It's funny how we have to wait for real and serious competition before we can get nice things. It took AMD, then Apple, to trounce Intel before we finally started seeing Intel take things seriously, and only now that the electric car trend is really taking off do we start to see real innovations in internal combustion engines.
I have a 1981 Diesel Chevette which can get 50 miles to the gallon when driven at a steady highway speed. If that forty year old fully iron engine can get 50 miles to the gallon in a car that's as aerodynamic as a brick, then why aren't new cars getting 80 miles to the gallon? Is our technology really that shitty? Or is it that the carmakers have marketed performance and "sportiness" to us over efficiency?
They certainly don't want to make engines that can last forty years and 750,000 miles, but that's another issue.
So the real question is this: if we can have 80, 100, 150, perhaps even 200 mile-per-gallon combustion engines, and if we can grow biodiesel from algae and even produce it using processes which pull CO2 from the air, then how much energy and carbon output could we save by not building limited life batteries and by not suffering the waste of electricity transmission and storage?
It's not all one thing or the other, and it never should be, but we've been milking the old internal combustion cash cow for so long we've virtually guaranteed her death, even though evolution of the internal combustion engine would be a net benefit.
I have a hobby car that is similar; I can get right around 40MPG on the highway and it makes more power than a stock modern version of itself. The real reason the newer cars don't get better mileage is a few factors:
Old cars do well steady state, but are far less efficient in transient states; modern engines are far better at that.
Old cars have absolutely toxic emissions. I mean literal 100's of times worse than modern engines (especially diesels), which are already terrible.
Couple these two major factors and you'll see where most of the advances have gone. That said, I don't think you are completely incorrect either; incentives have to be put into the right places to drive these innovations forward.
If you want to see state of the art efficiency for fossil fuel engines look at trains. They are more heavily regulated for emissions than bunker fuel ships, and the amount of fuel per ton-mile used is tiny compared to a personal vehicle due to a few factors (load vs vehicle weight, efficiency of acceleration/deceleration, engines operating only at peak power/efficiency and the traction motors being electric, etc.).
On a side note, the lack of parts to keep an old car in compliance with emissions is driving me insane. My hobby car is a HUGELY popular car from 20-30 years ago and the supply of parts to keep it on the road is drying up already. Due to it's factory state of tune (naturally aspirated, ~100hp/liter) aftermarket discount parts are not suitable and fail quickly, sometimes damaging other parts. OEM parts are so rare now that they are getting painfully expensive to continue procuring them, and for emissions related systems the only quality parts left are the high end aftermarket (which aren't legal). It's becoming almost impossible to keep these vehicles legal, which I'm sure is intended. I'm at the point where I'll likely run the "illegal" (though perfectly identical if used properly) parts for 23 out of the 24 months it's on the road, and only use the almost impossible to obtain OEM parts for the 1 month needed to get it sorted for emissions testing.
"Manufacture such parts yourself" is not OEM (original equipment manufacturer).
Yes, even if they're physically indistinguishable. (And they would be physically distinguishable because 3d printed parts can be distinguished, even if they perform identically.)
Not naive at all. It would, but as another response mentioned that's no different, for instance, than buying an adjustable Fuel Pressure Regulator and setting it to stock settings. In any reasonable world that's fine; in the emissions world that's absolutely illegal.
There's not much point to a 750,000 mile engine, as the rest of the car is worn out and rusted out at 200,000 miles.
> if we can have 80, 100, 150, perhaps even 200 mile-per-gallon combustion engines
Well, we can't.
Internal combustion engines have steadily gotten better, not stagnated.
In the 1970s, I heard all about oil companies buying 200 mpg carburetors to keep them off the market. My dad laughed at that, saying the military would never let patent law keep them from making 200 mpg tanks and stuff. Gas is a gigantic logistical problem for a mechanized military.
>> There's not much point to a 750,000 mile engine, as the rest of the car is worn out and rusted out at 200,000 miles.
I've seen plenty cars get 300,000 miles here in Texas without a spot of rust on them. Do you live in Michigan or something? The salty states have only known rust and salt lol
300,000 is a long way from 750,000. Rust is only one of the decays that set in. I grew up in Arizona, where the sun would destroy interiors and paint. Cars also simply accumulate damage that is uneconomic to repair.
