I have the original version of that diesel engine you speak of. VW calles it the TDI. Turbo Direct Injection. It uses fuel injectors mounted in the combusion chamber wall, removing the intake valve entirely.

My '96 TDI Passat has an inline 4 at 1.9 liters and is rated at 43 mpg highway. The car is significantly heavier than the Golf, so the difference isn't a big surprise. I've actually gotten up to 47 mpg highway going 55-65 mph. I usually drive about 80-90 mph on highways though, and the mileage drops to about 38 mpg.

The engine only puts out about 95 horsepower, and redlines at about 4250 rpm. But it does have quite a bit of low-end torque, 150 ft-lbs at about 2000 rpm. Don't get me wrong, its not a fast car by any means. However, it does decently against most other 4 cylinder sedans.

The later versions of the TDI engine are more fuel efficient and have better performance too.

I've heard that VW had a 5 cylinder version available in Europe and is working on a V6 version. The TDI has been selling rather well in Europe, as gasoline prices are very high there. In the U.S., there aren't so many.

The reason that the car runs efficiently is that the direct injection allows the spray of fuel to be directed and controlled. A bowl-shaped cutout in the head causes the fuel to swirl in a heavily-concentrated area in the center of the cylinder while at the edges there is less fuel. The better overall fuel-air ratio is what makes it more efficient.

The reason that one can't normally achieve the ratio is that the fuel wouldn't ignite if it was evenly distributed at that ratio. The swirling of the fuel allows the ratio at the center to be enough to ignite, while that at the edge brings the overall fuel-air ratio down to more efficent levels.

I believe Mitsubishi or Toyota is experimenting with direct-injection gasoline engines. Anyone know how their progress is?

removing the intake valve entirely

You might want to take another look. Unless your engine is a 2 stroke (and it isn't) you need an intake valve to get fresh combustion air into the cylinder.

Now, there is a whole line of 2 cycle diesel engine (the GM Detroit Diesel series 71 V) which has an inlet port for fresh air at the base of the cylinder wall, and 4 exhaust valves in the head. This engine uses a roots type supercharger to pressurize the air in the intake manifold. There are 6, 8, 12, and 16 cylinder versions. I think there is a 3 cyl version for city buses.

Perhaps you mean that there is no throttle body valve (or no throttle body) but this is true on all diesel engines.

The better overall fuel-air ratio is what makes it more efficient.

The much higher compression ratio, lower parasitic pumping losses, and higher thermodynamic efficiency make the diesel more efficient. The air intake of a diesel engine is uncontrolled (thus the lower parasitic pumping loss), and the fuel/air ratio is uncontrolled. The absolute amount of fuel (not the ratio) injected (at very high pressure directly into the cylinder, thru the injector in the cylinder head) at the top of the compression stroke determines the power output of that stroke. The very high compression ratio of the engine, and the self-ignition properties of diesel fuel (low octane number, i.e. high cetane number) causes the fuel to ignite as it is injected.

The use of a turbocharger is a great bonus for fuel efficiency, because it uses waste heat energy from the exhaust gas stream to reduce intake pumping losses even further, or even make the losses negative (i.e., helps push the engine forward on the intake stroke, if the intake manifold pressure is high enough) Of course, in a gasoline engine high compression and high intake manifold pressures lead to knock problems, but this isn't an issue for a diesel.

the fuel wouldn't ignite if it was evenly distributed

That's true if you were trying to ignite gasoline vapor with a spark, but diesel fuel self-ignites (detonates) due to the high pressure/temperature in the cylinder at the top of the compression stroke. The glo plugs (they are not spark plugs) contain small electric heaters to help preheat the cylinder when the engine is cold so that starting is easier. The glo plugs are not in use when the engine is running.

A detailed book you might find interesting is

The internal combustion engine in theory and practice- by Charles Fayette Taylor, MIT press. isbn 0262700166

Linux, of course. Why?

Perhaps you mean that there is no throttle body valve (or no throttle body) but this is true on all diesel engines.

