Six months of dream jobs
Winner Stephen Crossley has spent six months working with industry leaders, finishing at Jaguar Land Rover. He tells Kris Culmer what he has learned
After six placements at major automotive companies, experiencing every important facet of the industry, 2017 Autocar-courland Next Generation Award winner Stephen Crossley has emerged a wiser man. His final period has been at Britain’s biggest car manufacturer, Jaguar Land Rover ( JLR).
Here, he has worked in the research and development team, based at Warwick University. “Coming up with new ideas, working on them and then justifying them, selecting which would be best,” is how Stephen neatly sums it up. In fact, he is incredibly impressed at just how many development projects are ongoing at the company.
“The centre has facilities for developing technologies such as artificial intelligence, augmented reality and human-machine interface,” he explains, “as well as research on connected and autonomous vehicles, and on smart mobility.”
JLR’S use of virtual reality (VR) particularly surprised him. He showed Autocar around JLR’S ‘VR Cave’ in Gaydon, wherein you can walk around and view cars in 3D form, enabling the mind-bending experience of standing inside a Range Rover Evoque and putting your head straight through the dashboard to see the workings of the steering column – very useful if you’re trying to improve packaging efficiency or see how a car’s design looks from multiple angles.
Human-machine interface proved particularly interesting: how cars should be as easy as possible to interact with, and know a little about you, so as to improve convenience and safety. “This is something that’s only going to go further and further as we move to autonomous vehicles,” Stephen says. “The biggest improvements would be if you were able to operate functions with minimal distraction and if the car could predict your actions.”
Further excitement came from JLR’S development of printable, f lexible electronics. “This allows you to place electronics to optimise tighter packaging and weight distribution,” Stephen explains. “It’s also lighter and cheaper to produce, so there are huge benefits.”
All of Stephen’s work was theoretical, but it could very well be used in a practical application. “It would be amazing to see a feature on a JLR model in the future and know that I had been there while the concept was in the early research
stage,” he says. Indeed, he believes the most valuable skill he learned is how to turn an idea into an innovation. And that’s pretty useful, he says, grinning, because “this all started with me having an idea”.
The project he contributed most to concerned the thermal management of components. It involved exploring mechanical and thermodynamic solutions, which, Stephen felt, was perfectly suited to his skillset as an automotive engineering student. It meant evaluating materials and finding mechanical solutions and methods of protecting from environmental factors.
Software he used went from the very basic level of evaluative Excel spreadsheets through to computeraided design (CAD) and modelling platforms, to look at how the project could be taken forward and compare various ideas.
Stephen enjoyed what he calls a “collaborative environment” at JLR. “It’s a team effort,” he says. “Tasks are assigned. Then there’s a meeting to find the best solution and how it can work with everything else. Cars are incredibly complex things. You can fix a problem, but the solution may well impede on something else.”
“From day one, Stephen got stuck into the project and didn’t look back from then,” says Alex Mouzakitis, JLR’S head of electrical, electronics and software engineering.
“For us, bringing in young talent is perhaps of the most important benefit. People like Stephen will come in with fresh ideas and challenge what we do, how we do it and why we do it. So although he has been here for only a short time, the experience that we get from having him is invaluable.
“I’ve been in the privileged position of handling the Next Generation Award for three years now, and every year it has been a great year for us.”
Ref lecting on his time in the Next Generation scheme, Stephen says: “It has been a very informative, interesting and enjoyable experience. I’ve learned a lot and I’m going to go back to university and do things differently and really work toward some end goals that I’ve developed.
“I’ve had a look around all these companies and found all these fields I really like, specific areas I want to work in and places I want to go. It has also been really valuable to see what tools are actually used in the industry. But the best thing has been that I’ve found that I really enjoy working in the field, which is brilliant for any student, because there’s always that little bit of doubt.
“I’d therefore thoroughly recommend it to anyone.”
I’ve found that I really enjoy working in the ield, which is brilliant for any student