It takes a lot of work to keep an older car running. My truck is 35 years old, and the window rollup mechanism has disintegrated. The seals around the doors and windows have rotted away. Knobs are missing. The door latch bushings disintegrated and I can't find new ones. The trim, which was glued on at the factory, simply fell off. The paint is about as shiny as an asphalt shingle.
> In the 1970s, I heard all about oil companies buying 200 mpg carburetors to keep them off the market. My dad laughed at that, saying the military would never let patent law keep them from making 200 mpg tanks and stuff.
I know nothing about that story, but the military is budgeted by Congress and commanded by the President, and thus subject to political influence. Plenty of the what the military does is inefficient economically and militarily.
Battles are won and lost based on gasoline. In the Battle of the Bulge, the German offensive failed when they ran out of gas. The Allied offensive in Europe was also limited by gas supplies.
Do you think any military is going to allow itself to be crippled by patents?
In WW1, the American aviation industry was crippled by patent lawsuits. The government put a stop to that nonsense and forced them to form a patent pool, so advanced military airplanes could be built.
> Do you think any military is going to allow itself to be crippled by patents?
That might make sense in theory, but the history of war profiteering, etc. is otherwise. Militaries are 'crippled' by poor materials (though 'crippled' is an extreme case) - especially at the beginnings of wars.
For example, many think most US airplanes are ineffective against serious foes, including the A-10, F-35 (not my opinion, but many think it), and all the older planes (including the new-old planes they recently signed to buy). That also applies to aircraft carriers. However, there are many vested interests in those weapons programs and they resist tooth and nail. Change requires aligning people within the national security community, the easy part, and then Congress and the President. Uniformed and civilian officials in the Department of Defense can be just as political and corrupt; many of both sorts go through revolving doors to industry and have careers invested in one thing or another, or simply, like many incumbents in many fields (such as IT), bury their heads in sand about change.
> allow itself
They have limited power to make these decisions, at least in democracies.
Outside of that? Sure. Particularly if the crippling allows for an element of surprise and keeps that tech out of other peoples hands. Even without that though every country that isn’t spending the most it can on its military is choosing to ‘cripple’ it in favour of other things.
Patents require the invention to be disclosed. Now the Atomic Energy Commission had some special classified patents that were exempt from that rule, but that is very much an exception. The whole societal bargain behind patents is limited time monopoly in exchange for disclosure.
Cummins and Achates Power was supposed to have delivered two working prototype engines to the US Army's TARDEC to be installed into a Bradley for evaluations in 2019. I'm assuming that they testing went well enough to prove that the engines are viable enough for further development.
Uncertain if the technology will ever meander it's way to regular car market, but interesting to see ICE development continue on.
You being seriously injured or dying in an offset ~30mph collision, versus getting out of the car dazed and confused is the difference. And yes, passenger safety didn't change much for American cars between the 50's and early 80's.
You causing more pollution (particulate, NOx, etc) than a hundred luxury SUVs or more, is the difference.
Driving down the highway at 75mph able to hear the back seat passenger whisper versus having to talk loudly so the person in the front seat next to you can understand you.
A climate control system that keeps the car comfortable whether it is -20 degrees or 100 degrees.
Handling, brakes, and acceleration that is astronomically better than whatever your Chevette has.
There's no such thing as a "200mpg engine" - most modern car engines are very efficient, with the Prius's Atkinson cycle engine being the most efficient among worldwide-available, mass-production, affordable cars. It's a function of aerodynamics, parasitic electrical and mechanical losses, and weight.
> It's not all one thing or the other, and it never should be, but we've been milking the old internal combustion cash cow for so long we've virtually guaranteed her death, even though evolution of the internal combustion engine would be a net benefit.
Making an engine that would last 750,000 miles is certainly possible - just look at engines in big rigs - but people don't care about that in a personal vehicle, and the capex and opex for such an engine is incredible compared to the cost of making it significantly cheaper but slightly less reliable.