I seem to recall that a Golf direct-injection diesel racked up something like 90 MPG in a tour of England some years back.  Running at a cruising speed of about 50 MPH and with the lack of throttling losses inherent in the diesel, plus the reduced heat losses of the DI configuration, the only thing that could potentially beat it for efficiency would be a fuel-cell vehicle, and it might take a fuel feed which doesn't require a reformer (which loses efficiency) to get there.
--
Why do I have to get the kind of government they deserve?

I believe Mitsubishi or Toyota is experimenting with direct-injection gasoline engines. Anyone know how their progress is?

Thinking is one of hardest types of work.
Thinking is one of the most rewarding types of work.

Then how do you charge the battery up? Plug it into a wall outlet when you get to your destination? I know from experience that while a diesel can run without any electricity, the alternator/battery combination is very important because it takes a lot of electricity to start them because they have such a higher compression ratio than gasoline engines. That's one reason why many diesels have two batteries.

So how does one start this 'smaller, more advanced engine'? Unless it's got a crank like an old model-T or a kickstart, it's going to have an electric starter driven from a battery. The battery has to be charged somehow and if the car doesn't have a generator/alternator how does it do it?

The only diesel passenger cars that I've dealt with were General Motors products. The biggest problem with the dual battery setup was that if one battery started to go bad, both had to be replaced. If it wasn't, the alternator would slowly die.

I'd like to get a TDI Jetta, but I can't afford it. Oh well....Unfortunately, unless one is an area that experiences a very cold winter (I don't think Seattle counts...coastal cities often stay much warmer than inland cities at the same latitude), the stations only have diesel #2 instead of diesel #1. But that's when you get used to having a big bottle of anti-gel additive in the trunk. =).

So is the Lupo the engine that has a bigger than normal flywheel? I read that VW was testing a motor that used a big flywheel that would disengage from the crankshaft when the vehicle was at a stoplight or similar situation and then use the angular momentum to restart the motor when necessary. I didn't know they were in production yet. Cool! If I had the money, I would certainly buy one. Nothing irritates me more than seeing one person driving a huge SUV for commuting to work. Talk about a waste of money! Not only did they spend a ton of cash on a vehicle that they probably never fully utilize, they pay more in insurance and fuel costs.

Maybe, but "lots of power" and "low smog" are not mutually exclusive goals. I've often read that diesel trucks in Europe are much cleaner than those in the US and they still manage to carry stuff.

They also tend to be nowhere near as powerful. I suspect that most of 'em aren't carrying the kinds of loads you can fit into a 40' (or longer) trailer. IIRC, they also are equipped with governors that limit their speed to somewhere around 100 km/h (that's a little over 60 mph for those of you who don't grok metric).

I read an article about Australia in a magazine several years ago. One of the pictures that accompanied the article was of a "road train," which was three 40' trailers behind a Kenworth. IIRC, Australia doesn't have a rail network to speak of, so the road trains move goods across the outback at speeds of 80-90 mph. The tractors they use are almost all American-made because nobody else makes 'em powerful enough for that kind of usage. (I don't even think they bothered trying to get 'em in right-hand drive, but this all from memory from several years ago...maybe someone from .au will confirm and/or clarify :-) ).

got code?

Burgatronics
We've Got All The Secret Sources

1. They are unsure of running the system at high RPM's(above7200)that cars usually go

2. The RISC operating system and 24mghz processors need more than 12 volts like cars use now.

This basicly just means that car manufactures will have to redesign the car as we know it. This just means you will probally be walking or driving a semi for the next ten years
#include me

There are some problems with implementing this in cars

1. They are unsure of running the system at high RPM's(above7200)that cars usually go

I don't think that'd be a problem for many cars. Unless you really like Honda's and others who really like getting a *lot* of performance out of a smaller displacement block. (Yes, I drive a car that qualifies for that: 97 Integra Type-R 1.8L 195HP 8400RPM redline). Your average joe probably dosen't own car that see's the happy side of 7500RPM without finding out the hard way if it's an interference engine or not...

