Hot Wheels

GM’s Automotive Centre of Excellence brings new engineering capabilities to the University of Ontario Institute of Technology

By Treena Hein for Design Engineering | Published in AutoPlant April 2008

The way Greg Parker sees it, the General Motors of Canada Automotive Centre of Excellence opening next year in Oshawa, ON will provide an exciting and much-needed boost to the art and science of automotive design in this country.

“We’ve got some very talented professors at universities and students in terms of having unique ideas and concepts as they relate to the automotive industry,” says Parker, Advanced Technology Manager for General Motors of Canada Limited. “We need to get those great ideas, those bright minds, probably a little better connected with the needs of the auto industry.”

According to Parker, the Centre will create a space “where OEM, where suppliers like Magna or Multimatic or other companies in Canada, could work collaboratively with the academic community.” He says “Some of the perhaps more advanced [research] activities [that will take place at the Centre] would be a little expensive for a company to pour a lot of R&D dollars into on their own, but working with an academic community, they may have the ability to do that.”

Parker says GM of Canada and other supporters of the Centre’s creation see it as a great opportunity to apply an industry needs-based approach to a university setting – in this case, at the University of Ontario Institute of Technology (UOIT). “Dealing with the theoretical level is certainly what you want in an academic community and for an engineering learning environment,” he says, “but be to able to relate it to vehicles that you can actually see – trying out those concepts on, trying out those ideas on, producing those prototype components – it’s going to be very exciting for students coming in.”

The Centre’s collaborative focus will allow students and faculty to do full vehicle design work – relating and applying basic research, development and analytical work to design – a process which will result in the realization of more commercialization opportunities than before. Parker says “I think that government has probably recognized this for a little while and that really created the vision for the Centre originally.”

This new institute will build on two important pillars of automotive engineering design that already exist in Canada, one being UOIT’s well-established academic programs. Dr. Greg Rohrauer, the Centre’s Academic Director, says “Other institutions have offered engineering programs with [an automotive] emphasis, but UOIT will be the first one with an accredited degree in automotive engineering.” That accreditation will be bestowed to UOIT shortly after the first undergraduate class, now finishing its third year, graduates in spring 2010.

Rohrauer describes the accreditation process as “quite a challenge” and “very onerous,” but one that “We’re very happy about.” The journey has involved numerous faculty members working closely with the accreditation board and numerous inspections, all to ensure the curriculum delivery and demonstrations of student learning are meeting agreed-upon requirements. Rohrauer sees all the hard work as providing necessary support for the auto industry: “It’s a very competitive world. We have to strike back. We’re upping the ante.”

2008 Saturn Vue

David Adams, President of the Toronto-based Association of International Automobile Manufacturers of Canada, agrees. "[This institute] represents significant step forward in conducting critical automotive research and development in Canada.  To sustain and grow the automotive industry in Canada, we need to move up the ‘value chain’ in the parts, components, modules etc. that we can produce [here] to differentiate ourselves from our competitors.  Add to that the human capital that is developed in such an environment and you have a winning combination.”

The Centre’s second pillar consists of GM of Canada’s history of engineering activity. The company has maintained an engineering hub here for quite some time – one of its twelve global engineering hubs found around the world in countries such as Germany, the US, Australia and Sweden. Parker says this means GM of Canada is “an integral part of GM’s global engineering organization.” Parker adds “I think GM of Canada is fairly unique [among Canadian automakers] in its commitment to providing some engineering activities here.”

Specifically, says Parker, these include “things like supporting the vehicles that are produced in Canada…doing most of what we would call product engineering design. We don’t do studio surface design work here in Canada, but we take the surface data and turn it into a vehicle that can be manufactured with all the various sub-systems get integrated.” Parker says they are also engaged in vehicles that are not produced here in Canada as well as in areas such as fuel cell vehicle development.

Parker and others on the frontlines of automotive design are currently facing deep hurdles. Chief among them are the quests to achieve ever-better fuel economy and create viable mass-market alternative-energy vehicles. Fuel economy goals for automakers have been sharply defined by the US government’s recently announced requirement of 35 miles per gallon by 2020. Parker says this target has been accepted by the North American auto sector as their new future standard: “We’ve got a huge challenge as an industry ahead of us.”

However, facing these tough hurdles will be easier for the new generation of Canadian engineers who will be trained at the Centre because it’s being constructed for exactly that purpose. Parker notes “If you think about some of the new technologies like hybrid systems and fuel cell systems and those types of things, they have been factored in, in mind, when we’ve created the facility. So…for example, we can test hydrogen fuelled vehicles…we’ll have independently controlled dynamometers, so we can do some work on regenerative braking systems as we will create electric vehicles into the future.”

When completed, the Centre will house state-of-the-art research and development tools in areas such as vehicle dynamics, noise and vibration and structural durability testing. “A big element of it will be a climatic wind tunnel,” says Parker, “where you can do environmental type work in a lab. Essentially, you’re creating a giant laboratory that you can actually get a vehicle in and test it. When we are able to do that, you can very much control all the conditions in this giant environmental chamber so you can control the specific temperatures, you can create specific wind speeds and air flow conditions, you can control the humidity levels.”

“All that type of stuff you can do on a proving grounds, or a road test type of facility,” Parker explains, “but when you can put it into a controlled laboratory environment, it’s far better in terms of accelerating the development of the vehicle technology…Having those types of controlled environment facilities at a university is great in terms of reducing some of our development time on new technologies.”

Rohrauer says the Centre’s facilities will differ significantly from those at other Canadian institutions, allowing it to offer learning opportunities unavailable elsewhere. This includes an existing undergraduate engineering lab, a mixed-use facility in the middle where students and industry members will work together to varying degrees, and a restricted-access area for industry-related projects. This “quasi R&D operation,” as Rohrauer describes it, will service about 100 automotive engineering undergraduates, as well as about 25 Master’s and five PhD positions.

Parker sees GM of Canada’s support of the Centre as just another reflection of the company’s overall philosophy. “The key word for us these days is innovation,” he says. “I think there’s a large distinction between R&D and innovation. Innovation to my mind is trying to taking those good ideas that are seeded from basic R&D and really bind them to an application.” He adds “Like everybody, professors and PhD students want to see their ideas applied and marketed, and I think we’ve got a great mechanism here at this facility to make that happen.”

Parker concludes “I’ve been around for a few years and it’s still exciting as you have new technologies, new challenges, but probably what’s really exciting for students…is that they actually have an opportunity to apply some of the theoretical learning through the academic institutions to actually designing cars and trucks. It’s a great opportunity.”
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