They want a low price tag and low maintenance during the period they own the car. That's why most engines have a 10k oil change interval (though part of that is due to much improved quality of oil, and better filters.)
Modern cars have improved drastically since 1981 by all metrics. Power, efficiency, safety, reliability, cost, and emissions have all improved. An amazing example of iterative refinement combined with economies of scale. If there is some cabal trying to keep cars inefficient and unreliable, they are losing.
My father drove a chevette. You neglect to mention the nearly 20 second 0-60 time, which on modern roadways is a safety hazard in itself. How much fuel did you burn just to get to that highway speed?
My Prius can easily do 60 mpg when driven on a flat road at highway speeds, and while it’s no speed demon in the quarter mile, it’s at least safe to operate. Plus it has more cargo carrying capacity and its vastly more pleasant to drive than a chevette.
Even my cheap dad got rid of that car as soon as possible.
People have been trying to find a better engine design for a long time. Pretty much all of them have tradeoffs of some kind, especially when you consider the wide variety of environmental factors that can affect a combustion engine.
Emissions is one thing, but performance is another big deal. Just look at a Volkswagen bug vs a modern car. Modern cars have 2-3 times the power and that comes at a cost. Another factor is safety.
If we agreed (not suggesting this for obvious reasons) that everyone would just build ultra lightweight and fairly low power vehicles, I think 80 mpg is feasible, but probably a lot less safe.
I work for General Motors and I occasionally do tours for employees. One of the cars I show is a 1950's era Pontiac Chieftain with an 4.4L inline 8 cylinder engine. It made about 120 horsepower. A modern, small-ish 1.4L inline 4 cylinder makes more horsepower.
A Beetle from the 50's might have 30-40 horsepower. You can pretty easily get cars with 10 times as much power now.
It's been awhile since I've looked at the stats of a beetle, so thanks for pointing out I was being overly conservative. It's all crazy isn't it? I'm curious what MPG we could get on a modern 40 HP engine?
A modern car wouldn't be safe to operate with a 40 hp engine. Even those tiny little Japanese kei cars typically have a 63 hp engine (maximum legally allowed). Fuel economy is typically rated for about 54 mpg, but real world fuel consumption is usually worse.
People are getting 80+MPG with hybrids. The standard EPA tests involve reasonably aggressive driving which is why the 1981 Chevrolet Chevette is only listed at 33 MPG highway.
I am not sure about Petrol Engines. However diesels at least they are typically tuned to run anywhere and on differing grades of fuel. However if you get your diesel car remapped you get better power and mileage out of car. I had mine remapped an extra 20hp (on a 95HP car) and the fuel economy improved quite a bit.
As for engines that last 40 years and 750,000. If you look after Diesel engines they can get to 500,000 or more. However people don't once the car gets over like 100,000 miles. Servicing costs typically more than the car is worth.
> don't want to make engines that can last forty years and 750,000 miles
Forty years is no problem already and a typical Honda/Toyota 4-cylinder engine is already a favorite to make 250K miles. Our CR-V just passed 225K miles and rust will kill that car long before mechanical problems do.
750K miles will cost you over $100K in direct operating costs (fuel and wear items). I don’t know that making an engine last 3x as many miles is that big a benefit to a new car buyer.
> Our CR-V just passed 225K miles and rust will kill that car
Modern cars are a marvel of cheapest manufacturing and materials. What would we accomplish if we optimized for corrosion resistance? It's not like we don't have the materials or processes. But they're nowhere as cheap as stamped sheet steel.
Everything about modern cars, except for touchscreens, is superior to past cars including corrosion resistance. A five year old car from the 80's in an area that used salt and sand would have rust holes. A car from 2012 doesn't have anywhere near as much rust now.
My first car was a 13 year old Toyota Tercel. It had literal 8"+ rust holes in every door, the frame had rust holes, and the fenders were falling apart from rust. My second car was a 10 year old Cutlass Supreme. It had a 6" rust hole one door, a rust hole in one fender, and plenty of other rust underneath. This does not happen anymore, except maybe trucks used for salt.