2. The RISC operating system and 24mghz processors need more than 12 volts like cars use now.

It's not voltage, but clean enough power that they will need... You can step up the 12 volts off the car to 110, 5, 12, or what ever you need with a transformer, etc. I'm assuming it's not much of a problem to get it cleaned up enough, as people are running car MP3 players, and what-not already... So, completely redesign them? Nah, just keep the revs down (Boo hiss :)

Actually, it all depends on the market conditions. I'm something of a BMW fan, and at least on the other side of the pond, BMW AG has been making Diesel engines for ever. Really slick ones at that. For instance the 740d is a 4 liter v8 diesel, which has more torque than the new M5. It's acceleration numbers aren't up to the best of the gasoline super cars, but its still making well over 200 horsepower and given that you get quite alot better gas mileage, _and_ diesel fuel is considerably cheaper in europe, diesel engines in european cars is basically a no brainer.

Finally, the RPM limit you refer to frankly doesn't matter. BMW released the "eta" engines in the US during the early/mid 80s when we were feeling some oil crunch. You may have seen BMW 325e's or 528e's, the "e" here means its got an "eta" (or "economy") engine which has a redline of right around 4200 RPM. However, they have a monsterous amount of torque at the low end which makes them very zippy for driving around towns. They're just not very ideal track cars :)

BMW diesel engines in germany are already using electronic common rail direct injection today. It's a shame that the US market has responded so piss-poor to diesel engines; the BMW 524td was only sold in the states for about a year, however the few people that got their hands on that vehicle are still driving them (usually with over 200,000 miles on the original engine).

Since it is 1:30 AM and no one else else in America is reading Slashdot, let me try to answer that question.

...Hummm, it can't be implemented in cars because they don't have Diesel engines, meaning that the combustion is triggered by spark plugs and not by compression of the hyrdocarbon\oxygen mixture. Since it is mostly the sparks doing the job in a normal automobile engine, the amount\temperture\density of the air doesn't matter as much as it would in a compression based diesel engine. I think.

The real question I was wondering is when do we get magnetic brakes? Since turntables are powered by magnets, why can't we use magnets to stop car wheels?

And why don't I know anything? Why am I so ignorant?
Yi Ai, Yi Xin

Well, that may be true in USA.

In Europe there is a looong tradition of cars moved by Diesel engines, mostly turbodiesel with direct injection, which performance is directly comparable (as today almost equal) to gasoline cars, while the engine runs at no more than 3000/4000 RPM (while a gasoline car engine goes up to 7000).

In Europe, Diesel cars are almost as common as gasoline ones, because of the high costs of gasoline (i.e. in Italy it is $1+ per liter - if a gallon is 3.785 liters, do the math).

Just for fun, a real alternative to both Diesel and gasoline in the most part of Europe is no less than the... GPL (liquified propane, which is a problem only in underground parkings).

My 0.02 Euro

LPG (or GPL as it is called in some countries in Europe) stands for Liquified Petroleum Gas, not Propane Gas. I don't know the exact chemical composition of LPG, and it is possible that it contains propane, but I'm pretty certain it is not pure propane.

The beauty of using it to power cars lies in the fact that it is actually a waste product from oil refineries. Ever see those big flames coming out of those smoke stacks? That's LPG they are burning, since they have no use for it. Other than fuel for cars. Unfortunately you can't save the world with this principle, since the production of LPG is related to the production of ordinary gasoline. However, every little bit helps.

Yes, LPG is a little bit more explosive than gasoline or diesel, so you have to take a few precautions, like not filling the tank more than 80%. However, millions of cars have been powered by LPG in Europe for many years, and there has not been an unusual occurrence of exploding fuel tanks as far as I know. Also, consider that an LPG tank will have about the same energy contents as an ordinary gas tank, so you won't take out an entire city block should it explode. Bottom line is that it has been used without major problems for many years in Europe, so there really is not a compelling safety concern.

Never shoot the messenger -- you may have gotten the bad news first.

Never shoot the messenger -- you may have gotten the bad news first.

Really sorry for the mistakes, I've always believed it was propane and liquified, not petroleum and liquefied, but after a quick check I found I've always been wrong in both cases. Thank you for the corrections.

