Quote:
Originally Posted by cfg83
From what I have read, Fiat was the originator of the Diesel "Common Rail" technology. They were in $ trouble, licensed it to other car companies, and have regretted that day ever since.
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Sort of. Common rail direct injection was actually invented by a Swiss guy named Huber, Hubert, something like that (sorry senior moment) right around 1970. Maybe a year or two earlier. He actually built a working prototype engine and got basically zero interest.
Twenty years latter A Swiss technology institute starting doing some research into the idea and found some serious promise. That research is really the driving force behind commercial interest in the idea.
Denso actually developed the first commercially deployed system for heavy trucks, I'd say around '94 or '95.
Fiat basically setup the Fiat Group for research about '88. In that consolidation/creation/acquisition of some entities, they picked up a patent for an injector design which hadn't seemed to be of any particular use. But the group thought it could be used to make a practical application of the Swiss research in a system that used an ECU and electronic fuel injection.
It seems clear that they made some real headway, but the project stalled. There were some big technology gaps at Fiat, and it looked like even manufacturing requirements were outside of the parent company's existing capabilities.
So the intellectual property wound up being sold to Bosch, who did end up releasing a very lucrative line of commercially deployed systems.
When Fiat (or business papers) describe it they refer to Bosch "refining" the system for commercial use, but I not sure that description is quite fair. Bosch certainly provided some missing technology pieces for managing the system and made some significant changes across the board. I'd have to double check, but I think they even wound up with new patents on a couple aspects of the final system.
I think it is fair to say that the Bosch system relies on several innovations from Fiat. But Fiat's work was not alone, and all the companies involved, including Denso, owe a lot to both the Swiss research and the original inventor.
-jjf
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