression combustion and air management system as that of the recently unveiled high efficiency, near-Zero Emissions Diesel (n-ZED) engine. Similarly, the company’s experience in hybrid electric vehicles is now being used to great effect in helping leading Formula One teams to develop Kinetic Energy Recovery Systems (KERS), as well as in advising the sport’s governing body on future regulations aimed at promoting energy efficiency.

Sustainability – the green evolution
There is no quick fix that will deliver a sustainable transport system overnight – this is a long term challenge requiring many evolutionary steps of improved energy efficiency in parallel with the development of low carbon supplies of energy. But the need for tangible action to reduce carbon emissions and improve energy security is immediate; these evolutionary steps in technology are therefore needed with unprecedented urgency. Ricardo’s on-going portfolio of innovative research programmes places it at the forefront of the development of key technologies. The company has led the way in developing advanced diesel hybrids and created some extremely thought-provoking demonstrator vehicles such as the i-MoGen mild hybrid in 2002, the HyTrans micro-hybrid van in 2004, and the 99g/km Efficient-C vehicle of 2006, which out-performed its baseline counterpart while delivering a 30 per cent improvement in fuel economy. The effective targeting and successful execution of research projects such as these has resulted in Ricardo becoming one of the world’s most respected authorities on vehicle electrification, with in well in excess of a hundred hybrid projects completed since 2000. Amongst the most recent of these were the two hybrid versions of the A5 saloon developed with Chery Automobile of China. This is one of China’s first indigenous hybrid vehicles and will go on sale in the coming months. A fleet of 50 A5 hybrids were used as a high profile official transport at the Beijing Olympics.

Low carbon vehicle research continues at a fast pace and Ricardo is currently active with partners, including defence equipment and technology specialist QinetiQ, in the development of advanced battery technologies aiming to achieve superior storage capacity, durability and cost-effectiveness. With the new Ricardo Battery Systems Development Centre shortly to be commissioned in Detroit, it will also be in a position to test and develop batteries under more arduous conditions than would be possible with in-vehicle testing, improving the effectiveness of the development cycle for new battery based technologies, innovations and products. Ricardo has also recently announced collaborative programmes with Land Rover on range extended plug-in hybrid vehicles, and with Ford and Jaguar on kinetic energy recovery mechanical hybrid systems. It is also taking forward to a vehicle demonstration programme the revolutionary 2/4SIGHT gasoline engine concept, which is able to internally switch between two- and four-stroke modes in order to boost low end torque, enable aggressive downsizing and – as demonstrated in testing of the first research prototype – deliver fuel consumption savings of 27 per cent over the standard NEDC European drive cycle.

A separate strand of the company’s expertise relates to the development and evaluation of alternatives to fossil fuels. While many first generation biofuels have been criticised for their negative impact on global food production, there are many second generation technologies which hold the promise of a more sustainable solution. A wide range of research projects are actively developing bio and flex-fuel capable powertrains technologies that will be necessary to take bio-fuel applications to the next level.

Conventional hybridisation offers a means of improving the efficiency of operation of the internal combustion engine and recapturing energy otherwise wasted in braking. However, the further electrification of vehicle architecture through plug-in hybrids or full electric vehicles will only displace the carbon emissions of fossil fuels used in transport unless the grid electricity consumed by future vehicles can be provided from renewable resources. Even the most developed of the renewable power sources – wind energy – is in its industrial infancy in comparison with the automotive sector. Key issues remain in terms of design, quality, reliability and warranty management, and with its key experience in areas such as transmissions systems and energy management technology, Ricardo is applying its robust product engineering processes honed in the automotive sector to clean energy projects. Numerous projects have already been delivered for example, to customers in the wind and tidal power generation sectors in many parts of the world.

The final element of Ricardo’s strategy for sustainable transport is to evaluate the opportunities presented by more far-reaching prospects, such as the potential of a hydrogen based economy built on the use of fuel cells and hydrogen combustion. Over the past three years Ricardo has led the European Commission funded Roads2HyCom project that seeks to coordinate and plan hydrogen research and demonstration activities in Europe. A consortium project comprising 29 leading industrial partners, Roads2HyCom will be an important element in planning the next phase of large-scale European hydrogen demonstration projects.

Conclusion
The launch of the Sir Harry Ricardo Innovation & Sustainable Transport Centre has provided a snapshot of the work of Ricardo and its partners around the world in developing the innovations that will help to create a sustainable future for transport. The company has long been highly adept at deriving profit from innovation while also delivering tangible results for its customers. Its strategic vision is the guiding light of its research activity, which in turn enables Ricardo to deliver solutions ahead of requirements for its customers in all sectors.