The best place to put that energy IMO would be a flywheel. I want a flywheel car! (and think just how hard it would be to roll over! :-)

Wouldn't it also be rather hard for someone new to it to steer? I know that in aircraft a rotary system makes some very surprising motion possible, but it takes getting used to, and I'm not sure it would even be possible with just a steering wheel.

Hummm, it can't be implemented in cars because they don't have Diesel engines,

Where have you been? My dad's been driving diesel _cars_ (specifically Oldsmobiles) since the early 80's. His Ciera could get about 40mpg and had over 250K miles on it before he got rid of it. Diesels are available from many of the European car makers, much more so than their US counterparts. I would love to get a TDI Jetta. Given their fuel economy and capacity, it's got something like a 800 mile range. I would only have to fill up once to drive to my parent's house!

There's not that much of a price difference between gasoline and diesel fuel. In some places in the US, diesel is actually cheaper. Some people don't like diesels because of the noise and they can be a bit sluggish compared to a gasoline engine in the same car (not always the case though). Also diesels can be modified to run on other fuels too. I remember seeing a news blurb on TV about a guy that ran is VW rabbit on vegetable oil he gets from fast food places (his car exhaust smells like french fries). Some cities are experimenting with buses running on soybean oil too.

I can report with confidence that my car, which has electronic injection and ignition, has not crashed in the 4 years and 100,000 miles that I have driven it.

We have already started infiltrating our engines with electronics, and with good results. My midsize sedan gets 30 mpg with all the power I could want. Even back in the stone age days of '96 when a Pentium-166 was a fast computer. In fact, the only things that have needed replaced/failed on my car are pesky mechanical crap: brakes, struts, etc.

Do not confuse the reliability of your desktop PC with the reliability of embedded systems. They are structured and developed very differently, with an emphasis on reliability.

Hey this thing is running RISC
#include me

This will never happen. Car shops make millions every year adjusting the timing belts that currently drive the camshaft for the valves. If a computer were to control the timing, it would never need adjusting. Not to metion the fact that this would put the companies that make those strobe lights that you use to check the timing out of bussiness.

On the other hand, this makes herf gunning (or worse) a car all the more fun.

Daniel

Diesels ain't that great at -40F anyways. You generally need to keep the block warm, either with a heater in the block or by leaving them running.

So, if the block is already being kept warm, getting the electronics up to a working temperature shouldn't be that difficult.

Another big thing with diesels and cold weather is keeping the fuel from gelling up. You must remember to put #1 fuel and/or anti-gel additives in or you will be stuck. Diesels also need a lot of cranking power to start compared to gasoline engines, so the batteries had better work well in the cold weather too.

And what exactly happens in a high compression engine when a valve sticks in the open position and the piston comes home? Nothing good!

Which is one reason to make sure that the pistons are dished out where the valves would be. You have the same sort of problem if your timing belt breaks (I have to replace the timing belt in my cars ever 60K miles. The mechanic has said it wouldn't hurt if the belt breaks because the pistons have the necessary indentations, but I don't want to be stranded, so I'll pay the $300 to get them replaced).

The belt only costs $8.

It takes less then an hour to change it if you've done it before, 2 hours for the first time.

I guess you can tell I don't have other people fix my cars...

Linux, of course. Why?

Ok, that was a bit high...I had some other stuff done this time too ($15 timing belt + $55 other parts + $200 labor + $25 tax). But it's really difficult to get to on my car (little space and lots of stuff in the way, so I let someone else have the hassle. If I have the tools for it and I can get at it, I'll fix it myself. Otherwise, if it's something that takes a professional a few hours to do, I'd rather not waste a weekend trying to do it myself.

I agree with your statements regarding repairability/simplicity vs. reliability/engineering complexity; however our conclusions differ. I think both newer cars and older cars are great. M66 Chrysler Windsor 2DRHT is great (wouldn't mind your car in my garage either) but it doesn't get drove much for the simple reason that the Commando 383 sucks back a lot of gas. My Indy Fiero is/will be a lot more wallet friendly. And a new PT crusier would be great.