The "primer" step for car bodies after they've been welded is (typically) already a dunk tank. Hot dip galvanizing would only be a marginal increase in cost over that. You can't easily paint over that and people want cars in all sorts of colors and they last "long enough" as-is. Some smaller under-body assemblies are galvanized or zinc plated before paint.
The problem is big oil and other huge corporations are paying off the politicans, and looking to exhaust the resources before moving on. The companies that destroy the enviroment want be the same companie's that own the next innovation. We know this from our own history. They know that if they make the best perduct today, one that there is no need to upgrade, they lose out on the revenue the constant upgrades produce. They live on the top of the hill looking down on the mess they make not having to deal with the pain and clean up. That is relagated to the poor. I say it's time for a corporate revolution. Break up all these companies, send the owners, (Stock holders) to a penal colony and let them fight for the same scraps they thought was enough for the rest of us. Time to take back our lives, if not all we will have to look foward to is death.
I don't know what kind of an idealist you are but you cannot break those companies. They are literaly the state. Look at the activities of CIA (for example) in the last century and see which companies profited from it. Google, Facebook, Microsoft are a threat _only_ if they threat the hegemony of the other (oil) companies.
Well, without any personal attack at all, I ask honestly, 'Who cares what you say?' Would-be agitators throughout history have tried to egg the masses on to societal nirvana. All we get in the end is jailed/murdered visionaries and a handful of kooks who think that destroying a few lives and a little property will spark the dawning of the new age.
There will probably continue to be a future for liquid fuels (especially for aviation) for quite some time, but ICE vehicles are only cheap because we can get fuel out of the ground and don't have to pay the energy or climate impact costs up front.
Battery-electric vehicles have such a huge efficiency advantage that I don't think ICE vehicles will ever be remotely competitive if you had to synthesize the fuel directly using renewable energy. A more efficient ICE engine (if it can live up to that claim) would be better than using old less-efficient engines, but I think we're at the point where the best option is not to use engines at all unless it's absolutely necessary for that application.
> I have a 1981 Diesel Chevette which can get 50 miles to the gallon when driven at a steady highway speed.
In a similar vein, my 2007 diesel Toyota Yaris regularly passed 60MPG and occasionally reached 70MPG before it was written off in an incident about 3 years ago.
This is the way. You are thinking like an engineer, and that will create solutions. Extracting carbon from the air, if done in a net-neutral manner (impossible with today's tech AFAICT), will provide us with sustainable hydrocarbons, nature's battery.
Part of it is weight. Safety standards and other things have really ballooned the the curb weight of cars. A Chevette weighed at most 2000lbs. A new Chevrolet Sonic (which is also a subcompact)? 2800lbs.+.
>I have a 1981 Diesel Chevette which can get 50 miles to the gallon when driven at a steady highway speed. If that forty year old fully iron engine can get 50 miles to the gallon in a car that's as aerodynamic as a brick, then why aren't new cars getting 80 miles to the gallon?
Because those modern cars have airbags, and thick pillars, etc, etc, etc and it's for your own good, peasant.
(also emissions, but modern tech to control emissions makes that a wash in the fuel economy department because said tech enables the engine to operate more efficiently on a per fuel basis)
The minimum viable car has gotten much safer, and much bigger. Reversing this trend and enabling right-sized vehicles will be one of the many benefits of autonomous vehicle technology and other active safety technology. Except for getting crushed like an insect, I don't need more than a vehicle weighing a few hundred pounds -- less than the weight of a Tesla battery -- for commuting. It would be less expensive and require less of everything, especially battery.
Are there really sliding seals that are good enough to contain a combustion reaction while handling an occasional redlining at 25,000 rpm, and capable of lasting for decades of service?
If so, then the fact that you can have two involute shaped mating surfaces as valves (almost no sliding, just a rolling contact), and a rotor that could be statically and dynamically balanced to almost zero vibration, would be amazing.
At this point, most of the parts of an EV are quite mature, and the overall system is a lot more straightforward than a conventional ICE car. A rear motor (or pair) can drive the real wheels without a transaxle or multi-speed transmission. Traction control can be achieved by rapidly adjusting torque. Regenerative breaking massively increases brake lifetime and reduces particulate emissions. 4WD is relatively inexpensive and increases efficiency (because the front and rear motors can be optimized for different operating regimes, and one can be turned off whole cruising). An electric A/C compressor can operate at the optimal speed for the A/C without regard for driving conditions. A small battery pack that can produce plenty of power for bursts of acceleration under anything except racing conditions is essentially a commodity.
