Cutting Scooter Pollution with Semiconductors

A run-of-the-mill 150 cc scooter can put out more carbon monoxide and nitrous oxide compounds than a high-end car, says Kevin Klein, the automotive microcontroller manager at Freescale. That’s one of the reasons the chipmaker has high hopes for a cheap fuel injection system that just started being delivered to emerging nations.

The injection system—devised by ElectroJet and based around controllers from Freescale—cuts down carbon monoxide emissions by 65 percent and nitrous oxide emissions by 35 percent compared to a similar scooter or motorcycle with a carburetor. A scooter equipped with the injection system also gets 12 percent better gas mileage.

But even more important, it’s cheap. The entire system adds less than $50 to the component budget of a scooter, a key factor in countries where motorized transportation often sells for less than $1,000. The injector is also bolt-compatible, so it can be integrated into existing engines and scooters.

“It pays for itself in nine months,” said Jesse Beeker, a field application engineer at Freescale.

Dayang Motorcycle Co. (the official cycle supplier of the Beijing Olympics) has inserted the injection systems onto bikes being ridden by emergency medical personnel and police agencies at the games. (We were going to speak to ElectroJet’s CEO, but he’s in Beijing and swamped at the moment.)

Although thousands of new cars are added to the streets of Asia’s megacities monthly, scooters and motorcycles remain a hugely popular form of transportation. The high-pitched whine of their engines is an omnipresent background noise, and so it the blue smoke from the tailpipe. To curb emissions, some countries and cities have started to pass tougher regulations. In China, for instance, future cycles have to meet Euro III standards.

In the U.S. and Europe, cycle manufacturers already sell bikes with injection systems.
Those might cost $120 or more, out of range for manufacturers targeting the mass Asian market.

So how did they bring the price down? ElectroJet reduced a number of the sensors in the typical injection system by exploiting the processor and a complimentary co-processor (the 16-bit 512XE processor and XGate co-processor, in case you were wondering) more effectively. With fewer sensors, the processor naturally receives less data from fewer sources. However, the processor has a faster-than-average timing loop. This allows it to extrapolate from what data it has and thereby control fuel consumption. The chip, Beeker points out, is popular in the automotive market but mostly is used for other purposes. (That’s a picture of the injector, by the way.)

Like many chip companies and software outfits, Freescale is examining its product portfolio more closely these days to see what products can be tweaked for fine-tuning energy consumption. Expect to see similar and more announcements from Intel, National Semiconductor, Texas Instruments and others.