PM10s, particles with a diameter of less than 10 micrometres, are thought to
kill 10 000 people each year in Britain alone. Although particle traps have been
fitted to trucks and buses, this is the first commercial system for cars.

The filters work by trapping particles and then using the heat of the exhaust
gases—in some cases aided by a catalyst—to periodically burn off the
accumulated soot, preventing it from clogging the filter. It is easier to make
the filters work on trucks and buses because they have hotter exhaust gases.

The Peugeot system gets round this problem by adding a cerium catalyst to the
fuel. This lowers the temperature needed to burn off the soot from 550 °C to
450 °C.

The system is entirely automatic. Sensors monitor the build-up of dirt in the
filter. When necessary—usually every 500 kilometres or so—the engine
management computer injects extra fuel, which increases the exhaust temperature
from 150 °C to 450 °C and burns off the soot.

Sensors also monitor the fuel level, and when you top up the car at a filling
station the cerium is automatically added from a 5-litre tank next to the fuel
tank. Paul Lefebvre, Peugeot’s project director has high hopes for the system.
“It’s the greatest innovation since the invention of the engine by Rudolf
Diesel,” he claims.

Yates recounts the daily struggles of a team of designers, engineers and
managers to produce a new Chrysler mini van that would make or break the
company. The “critical path” is the theoretical shortest distance between the
start and finish of a manufacturing project.

Americans remember Iacocca as the charismatic leader who saved the country’s
number three car maker from bankruptcy in 1979. But to Yates, Iacocca played a
central part in the company’s failure to update its fossilised management style
and improve its appalling product quality, which contributed to the company’s
brush with bankruptcy in the late 1980s.

So Yates’s tale of the mini van team is more than a design odyssey. As a
respected motoring writer, Chrysler’s shock troops trusted him to record their
long march from the brink and the metamorphosis of the company’s culture after
Iacocca’s departure in 1992.

Yates loves cars so much that, to him, those who attempt to make good ones
are practically saints and arouse in him a passion of the kind that soup kitchen
volunteers must feel for Mother Teresa. Thus everything is recorded in
stupefying detail. For example, who would care what size screen was used for a
slide presentation to senior management.

But if much of the book begs the question of just who Yates expects to read
it, everyone who ever relies on car reviews in the media when buying should at
least read his description of the mini van’s impossibly luxurious press launch.
Even Yates admits that this was a particularly lavish example of the tactic used
to try to influence journalists like Yates himself and, indeed, this reviewer.

The new system, developed jointly by Mercedes-Benz and Lucas, the car parts
manufacturer, uses a power-assisted servo system in conjunction with antilock
brake systems (ABS) to stop a car as quickly as possible when the driver
stamps on the brakes.

The two companies began collaborating on the electronic actuation system
(EAS) about three years ago, after discovering that they had been working
independently on the same idea. Through their joint research it emerged that
70 per cent of drivers react quickly to emergencies, but do not press the
brake pedal hard enough: trials established that only one-third of the car’s
braking potential is used in such situations.

However, with EAS the maximum possible servo boost is applied once the
continuous force is detected, regardless of how hard the driver pushes the
brake pedal.

While ABS, which let the driver steer while braking, work by measuring each
wheel’s speed and reducing the brake pressure on any wheels which are turning
slower than the others, a microprocessor in the EAS identifies an emergency
stop by measuring the speed at which the brake pedal is pressed, and then acts
centrally on the brake booster. It distinguishes an emergency stop from
braking to slow down by the degree of pressure on the brake. “If the driver
eases off, total control is returned to him or her,” says Helen Cavaco, a
spokeswoman for Lucas. “The decision to come to a full stop remains with the
driver.” The companies say EAS can halve stopping distance. It would have to
be used with ABS, though, to avoid skids. Presently about 30 per cent of cars
built in Europe have ABS; in Britain, the figure is about 20 per cent.

Mercedes-Benz has a patent on the concept and will use it exclusively as
early as 1996. “It’s pretty much available to implement immediately by new
technology standards,” says John Evans of Mercedes. But Lucas may further
develop the EAS’s electronic control of brake power to stop vehicles spinning
in corners, and to offer traction control and better roadholding on hills.
Another use could automatically adjust the braking power to vehicle load, so
the pressure needed to stop is the same whether the vehicle is empty or
laden.

“Although passive safety systems like air bags, crumple zones and side
impact bars play a part in reducing injury, only active systems like EAS can
make a major contribution to road safety by reducing the likelihood of an
accident in the first place,” says Ken MacIver, chief of Lucas braking
systems.