So I think a series electric car with a 150kW (not kWh, and only supplying 150kW in brief bursts) and a small, highly efficient 30-40kW gasoline engine would be fantastic. And that engine would not need to have low efficiency and high emissions while warming up at low speed — when it turns on, it could immediately run at its optimal operating point even if the car is stuck in traffic.
Heck, a manufacturer could sell the engine as an optional feature — many customers could simply skip the engine and drive the car as a short-range EV.
That's also how hybrid supercars and the current batch of Formula 1 cars work. For nearly a decade now, F1 cars have been turbocharged engines running electric motors, putting down something like 800-1000hp in the process and running an entire race on one small tank of fuel. I think they're down to 1.6L V6 now.
The Chevrolet Volt used a similar principle as well, as opposed to the Prius and its more complicated mechanical duel-drive train.
That's incorrect. F1 cars are primarily driven by their piston engines. They have a real transmission that drives the wheels from the driveshaft. Electric motors assist with power delivery from energy captured from kinetic motion, heat and exhaust pressure.
This is different from pure electric drivetrains like diesel-electric locomotives where the fuel is only used to generate electricity and all of the propulsion is by electric motors.
The Chevrolet Volt has a direct mechanical coupling from the internal combustion engine to the transmission for efficiency. If doesn't really operate as a series hybrid much of the time.
The highest driving range for the longest range Tesla is 402 miles on a
full charged 100kWh battery pack. This is 4.02 miles per kWh.
A 30kW generator will produce 30kWh in an hour, which is enough energy to
drive 120 miles and well above any average travel speed required.
In ideal conditions a 20kW generator would be enough to drive with a
completely depleted battery at highway speeds, and a 10kW generator
would be enough to significantly extend your range.
Which might be necessary.. a 30kW generator running at fult tilt while
sitting at a stop light might be a rather unusual experience. Also
looking at commercial extended duty 30kW generators makes me wonder where
you're going to put that on an already 4,000lb car.
If I’m buying a series hybrid with a small battery, I would like the ability to tow small loads, drive with the windows open, drive faster than Tesla’s rated speed, drive on wet or snowy roads, etc. Some margin for error would be welcome.
Exactly. Modern piston engines are great for dynamic loads but very inefficient because of it. Using engines to generate electricity in a single optimized configuration can greatly increase efficiency while benefiting from all the advantages of electric drivetrains. They can also be made modular to power everything from cars to boats to machinery.
This setup is already used in diesel-electric locomotives and submarines but hasn't really been applied to other transport systems for various reasons. It's something I've been working on as a side project although maybe it's time to launch it as a startup.
This is the second revolutionary ICE I have seen recently.
There was another that was also sort of like a Wankel. In it the triangular Wankel rotor is static, and the combustion chambers rotate around it. They have a working model with transparent parts so you can watch how it works.
Nothing in the Omega 1 presentation seemed to offer any clue how it works or why it is better.
These engines both seem like viable general-avition engines to replace Lycomings and Continentals, because electric is not really up to the job. FAA should take initiative to get these approved and deployed, because nobody can afford to do it privately.
Even better, these could be generation systems hooked up to an electric motor and energy buffer (battery). Put the prop on the motor, keep the whole transmission system electric, and stick one or more of these somewhere else making power.
You could put a little turbine in a Cessna or Beechcraft driving a generator and little-ish battery, and an electric motor driving the prop, and get the same benefit, but the cost and maybe weight would be higher in a place where both are critical.
Still, FAA probably should look into pre-approving such a configuration, too.
There’s no concept of a pre-approval in FAA land. You build an airplane and flight test it in experimental category to gather real-world performance numbers to put into the required format for the operating limitations and pilot operating handbook and get certification of the package based on demonstrated data.
I.e., there is no constitutional restriction against Congress assigning such a task to some agency. NASA might be best organized, of federal apparatus, to do the work, maybe under a future "General Aviation Revitalization Initiative" authorization, maybe letting contracts for actual development.
