BMW new generation electric vehicles depend on an unpretentious black box called “Heart of Joy”
Last November, I got attached to the back of the passenger of a fully electric four -door sedan with BMW test pilot and The 24 -hour runner Jens Klingmann Behind the steering wheel. It was a cold day at the BMW performance conduct in Greer, SC, and under the five -point harness, the roller cage and the highly camouflaged body, Klingmann had an unexpected co -pilot: a small black box called “Heart of Joy. “”
It was a strange name for an interesting suite of technological features fueling my brief passage of three laps on the performance track of 1.7 mile. The heart of joy represents an interesting future for the German brand which always wants to be known as “ultimate driving machine” in the electrified future.
The vehicle in which we rolled is called The Vision Driving Experience (VDX), only one-off is specifically built to test this supposedly magical black box, as well as more to come for The new BMW class platform. The VDX uses fans to suck it on the track for better high -speed traction. These fans are noisy inside the vehicle, which makes it almost impossible to hear much more than a roar while we rush around the track at speeds at 90 mph, even if the car itself is a Mainly silent.
In the skilled hands as Klingmann, tires moan as the limit of their grip approaches. There is less BMW brake cries because this little black box makes the majority of the work while we rush around the track.
The heart of joy is an ECU which combines both driving dynamics and control of the powertrain in a single computer. About eight inches per eight inchesThe box will serve as a control module for the next electrified vehicles Neue Klasse who will start to deploy later this year.
It has been developed internally by BMW engineers, which is unique because most manufacturers break hundreds of standard components and write software code to communicate all in a transparent way with each other. This results in a kind of homogeneity of driving experiences on different brands, as most brands use the same suppliers. BMW therefore instructed its engineers to think about how to differentiate its electric vehicles from the competition by offering a new unique computer system that could feed a variety of driving dynamics in the BMW range – WADs to sports cars.
“The question is what the pleasure of driving at an electrification era looks like?” Christian Thalmeer, principal engineer of BMW’s driving dynamics. “It combines the power and torque of electric motors, with the ability of these engines to slow down and brake a vehicle, and the option of having more than one power source.”
On the track, the VDX is a rocket, and even if we approach 90 mph on the right, Klingmann barely affects the brakes and simply lifts the accelerator to bring the vehicle to a healthier speed for pointed hair pins.
“The question is what the pleasure of driving at an electrification era looks like?”
BMW has not shared all the specifications of the VDX test vehicle, in addition to its crazy 13,269 lb-ft of torque, and a 25% increase in efficiency thanks to the integrated recovery of brakes and energy . But they shared that the heart of joy is ten times faster than the Ecus-Together on the market.
One of the main characteristics on which BMW has focused in development was control of braking and stability. The system can actively use regenerative braking to end BMW vehicles without the driver never having to touch the pedal. The company claims that this function will lead to greater stability at the limit, because the system can slow down each individual wheel to create better grip, which leads to recovery which is 60% more efficient.
Because a single computer system manages everything, from driving dynamics to the exit of the powertrain including individual wheels, there will be less latency in the vehicle response and you get less wear on the brakes and tires. Thalmeer said that the new ECU system can move power and deceleration from front to back and each wheel to obtain the maximum recovery and stability of the vehicle, an event he calls “joy of s ‘Stop”.
Heart of Joy was developed in just three short years and has currently gone through more than 7,500 hours of testing, both in the hands of experienced engineers like Thalmeer and racing drivers like Klingmann. The objective, of course, is to bring future BMWs to drive more like BMW, and not as, let’s say, Kias, which uses the programming supplier model for their electric vehicles. The unique computer also also facilitates live updates for BMW.
Bringing internal development is not new for BMW, but it is relatively unique in an industry that frequently turns to external suppliers for everything, from voice recognition to infotainment. ECU tends to be outsourced to other companies like Magna Steyr, for example.
The CTO BMW Frank Weber explained how the non-intention of the car manufacturer to launch the series 7 25 years ago gave the company the capacity and the confidence to create the new heart of joy. “It was a nightmare,” Weber told me at these earlier this year. “We hardly did the launch of the car … Today, I can say, maybe it was the best thing that happened to BMW. Because it was so difficult, we had to develop more robust processes for these advanced digital technologies much earlier than the others, then we just prepared it over time. »»
“We hardly did the launch of the car … Today, I can say, maybe it was the best thing that happened to BMW.”
This led the company to believe that it could tackle the difficult task of ensuring that the creation of the ECU internally. “Being able to work with controllers is something that our driving dynamics have already done for a long time, but they have done so with suppliers,” said Weber. “Here, we had the knowledge, and we developed the algorithms with the suppliers … We must have it, because what we can do with this new controller, when we look at everything is simply incredible.”
As Weber noted, there was an increasing push to regionalize everything, requirements in terms of emissions to the sources of suppliers in the world. The supply chains of the car manufacturer are deeply integrated between borders, and globalization as this is very difficult and costly to relax. Look at the incredible number of damage that President Trump The 25% prices offered could have the only car manufacturerswith disastrous estimates that American car manufacturers could stop in a week If they are put in place. As Weber noted, the regionalization which is used to establish boundaries between countries, is something that threatens the entire automotive industry. By providing part of the production of what makes a BMW, an internal BMW, the company can, at least in some respects, minimize this risk.
If the brief but exciting experience I had in the VDX is an indicator, the new heart of joy, underlines the “ultimate driving machine” of BMW, root and promises a really dynamic all -electric driving.