All that being said I'd like to see them get this into consumer vehicles. The part that intrigues me the most is the ability to shut down cylinders at will when full power is not required. Like the Caddy 4-6-8 done right. Think about a monster turbo charged, port injected, 426 Hemi with computer controlled spark and valvetiming. Add the ability to run on 4 cylinders when power isn't required and you start getting into dream car areas. You could even alternate the 4 cyclinders around and use air to cool the engine incase of coolant loss. Mate the whole thing to a dynamic 4 wheel drive system like Porche's and keep the weight down below 1500 kilos and you would have a very capable sports car.

PS: Wasn't it great when engines actually had names.

And do we care about the environmental effects? Of course not. Life's too short and we've got to enjoy it while we can. If this means pumping out a few nasty chemicals into the atmosphere while we get our motoring kicks, then that's fair enough. Environmentalists are just a bunch of selfish, moaning old hippies, who profess to care about the planet yet are really just living in constant fear and denial of their own mortality. Their "Save the Planet" slogan can really be translated into "Save My Candy Ass". The planet does not need to be saved! So what if pollution wipes out mankind and life as we know it? Mother Earth will still survive and new forms of life will evolve to replace us.

The liberal hippies of "Friends of The Earth" and "Greenpeace" are trying to spoil everyone else's enjoyment because they cannot come to terms with the fact that one day they will die, and the human race will become extinct soon after. It is this sort of person who puts the mental into environmental.

The planet does not need to be saved! So what if pollution wipes out mankind and life as we know it? Mother Earth will still survive and new forms of life will evolve to replace us.

Unfortunately, we currently have the capacity to cause serious damage to the planet's ecosystem. If we muck up badly enough, it could take a long, long time for any life to replace us. Unless the cockroaches become significantly more intelligent in less time than seems likely ATM. Besides which, what's wrong with self-preservation? It's what everything's bred for, after all.

I wouldn't say that. A lot of materials science technology is going into diesel engines. Unlike gasoline engines, the hotter they run the better. Because of this, manufacturers like Caterpillar and Cummins are producing engines with ceramic parts, mainly for construction, agriculture, locomotive, and other similar areas. Because they can run hotter than conventional engines, they need no cooling system, burn cleaner, and are much more efficient. My uncle used to work on some of them and said that after running for about a day, the engines would glow at night because they were so hot. Now this is certainly something that probably won't go into a consumer vehicle sometime soon. But diesels that are available in ordinary passenger cars (such as the TDI Jetta) are more than sufficient for the average person.

As far as I'm concerned, Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth, EarthFirst, etc. can all go to hell and I wouldn't shed a tear if they were all lost at sea. However, I do think that having clean burning efficient transportation is important. When you are wasting resources (whether it be fuel, paper, metal, etc.) you are wasting money. I'm a cheap bastard at heart, so I always try to recycle and look for efficient items not because I have a 'Save the Earth' complex, but because I don't like spending money. Think about it, once materials separation technology for recycling takes off, cities are going to be making money by strip mining their landfills.

I think the problem with some of the US made diesels for cars was that they basically tried to convert existing gasoline engines to diesels instead of designing one from the ground up. In the US, you more likely to see a diesel in a pickup than you are to see one in a car. Especially if one uses the pickup for actual work (in contrast to the people who buy trucks as a mode of transportation that could actually carry furniture one in a blue moon). My Dad and one of my uncles have basically the same truck: a 4wd Dodge Ram. They use them for pulling livestock trailers, campers, etc. The only difference is my Dad's truck has a Cummins V8 diesel and my uncle's has a gasoline V10. During a trip where both were pulling similar trailers, the diesel consumed about half the amount of fuel the gasoline truck did.

My brother (who coincidently used to be a diesel mechanic) knows guys that will buy Ford 3/4 to 1 ton pickups without the engines and then drop Cummins or Caterpillar diesel engines in them. This allows them to pull heavier loads, get better mileage, and have a more reliable truck than by using the stock Ford gasoline engine. Joe Suburbanite might not like them because they can't accelerate as fast onto the freeways, but Farmer Brown loves them.

