Overcoming the ‘CO2 penalty’ of autonomous vehicles

What type of propulsion system will power the highly automated (SAE Level 4) and fully autonomous (SAE Level 5) vehicles of the future? Such systems will need to be more efficient than those used in today's human-driven vehicles to offset the “autonomous overhead”-the significant amount of electrical power required for data processing alone. And that propulsion won't be the lowest-cost solution, said Chris Thomas, BorgWarner's vice president and CTO.

The 1.5 kW to 2.75 kW needed just to process the increasing deluge of incoming and in-vehicle data-generated from onboard sensor arrays, from other vehicles, the infrastructure and the cloud-is “the dirty little secret” of autonomous vehicle engineering, Thomas told the audience at SAE's 2017 High-Efficiency Engines Symposium in Detroit on April 3.