Driving Innovation Under Pressure/ A Mission-Critical Engine Development Project
Introduction: Industry Shift and Regulatory Pressure
The 2010s marked the beginning of a turbulent era for the automotive industry. Tesla’s rapid rise, driven by its performance-oriented and environmentally friendly electric vehicles, began to reshape consumer expectations. Additionally, the signing of the Paris Agreement led to a global surge in awareness and urgency around climate change. The automotive sector, historically reliant on combustion engines, now faced mounting pressure to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
While improving fuel efficiency remained a key method for reducing CO₂ emissions, the task proved far more complex than simply enhancing engine performance. OEMs needed to pursue new technologies, secure product quality, and maintain cost competitiveness—all within constrained budgets. The situation became even more challenging with the introduction of stricter emission regulations. In the EU, new legislation began targeting not only the chemical components of exhaust gases but also the quantity of particulate matter (PM) emitted by gasoline engines—an area with far less technical maturity. For engineers and OEMs alike, this marked a major hurdle, as PM emissions had not been a core development focus until now. Worse still, the tools needed to accurately measure particulate matter had only just been introduced, making validation extremely difficult.
In this high-pressure context, automakers had to deliver new vehicles that satisfied customer expectations, complied with complex new regulations, and incorporated unfamiliar technologies—while maintaining competitive performance and economic viability. For one mid-sized automaker in particular, the stakes couldn’t have been higher.
Project Goal: A Critical Turning Point for a Mid-Sized OEM
This automaker, known for building distinctive vehicles with a loyal user base, had been relatively successful—thanks to strong brand positioning and a strategy centered around fuel-efficient engines and unique plug-in hybrid offerings. However, the company had not yet launched a full battery-electric vehicle. Its core business still relied heavily on internal combustion technologies.
Faced with sudden regulatory changes and a dramatically shortened development cycle (from the usual three years down to just two), the company found itself in crisis. Success would mean survival; failure could jeopardize certification and the ability to bring vehicles to market—posing an existential threat to the business.
My Role: Technical Project Lead in a Mission-Critical Development
In this high-stakes environment, my team was brought in to lead the technical development of a compliant gasoline engine system. The project included:
Developing a new gasoline engine that would minimize particulate emissions.
Designing a new after-treatment system for the vehicle.
Creating a control software solution to ensure optimal system performance and regulatory compliance.
The automaker placed its full trust in our technical solution. While the challenges were substantial, the project also presented an opportunity: to demonstrate our engineering capabilities, solidify a strategic partnership, and ultimately play a defining role in the automaker’s regulatory compliance strategy.
As technical project lead, I was tasked with forming and executing the development strategy, aligning engineering teams, and ensuring technical delivery under immense time and performance pressure.
Strategy and Execution: Building a Path to Success Under Constraint
The first step was to clearly define the success conditions. From the automaker’s perspective, certification was non-negotiable—we had to deliver a vehicle that met regulatory thresholds while preserving baseline customer satisfaction. On the engineering side, success required ensuring safety, regulatory compliance, and strategic prioritization of development efforts under tight time constraints.
After establishing these criteria, I led the development of a project roadmap and shared it with technical teams, aligning everyone around shared goals and constraints.
We began by evaluating the capabilities of the existing engine system—and quickly confirmed it would not pass regulatory testing. From there, we identified failure points, prioritized potential improvement areas, and defined our technology development themes:
Reduce particulate emissions at the source (engine combustion process).
Improve particulate capture through an optimized filter.
Develop control software to actively manage the filter and prevent performance degradation.
Each development area required rapid iteration. Much of the technology was new, and our experimental tools and setups had to be built from scratch. Where possible, we creatively combined existing solutions to speed up prototyping and reduce cost. As expected, initial hypotheses didn’t always hold up in testing, requiring constant reassessment of priorities and new development items.
In this context, I focused on maximizing our development cycle speed, learning through daily testing, analysis, and refinement. Working closely with cross-domain experts, I helped build a fast feedback loop between simulation, testing, and software updates—navigating uncertainty with agility and precision.
Once engine and filter hardware reached stable performance, we tackled the next challenge: intelligent software control. A key issue was filter clogging. If particulate matter accumulates too much, it can reduce performance or damage the system. Manually replacing filters was not an option—it would burden the customer and harm the product’s value.
Instead, we needed to create a seamless experience. Our solution was to use high-temperature exhaust gases from the engine to burn off accumulated particles inside the filter during normal driving conditions, without user awareness. This required highly accurate sensor interpretation and thermal control, as uncontrolled regeneration could damage the system or pose a safety risk.
Because of limited resources, every experiment had to count. Using a combination of physics-based modeling, historical data, and team expertise, we optimized test cases and software logic. Ultimately, we succeeded in building a stable system that could perform passive and active regeneration safely and automatically.
Result: Launching a Globally Deployed New Technology
The project concluded successfully—on time, and meeting both the automaker’s and our internal success criteria. Our work enabled the first production vehicle in the global market to apply this specific particulate-reduction technology, achieving regulatory certification and a timely market launch.
Our work significantly strengthened the partnership with the automaker, who expressed strong trust in our capabilities. More importantly, we laid the technical foundation for future collaboration and strategic technology sharing.
Looking back, this was one of the most challenging and rewarding projects I’ve ever led. Each day brought new surprises, new data, and new obstacles. And yet, through teamwork, persistence, and fast execution, we delivered something truly impactful.
To this day, I still feel a special connection to that vehicle. Whenever I spot one on the road, I wonder who is driving it and what kind of journeys they’re having. It’s a reminder of the challenges we overcame—and the real-world impact of the work we do as engineers and problem-solvers.
© 2025 Masato Nagayoshi
