Review of the Research Program of the Partnership for a New Generation of Vehicles: Second Report (1996)

This is the second report of the National Research Council's (NRC's) Standing Committee to Review the Research Program of the Partnership for a New Generation of Vehicles (PNGV). The committee was established in July 1994 to conduct independent annual reviews of the PNGV's research program and to advise the government and industry participants on the program's progress. The PNGV declaration of intent includes a requirement for an independent peer review “to comment on the technologies selected for research and progress made.” To this end, this review was undertaken by the NRC at the written request of the Under Secretary for Technology Administration, U.S. Department of Commerce (DOC), acting on behalf of the PNGV.

The PNGV program is a cooperative research and development (R&D) program between the federal government and the United States Council for Automotive Research (USCAR), whose members are Chrysler Corporation, Ford Motor Company, and General Motors Corporation. The PNGV was initiated on September 29, 1993, by President Clinton with the purpose of enhancing the U.S. domestic automobile industry's productivity and competitiveness while improving the fuel efficiency of today 's vehicles. The aims of the PNGV program are to improve automobiles over the next decade and to develop technologies for a new generation of vehicles that could achieve fuel economies up to three times those of today's comparable vehicles. At the same time, these vehicles should maintain performance, size, utility, and cost of ownership and operation and should meet or exceed federal safety and emissions requirements (The White House, 1993).

The PNGV goals and the considerations underlying them are articulated in the partnership's program plan, as follows (PNGV, 1995):

GOAL 1—Significantly improve national competitiveness in manufacturing.

Improve the productivity of the U.S. manufacturing base by significantly upgrading U.S. manufacturing technology, including the adoption of agile and

flexible manufacturing and reduction of costs and lead times, while reducing the environmental impact and/or improving quality.

GOAL 2—Implement commercially viable innovations from ongoing research on conventional vehicles.

Pursue technology advances that can lead to improvements in the fuel efficiency and reductions in the emissions of standard vehicle designs, while pursuing advances to maintain safety performance. Research will focus on technologies that reduce the demand for energy from the engine and drivetrain. Throughout the research program, the industry has pledged to apply those commercially viable technologies resulting from this research that would be expected to significantly increase vehicle fuel efficiency and improve emissions.

GOAL 3—Develop vehicles to achieve up to three times the fuel efficiency of comparable 1994 family sedans.

Increase vehicle fuel efficiency to up to three times that of the average 1994 Concorde/Taurus/Lumina automobiles with equivalent cost of ownership adjusted for economics.

According to the schedule for Goal 3 that is described in the program plan, by 1997 the PNGV expects to assess system configurations for alternative vehicles and to narrow its technology choices, with the intent of defining, developing, and constructing concept vehicles by 2000 and with the production of prototypes by 2004. The technology areas being addressed include advanced lightweight materials and structures; energy efficient conversion systems (including advanced internal combustion engines, gas turbines, and fuel cells); hybrid electric propulsion systems; energy-storage devices (including high-power batteries, flywheels, and ultracapacitors); more-efficient electrical systems; and energy recovery systems, such as those for efficiently recovering and utilizing exhaust energy and braking energy.

For Phase 2 of the PNGV peer review, additional members were added to the committee to provide the expertise necessary to assess developments in the program since the first review; notably, in the areas of energy conversion, powertrain technologies, and systems analysis. Biographical information on committee members is presented in appendix A. The committee was charged with performing the following tasks:

• Assess the progress of the PNGV program since August 1994 and its response to the recommendations from the first NRC review.

• Examine ongoing research activities in the PNGV, that is, in the various agencies of government (including the

pertinent national laboratories and contractors) and at USCAR.

• Assess the relevance of that ongoing research and its management to the PNGV's goals and schedule.

• Prepare a second peer review report.

Consistent with this charge, this second report offers the committee 's findings and recommendations based on presentations from the PNGV that were made August 27–31, 1995, in Dearborn, Michigan, and October 30–November 1, 1995, in Washington, D.C. The two committee meetings were supplemented by site visits to Chrysler, Ford, and General Motors R&D facilities by small subgroups of the committee and by the attendance at selected conferences and symposia of individual committee members. (The list of presentations to the committee and other data-gathering activities is provided in appendix B.) Some of the material was presented to the committee as USCAR proprietary information under an agreement signed by the National Academy of Sciences; USCAR; and the U.S. government, represented by the DOC.

The committee started its work with the explicit understanding that the vision, goals, and target dates for the PNGV had been articulated by the President and that the appropriate R&D programs had been launched. On the premise that the PNGV would be seriously pursued by its partners, the committee saw its charge as one of providing independent advice to help the PNGV achieve the goals envisioned. Thus, in its review the committee sought to identify strengths and actions that could enhance the program's chance for success.

The committee has studiously avoided making judgments at this time on the value of the program to the nation; hence, the committee accepted the fuel economy target for Goal 3 as a given. This target is to design and construct a production prototype vehicle (or vehicles) by 2004 that will have, among other attributes, a fuel economy of up to 80 miles per equivalent gallon of gasoline (as measured by the Federal Test Procedure). The committee discussed, but did not choose to question, this fuel economy target, deferring that issue for later discussion following selection of vehicle configurations in 1997. Likewise, the committee accepted the statements for Goals 1 and 2, while noting that they are open ended and do not have quantitative targets and milestones as does Goal 3.

In the foregoing context, the objective of the committee's review was to conduct a review of the R&D program as presently configured and to assess the PNGV program's potential for achieving its goals. Thus, the presentations sought by the committee at its second round of meetings centered around understanding the PNGV's perspectives on the technologies under consideration; key research challenges and priorities; alignment of the program architecture with the goals, schedule, and milestones; metrics for measuring progress; resources deployed in

fiscal year (FY) 1995 and planned for subsequent years; and program management within the PNGV.

Key questions for which the committee sought information and insight include the following:

• Are the broad priorities established for the PNGV program reasonable?

• Are there obvious potential technologies not being considered as candidates for the PNGV concept vehicles?

• Does the PNGV program have detailed plans sufficient to adequately describe the work effort and permit effective program management of dedicated resources?

• Does the PNGV program have an effective program management structure for the government and industry organizations involved?

• Does the PNGV program have adequate and dedicated levels of funding and resources required to accomplish the goals and schedules specified in the program plan?

• Is the PNGV program considering all pertinent sources of technology?

This report attempts to answer these overarching questions.

PNGV (Partnership for a New Generation of Vehicles). 1995. Program Plan (draft). Washington, D.C.: PNGV.

The White House. 1993. Historic Partnership Forged with Auto Makers Aims for Three-Fold Increase in Fuel Efficiency in as Soon as Ten Years. September 29, 1993. Washington, D.C.: The White House.