Yet another example of how large corporations become inefficient after they reach a certain "breaking point" size.

-------
CAIMLAS
(place random stupidity here)

The difference is: In the VTEC engine there are only two different valve timings. It is not continuously variable as an electronic valve system would be.

"The great object is, that every man be armed. Every one who is able may have a gun." -- Patrick Henry, June 14 1788

Power to space ratio is one sort of efficiency, but of course you mean fuel efficiency. Not really a fair comparison, since so little engineering effort has been put into them, relatively speaking, and of that which has, fuel efficiency was hardly a focus. Anyway, I obviously didn't buy a sports car for the gas mileage.

But yeah, granted, none of the *many* rotary autos out there get great mileage, and gas mileage was a salient point of this technology. I still think rotary's a much superior solution. The more so because their superior suitability as hydrogen engines. And anyway, dammit, if I can't be an abrasive technological bigot, what's Slashdot coming to, anyway? ;-)

"The great object is, that every man be armed. Every one who is able may have a gun." -- Patrick Henry, June 14 1788

Well... yeah. So? :-)

It's just like Linux kernel junkies & overclockers...they're too busy futzing with the car & preening over its technical specs to realize they're not actually getting anything done.

Oh, come now! Overclocking and kernel tweaking are fun. Having fun *is* getting something done. And if you have to drive (a regrettable necessity of most modern folks), you'd might as well have some fun doing it. I can think of no purely utilitarian reason to interest yourself in your car at all.

What is it with geeks & RX7s? They gotta have the "superior" technology that's barely competitive in the real world with piston engines..

Untrue, but let's save ourselves the argument and quit here. I think rotaries have great potential for non-sports cars.

and Im sure the big-peepee styling is a major selling point, too.

Personally, I wouldn't mind a rotary VW Bug, or some other not-quite-so-macho car. It's the engineering. RX-7s are really good, technically interesting cars.

Not to mention that the 1st & 2nd gen RX7's are a cheap ticket into sportscar land.

True

Pity they couldn't do any better than a Porsche 944 ripoff for the 2nd gen styling though.

I agree. 1st gens are much cooler.

I actually wouldn't mind a rotary-powered Miata..that'd be a cute grocery getter to toss around..

Ahh... the truth comes out! Rotary envy! ;-)

I've always (ruefully) wondered why they went with a reciprocal engine for the Miata.

"The great object is, that every man be armed. Every one who is able may have a gun." -- Patrick Henry, June 14 1788

The idea is quite old now and I actually saw a working system demonstrated at Lotus a good few years before Colin Chapman died. It was used to help design camshaft profiles. You could even use a 'light pen' to pull the curve as the engine operated in real time.

BTW it definitely was electrohydraulic.

The patents system is sick, it really needs a overhaul. Here is a system that could have been implemented years ago and saved millions of gallons of fossil fuels from being wasted. What are future generations to think of us.

Good, Quick, Cheap: Choose Two.

...major improvements in electric engines.

One of the big bitches of electric cars is (besides battery life) the poor power/weight ratio of the electric engine against the gas (petrol) engine. Also, even more damning, is the relative reliability of the gas engine. What we really need are people putting alot more effort into making a better, lightweight electric engine.

We already have the parts to build a really good hybrid gas/electric car (which, face it folks, is the only kind of low-emissions vehicle you will see for years). We have the following parts:

• Electric engine - provides the power to move the car. Also acts as a generator when braking/coasting, thus providing extra power!
• High-efficiency gas engine - stick in a 300-400 cc motorcycle engine. They generate several kW of power, and can run at optimal efficiency (about 4500RPM) all the time, since you're not using them to directly drive the car. And the parts are readily available, and easy to maintain (and there is a repair infrastructure already in place - your local Kawasaki dealer...) Of course, I'd really like to see us use miniature gas-turbine engines, but I don't expect to see this anytime soon...
• Zinc-oxide batteries - the so-called "air battery" provides excellent continuous voltage and storage. You may still need a couple of lead-acid around for instantaneous bursts, but probably no more than 2 standard ones.
• High-speed Flywheels - easily the most efficient and compact way to store energy, a flywheel made of composites can be spun at up to 100,000RPM or more to store energy. And they don't lose energy much (you could leave one spinning overnight and probably only lose a couple hundred RPM, if that). Far more efficient than batteries, these are tre-cool, too.

