Thursday September 03, 2009

Honda to reassign 400 F1 R&D engineers to improve fuel efficiency of hybrid cars

bloomberg.com :

Honda's withdrawal from Formula 1 racing in Dec 2008 to save money may give it an advantage over rivals: fresh blood from an elite cadre of R&D engineers to improve its Honda Civic and Odyssey models. Honda reassigned the racing team's 400 engineers to develop new technologies to improve fuel efficiency and emission levels for mass-produced cars. An advanced regenerative brake system is being tested for possible use in Honda's hybrid cars. Racing has trained the engineers to acknowledge what works and what doesn't. Those competitive instincts are now redirected toward building cars to outsell rivals.

Honda quit F1 racing to cut costs as auto sales plunged amid the global recession. Teams using Honda's engines have won 69 races out of 151. Toyota, which started Formula One racing in 2002, has never won. The move may take Honda past Toyota in overall efficiency, as Honda expands its hybrid lineup with the 2010 Honda CR-Z sports coupe and the 2010 Honda Fit hybrid. Toyota plans to lease plug-in hybrid cars next year and plans to sell an electric car in 2012, and the 2010 Nissan Leaf electric car was announced recently.

- This is a great move by Honda. I'm just surprised that they had so many R&D engineers dedicated to the F1 racing team. 400! That is a tremendous amount of talent, not to mention the cost that Honda must have been incurring when it was sponsoring the racing side of things. And now with Toyota, Nissan, and Mazda announcing either electric cars or plug-in hybrids of their own, the competition for the next generation of cars is getting hotter by the day. So it looks like they've got their work cut out for them. They've got 2 or 3 years, maybe less, to get something out the door quickly. Let's see what they come up with.

See also :

1. 2010 Honda Civic Hybrid preliminary specifications released
2. 2010 Honda Insight specifications released : 41 mpg, 1.3L, 98hp, i-VTEC, CVT
3. Honda, GS Yuasa JV to make lithium-ion batteries for 2010/2011 Honda Civic Hybrid
4. Honda may develop plug-in hybrid cars as Obama alters US policy
5. 2010 Honda CR-Z hybrid, 2010 Honda Fit/Jazz hybrid models confirmed

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