BMW Looks to NASA to Increase Efficiency

With so much emphasis being placed on fuel efficiency, many manufacturers are trying to reinvent the wheel, so to speak, in the search for that Next Big Thing. From GM’s plug-in electric car, to Honda’s cheaper Insight to the hydrogen movement, there are massive changes on the automotive engineering front, with technology advancing by leaps and bounds.

But sometimes, leaping and bounding resulting is falling down. Hence why BMW is selecting instead to advance their vehicle’s efficiency by using smaller measures; slowly whittling away at their emissions and fuel consumption figures through a series of minor revisions and changes in a program that they are calling “EfficientDynamics.” In its first revision, the program garnered the application of familiar technologies, like Start-Stop engine management and regenerative braking, but the second revision uses technology borrowed from NASA to recapture the energy that would otherwise escape as exhaust heat. Using thermo-electric generators, or  TEDs (used by NASA to turn radiant heat from radioactive sources into electricity), BMW hopes to recover 200 watts of energy from the exhaust system of a vehicle; enough to power things like the climate control system and auxiliary systems. Not a massive figure by any stretch, the consistency with which that power could be harnessed (as opposed to Start-Stop engine systems or regenerative braking) during the entire driving experience would result in a 5% increase in efficiency; more than either of those systems combined!