The problem to be overcome is that nobody private seems to be rich enough to jump through all the regulatory hoops to get a modern engine approved to build modern small aircraft around, no matter how much better one could be.
I don't know why a Cessna-size turboprop mill never got to market. Is periodic maintenance and inspection of turbines prohibitively expensive?
There’s no real reason to pre-approve something (IMO). You want to certify an airplane? Build and fly a prototype. If you’re capable to build an airplane manufacturing company, you’re capable to make and fly a prototype.
For small aircraft turbines: Cessna makes the 208 Caravan. If the 208 is too big, Quest makes the Kodiak and Socata makes the TBM. If someone’s going to pay all the purchase and operating costs to run a PT6 turbine, they might as well drag around a medium-sized airframe.
Maintenance and inspection of turbines isn’t prohibitive. Initial purchase price and specific fuel consumption at low altitude is a far greater concern for private operations.
Pistons are way more popular simply because of economics. Virtually everything else about turbines is better. If I could afford a turbine, I’d switch to one immediately.
If it were that easy, we would not still be flying 70-year-old Lycoming and Continental designs.
I interpret the facts on the ground to mean qualifying a new light-aircraft power plant is in practice prohibitively difficult and/or expensive, and needs assistance, maybe even statutory assistance.
It’s not the regulatory side so much as the total addressable market being quite small. If you build a new light airplane now, you’re looking to steal market share from annual sales figures totaling just over 1300 airframes per year. Worldwide.
Ferrari sells almost as many cars in a month as light aircraft are sold in a year. I’m not surprised that people aren’t lining up to compete for those scraps.
We can speculate about what exactly are all the reasons, but none of it can change the facts.
It is a safe bet that if small aircraft got as cheap and performant as is in easy reach of modern engineering and production capabilities, there would be a lot more of them bought and used. Halving cost ought to result in much more than twice the demand.
For comparison, we may look at solar panels. There have been no fundamental advances in a long time, but increasing volume triggered by heavy Chinese subsidies kicked the market into a different mode it is still far from settled into.
Probably there are lots who would rather general aviation not become a lot more accessible, but that is policy, not fundamental economics.
Flying and maintaining a light aircraft for 100 hours in a year is a $25K-$50K endeavor. Insuring and paying the note on a six figure loan is another $10K+ expense. Hangaring can be another $5-20K. Most people would be paying these amounts with after tax dollars if it’s not for business use, so there are clear economic limits to how popular this will be.
In many ways it’s like other expensive hobbies. Horses aren’t expensive because they’re rare or complex to make. Blue water sailing isn’t expensive due to lack of innovation in boats.
Horses are mature tech, thousands of years old. Boats, likewise. Aircraft, barely more than a century. You cite costs as if they were ordained, but they are a direct product of history. Make a different history, you get a different product.
You could have said the same about computers just a few years ago. Now you carry a supercomputer in your pocket and complain how slow it is.
Or you can just do what's already done: drive a propeller off the turbine. Which is what's done in turboprop engines, the most efficient airplane propulsion system available.
Nothing is more efficient under power; turbines are only inefficient at low power settings (descents, taxiing, etc.)
Idea is that if you can use a battery to boost output power for takeoff and climb out, for that few minutes, you can get along with a much smaller turbine just for cruising than you would need for a turboprop, so is cheaper. And, if the turbine drives a generator directly, it doesn't need the step-down gearing you would need to drive a prop, and you can run the turbine at a constant speed any time it runs at all, more efficiently for that and without gear-train loss. And, it can run on jet-A fuel, which is cheaper per kWh than Avgas.
I don't know where a turbine of the right size is in use, that could be re-purposed.
There are lots of interesting engine designs, but they almost always are either too difficult/expensive to make or unreliable outside of a dynamometer stand.
Sounds similar to experimental designs by Rolls Royce for a diesel rotary during the 60s, in that it uses two separate parallel shafts and rotors for intake/compression and ignition/exhaust.
