Fifty years ago: Bosch makes gasoline injection electronic

Gerlingen, Germany– It was a top secret mission. No customers from the automotive industry were to find out about the revolutionary technology the Bosch engineers were working on. When Bosch associates bought the first test vehicle in 1959, it was declared to be a regular company car. In reality, it was refitted as a test vehicle for the secret project: electronic gasoline injection. Each time before it was taken in for servicing, according to the engineer Heinrich Knapp, the vehicle was refitted with its original carburetor so that automakers would not suspect what Bosch had in mind.

Hermann Scholl played a key role in the development of electronic gasoline-injection systems from 1962 on. Now the honorary chairman of the Bosch Group, Scholl recalls: “When we presented the system in 1964, our customer Volkswagen was initially as skeptical as pretty much every automaker that we had tried to convince of the merits of our innovative injection system.” When engineering work started, there was just one test vehicle, and the customer gave Bosch just two years in which to make the system ready for production. The system was far ahead of its time. At that point, no similar was yet in mass-production. As Scholl recalls, “automakers had to take a certain risk.”

Automakers had to take a certain risk.

Hermann Scholl, honorary chairman of the Bosch Group

Better performance, less consumption – two powerful arguments

On September 14, 1967, Bosch unveiled the electronically controlled “Jetronic” at the International Motor Show (IAA) in Frankfurt. The market launch in the same year was initially in the U.S., for a new VW type. Strict new emissions laws made it imperative to have this new vehicle type. In Europe, Jetronic was not available until 1968, and then only for a surcharge of as much as 10 percent. Not surprisingly, very few customers ordered the car with this technology at first. However, automakers identified two key benefits of Jetronic – lower gasoline consumption and the potential for boosting engine performance. This led BMW, Citroen, Jaguar, Lancia, Mercedes-Benz, Opel, Renault, Saab, and Volvo to fit this Bosch technology in some of their top-of-the-range models from 1969 on.

In the end, electronics won the day in the preparation of the air-fuel mix – only electronics could achieve the increasingly important reduction in consumption and emissions. This pioneering technology thus prepared the ground for new standards, in which Bosch was again and again involved. Whether ABS, TravelPilot, ESP, airbag control, or the automated and connected cars of the future, people’s trust in electronics would not have grown so fast without the pioneering work done by Jetronic, and many of today’s automotive electronic systems would still be pipe dreams.