Final November, I strapped into the rear passenger seat of an all-electric, four-door sedan with BMW take a look at driver and 24-hour racer Jens Klingmann behind the wheel. It was a chilly day at BMW’s Efficiency Driving Heart in Greer, SC, and beneath the five-point harnesses, roll cage, and closely camouflaged physique, Klingmann had an surprising co-pilot: a tiny black field known as the “Coronary heart of Pleasure.”
It was an odd title for an attention-grabbing suite of tech options powering my transient three-lap stint on the 1.7-mile efficiency monitor. The Coronary heart of Pleasure represents an attention-grabbing future for the German model that also needs to be referred to as the “Final Driving Machine” within the electrified future.
The automobile we rode in is named the Imaginative and prescient Driving Expertise (VDX), a one-off constructed particularly for testing this supposedly magic black field, in addition to extra upcoming options for BMW’s Neue Klasse platform. The VDX makes use of followers to suck it all the way down to the monitor for higher traction at velocity. These followers are loud contained in the automobile, making it practically inconceivable to listen to way more than a roar whereas we’re hurtling across the monitor at speeds nearing 90 mph, regardless that the automobile itself is a principally silent EV.
Within the expert arms of Klingmann, the tires whine as they strategy the restrict of their grip. There’s notably much less BMW brake squeal as that little black field does a majority of the work as we hurtle across the monitor.
The Coronary heart of Pleasure is an ECU that mixes each driving dynamics and powertrain management into one pc. Approximately eight-inches by eight-inches, the field will function the management module for the upcoming Neue Klasse electrified autos that may begin rolling out later this yr.
It was developed in-house by BMW engineers, which is exclusive since most producers cobble collectively tons of of off-the-shelf parts and write software program code to make all of them talk seamlessly with each other. That leads to a kind of homogeneity of driving experiences throughout completely different manufacturers since most manufacturers use the identical suppliers. So BMW tasked its engineers with excited about find out how to differentiate its EVs from the competitors by arising with a brand new, single computing system that might energy quite a lot of driving dynamics throughout BMW’s lineup – from SUVs to sports activities vehicles.
“The query is, what does driving pleasure appear to be in an period of electrification?” Christian Thalmeer, BMW’s senior driving dynamics engineer, stated. “It combines the sheer energy and torque of electrical motors, with the power for these motors to gradual and brake a automobile, and the choice to have multiple energy supply.”
On the monitor, the VDX is a rocketship, and regardless that we’re approaching 90 mph on the straight, Klingmann barely touches the brakes and easily lifts off the accelerator to deliver the automobile to a extra sane velocity for the sharp hairpins.
“The query is, what does driving pleasure appear to be in an period of electrification?”
BMW didn’t share all of the specs of the VDX take a look at automobile, in addition to its insane 13,269 lb-ft of torque, and 25 % enhance in effectivity due to the built-in brake and vitality recuperation. However they did share that the Coronary heart of Pleasure is ten occasions sooner than the strung-together ECUs in the marketplace.
One of many main options that BMW targeted on within the growth was braking and stability management. The system can actively use regenerative braking to deliver BMW autos to a full cease with out the driving force ever having to the touch the pedal. The corporate says that that characteristic will result in extra stability on the restrict for the reason that system can brake every particular person wheel to create higher grip leading to recuperation that’s 60 % extra environment friendly.
As a result of a single pc system manages the whole lot from driving dynamics to powertrain output to particular person wheels, there can be much less latency within the automobile response, and also you get much less put on and tear on brakes and tires. Thalmeer stated that the brand new ECU system can shift the facility and deceleration from entrance to again and to every wheel to get the utmost recuperation and stability out of the automobile, an occasion he calls the “pleasure of stopping.”
Coronary heart of Pleasure was developed in simply three brief years and has presently been via greater than 7,500 hours of testing, each by the hands of skilled engineers like Thalmeer and race drivers like Klingmann. The goal, in fact, is to get future BMWs to drive extra like BMWs, and never like, say, Kias, which makes use of the supplier-to-programming mannequin for his or her EVs. The only pc additionally, conveniently, makes over-the-air updates a lot simpler for BMW.
Bringing the event in-house shouldn’t be new for BMW, however it’s comparatively distinctive in an trade that incessantly seems to be to exterior suppliers for the whole lot from voice recognition to infotainment. ECUs are usually outsourced to different corporations like Magna Steyr, for instance.
BMW CTO Frank Weber defined how the automaker’s close to failure to launch the 7-series 25 years in the past gave the corporate the power and confidence to create the brand new Coronary heart of Pleasure. “It was a nightmare,” Weber informed me at CES earlier this yr. “We nearly didn’t make the launch of the automobile…At the moment, I can say, possibly this was one of the best factor that occurred to BMW. As a result of it was so troublesome, we needed to develop extra sturdy processes for these superior digital applied sciences a lot sooner than the others, after which we simply groomed it over time.”
“We nearly didn’t make the launch of the automobile…At the moment, I can say, possibly this was one of the best factor that occurred to BMW.”
This led the corporate to consider it might sort out the troublesome process of bringing the ECU creation in-house. “Having the ability to work with the controllers is one thing that our driving dynamics folks did already for a very long time, however they did it with suppliers,” Weber stated. “Right here, we had the information, and we developed the algorithms with suppliers… We have now to personal this, as a result of what we will do with this new controller, after we take a look at the whole lot, is simply unimaginable.”
As Weber famous, there’s been an rising push to regionalize the whole lot from emissions necessities to provider sources world wide. Auto producer provide chains are deeply built-in throughout borders, and globalization like that may be very troublesome and expensive to unwind. Take a look at the unimaginable quantity of harm that President Trump’s proposed 25 percent tariffs could have on US automakers alone, with dire estimates that US automakers could shut down within a week ought to they go into place. As Weber famous, regionalization which is used to place up boundaries between international locations, is one thing that threatens your entire automotive trade. By bringing a part of the manufacturing of what makes a BMW, a BMW, in-house, the corporate can, no less than in some methods, reduce that threat.
If the transient however thrilling expertise I had within the VDX is any indicator, the brand new Coronary heart of Pleasure, underlines BMW’s “Final Driving Machine,” roots and guarantees a really dynamic, all-electric driving future.