> In the case of the Rolls-Royce Wankel Diesel, the fuel-air mixture is first compressed by the lower rotary, and the output of that engine (which would be like the exhaust valve of a conventional rotary) sends the compressed diesel/air mixture to the intake of the smaller upper rotary engine, where it’s compressed to ignite like a regular diesel engine.
Seems like it had the same issues that have always plagued rotaries, primarily with apex seals.
I don't get it. How is this engine going to save internal combustion? Ok, it's a small engine with a lot of power, and probably has some cute technical details, but what's the efficiency?
Almost one third of all greenhouse emissions come from transportation, which is the same as saying from ICE's. There are 2 ways to reduce that: replace ICEs with electric motors, or increase their efficiency. If you manage to double the efficiency of ICE's, you're doing as good as replacing half of the ICEs with electric motors. If you increase their efficiency by 20%, it's like replacing 20% of the ICEs with electric motors.
So, yes, you could certainly revive ICEs, but only if you dramatically increase their efficiency.
Now, a typical ICE has an efficiency of 25%. Nissan is working on an ICE with an efficiency of 50% [1]. That thing can save ICEs. Anything else, it's just word spinning.
I see no reason this thing wouldn't lose compression or backflow exhaust gas after wear-in, and wear-in would happen quickly with the cyclic load on those ball bearings. It's a pretty animation but unless they have some spring loading to press the upper and lower rings together the compression (and therefore efficiency) doesn't appear to be durable. There are also some limitations to having a single power stroke per revolution. This can be geared down, of course, but at an efficiency cost.
> There are also some limitations to having a single power stroke per revolution.
Unlike one power stroke per two revolutions? That engine has one stroke lasting a full revolution, modern four-stroke has power stroke lasting half of revolution, every two revolutions.
This is kind of vaguely similar to LiquidPiston's engine[1], which is sort of like a wankel engine turned inside out. (This has a couple benefits. The equivalent of apex seals can be on the non-moving part of the engine and thus are easier to lubricate. Also, the combustion chamber can be made more closely to spherical, which in theory should improve efficiency and emissions quite a bit.)
As of awhile ago, the LiquidPiston folks were working on improving longevity. Building a test engine that works is an impressive achievement, but getting it to last also requires a lot of careful engineering and testing.
I don't see the internal combustion engine being anywhere close to any scrap heap of history any time soon. Even if a certain subset of consumer cars are moving over to electric motors at an accelerating pace, there are still plenty of major hurdles against these engines for a while yet, and many, many practical applications in which these hurdles just don't let electric cut the ice in place of combustion and power. There are over 31 million joules, or just under 9 kWhr in a single liter of gasoline. I know of no consumer market electric motor or battery that comes even close to this density.
I'm a huge fan of ICE vehicles. In the interest of fairness I feel obligated to point out that electric motors are far more power dense than any mass produced ICE. Motor technology really could freeze forever and they would still be amazing.
Batteries can have any power density you want its really more of an aspect of pack design.
The only defficiency of EVs is the energy density of batteries.
Motors: high power density
Batteries: medium to high power density, low energy density
I get the feeling electrification of vehicles is going to happen in a geographically similar fashion to the American political divide. EVs work very well in urban areas, but are less ideal for rural use for the reasons you mentioned. There's also the cultural issue of it - working on cars is a classic pastime once you leave the cities and the anti-repair nature of EVs doesn't fit well with this.
I completely agree. I also wanted to add that ICE vehicles made after ~2010 (depending on manufacurer) also have an anti-repair nature. My Cruze has many parts that require dealership programming (encryption keys) before the ECU will talk with them. Like the ABS unit and fuel pump for example.
There is no going back now. The age of new repairable cars has ended.
If this becomes more widespread, it will be a sad state of affairs. One basic hallmark of ownership absolutely should be the technical ability to personally repair your property or at least have it repaired by professionals entirely of your choosing. I really hope you're wrong and that a certain consumer demand ensures they keep existing. Auto makers locking you into their own dealerships with encrypted digital parts is the hardware equivalent of keeping all your digital "property" on a single giant platform instead of self hosting.
