BMW announced this week that it will unveil a racy plug-in hybrid concept car at the Frankfurt Motor Show in mid-September.
Called the Vision, the new vehicle will combine a three-cylinder, 1.5-liter turbo-diesel engine with a 10.8 kW-hr lithium polymer battery. Using the energy stored in its 98 lithium polymer cells, it will be capable of driving 31 miles in an all-electric mode. When running only on its diesel engine, it will get fuel efficiency of 62.6 mpg and offer a range of about 400 miles.
The Vision’s real eye-opener, however, will be its speed. BMW says it will go from 0 to 100 km/hr in 4.8 seconds and will hit a top speed of 155 mph.
Charging will take about 2.5 hours at a 220-V outlet, BMW says.
The debate over unintended acceleration, having lingered around the periphery of the auto industry for more than two decades, may be about to receive a fatal blow.
Against a backdrop of mounting product complexity and a need to keep a lid on development costs, companies are recognizing a need to make simulation a more integral part of the design process. In response, vendors in the CAD world are building out CAE functionality as part of their CAD suites while simulation vendors are building tighter integrations to leading CAD tools. Keith Meintjes, Ph.D., Practice Manager, Simulation and Analysis at CIMdata, Inc., joins Design News CAD Editor Beth Stackpole in this radio program to explore the new face of integrated CAD and CAE, how companies are benefitting from this tighter partnership between platforms, and how integrating CAE earlier in the development cycle pays off in optimized product designs.
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