I also love the blurb they have: "Note: This technology is projected to be capable of flying through a flock of birds, volcanic ash, smoke, and sand without skipping a beat, as well as the highest altitude flying capability that exists. Also does not require rotor seals at all. Tight tolerances and high RPMs solve that problem, not enough time for the air to leak when running!"
The Motor Trend article[0] they link has a video of it being used in a ducted fan configuration. They might be able to avoid particulate intake to the engine itself (just like every other reciprocating engine with a filter), but sandblasting the fans or smacking them with a bird is pretty guaranteed to cause damage to the prop or fan at a minimum, and still has a likelihood of torqueing the engine in a way that damages the seals and bearings.
It's cool, it's promising, but no prototype and high claims? I am extremely skeptical.
they are claiming double the efficiency so it would be half as much co2 for a given workload, but history and jevons paradox tells us cars would just get bigger and heavier and more powerful to eat up the gains!
The reason passenger cars have gotten bigger and heavier so far can be mainly attributed to 2 reasons: (1) more room for passengers and luggage (2) safety requirements. I think they are both starting to hit the "diminishing returns" stage, so a little more efficiency could potentially go a long way.
Mazda also released the spark-compression gasoline engine in the current round of Mazda designs. PHEVs allow gas engines to run on the Atkinson cycle.
Range extenders or an emergency recharger is about all you can use them for.
We do need an ultracompact engine for what I think is a sweet spot for consumer transition: 100 miles of LFP battery range + a compact range extender gas engine until charging infrastructure is ready and fast charging works reasonably well.
No, the thing you're talking about is [1], and is quite different from OPs link. That being said, I came here to point out that new engine designs have been showing for literally the last a hundred years. There's a reason basically only pistons have succeeded. Scaling + reliability is really hard in a thing that is literally in the state of combusting thousands of times a minute. That being said, the wankel (more specifically Mazda's 13b) is still my favorite engine design ever.
What are you favorites about it? I know they have great power:weight, but don't they have fundamental shortfalls in pollutants/emissions and (strangely, considering the weight advantage) fuel economy?
How would a Wankel that only had to do recharging (fixed gear, etc) serve in that fashion?
A scaled down rotary that was portable might be a good "oh shit I ran out of charge" portable recharger, but then again, a fuel cell might be better for that.
Of note in recent IC engine improvements is Koenigsegg's "Freevalve" technology [0, 1] which along with the motor featured in this thread [2] will be in the upcoming Gemera.
I really don’t mind all the commuter cars going electric. It just frees up more spare parts for my race car, and potentially, more race cars if the mood strikes me.
The sooner we can get the Walmart warriors into adult Power Wheels the better.
The RX-8 just ended up being a discontinued anomaly that needs specialist mechanics to get serviced, to my knowledge. Can’t see this taking off at this juncture unless I’m missing something.
I've never had a shop refuse to work on any of my many rotary cars I've owned. That said, as someone who is a massive rotary/wankel fan and who has seen plenty of rotary designers make the claim that "this time is different", count me as extremely skeptical.
well the claim of 60% efficiency would be 2x better than a normal car instead of 2x worse, that might inspire one to replace apex seals every five years
So which news happens more often, an introduction of the new kind of rotary ICE with a revolutionary animation, or of a cancer cure in a Petri dish? And who are Astron Aerospace?
I have a 1981 Diesel Chevette which can get 50 miles to the gallon when driven at a steady highway speed. If that forty year old fully iron engine can get 50 miles to the gallon in a car that's as aerodynamic as a brick, then why aren't new cars getting 80 miles to the gallon? Is our technology really that shitty? Or is it that the carmakers have marketed performance and "sportiness" to us over efficiency?
They certainly don't want to make engines that can last forty years and 750,000 miles, but that's another issue.
So the real question is this: if we can have 80, 100, 150, perhaps even 200 mile-per-gallon combustion engines, and if we can grow biodiesel from algae and even produce it using processes which pull CO2 from the air, then how much energy and carbon output could we save by not building limited life batteries and by not suffering the waste of electricity transmission and storage?
It's not all one thing or the other, and it never should be, but we've been milking the old internal combustion cash cow for so long we've virtually guaranteed her death, even though evolution of the internal combustion engine would be a net benefit.