The Honda Inspire and the coming competition from Nissan and Toyota are OK, but face it, we need something about the size of a Honda Accord, not a Honda Civic CRX. I can't see any reason (technically) right now why someone doesn't mass-produce a converted Accord. I mean, you can use the exact same design (maybe cheat and use alluminium body panels), just with a new powertrain (with an electric engine, you should probably have a continuously variable transmission, rather than an "automatic", and definately not a "standard") and still get at least 70+ miles/gallon (that is, 30km/l).

Hell, with the $4k US tax credit for buying a low-emission vehicle, and gas here at $1.85 in the Bay Area, I'd spend $5k more for a converted Accord over a normal one, and still make out like a bandit. So who're the morons in the Marketing Depts at the car manufacturers?

-Erik

I race R/C cars, and let me tell you, I have an electric dragster that will do better than 85 miles/hour. The electric motor weighs less than a comparable gas engine, but it eats the battery in a couple of runs.

Everbody jumps to the juggalow sound!

The danger of a catastrophic flywheel burst is certainly one of the problems to be overcome before flywheel energy storage systems become viable. I have watched safety tests on heavy-duty diesel engine flywheels, in which the wheel is spun on an air turbine in an evacuated pit. They typically burst around 60,000 RPM with bang, fragging into four neat quarters which mangle the six-inch-thick lead blocks lining the pit. k001.

Flywheels for long-term energy storage are made of layered composites which (one hopes) change the failure mode from fracture to a more mild gradual delamination. I still would not want to ride one though.

Flywheels for long-term energy storage are made of layered composites which (one hopes) change the failure mode from fracture to a more mild gradual delamination.

One way to overcome such potential emergencies is to use two counterrotating flywheels. It is much more difficult to extract energy from them (because you have more trouble doing it magnetically through the flywheel housing), but in the event of a detectable failure, you can essentially clamp the two together, resulting in an amazing amount of heat (which can be managed), but no projectiles.

--
It's never too late to panic.

http://www.borealis.com/motor/index.htm The Chorus motor is a multiphase AC motor which has low end torque similar to a DC motor and better high RPM efficiency than a standard AC motor.

The company that developed it has been very careful about patent and trade secret issues, so the progress bringing this engine to market has been painfully slow. A tech to watch though.

Paradigms: Shift Happens.

Actually I remeber talking with a Renault engineer... they did experiment with those tiny gas-turbines a couple years ago. Problems were temperature (though ceramics could handle it), and ultrasonic hiss. Dogs went mad at it even a kilometer away...

Now they've dropped that technology, focusing instead on fuel-cells.
-- Colin

I've seen a 28V electrical system in military vehicles, to power radio equipment.

The problem is what's called i-squared-r: since every wire has a non-zero resistance R, the wire burns off an mount of power proportional to the square of the current in the wire. To deliver the same amount of power to a load, for every doubling of voltage, you halve the current: this is why we have high-tension lines: to deliver a thousand megawatts of power to a city at 100kV takes one thousanth the current that 100V would, so you get one millionth the losses in the wire.

Now, in automotive use, 12V is really a pain: consider a laptop computer drawing 52 watts of power. At the nominal engine running voltage of 14 volts, you need 4 amps of current to get 52 watts. If your connection to the car's electrical bus has one ohm of resistance (lighter sockets are a lousy interface), you burn off 4 watts of power in the connection (actually, a bit more, since you lose 4 volts across the drop, and now your laptop power supply is trying to get 4.5A to make up for the difference).

Now, you start getting into steer by wire, electronic valve actuation, ThunderThump 2000 Stereos, maximum-legal output ham radio systems, cell phones, computers, TVs, VCRs, and all of the other things that we are cramming into cars these days, and you are pulling about 2-3kW of power. At 12 volts, this is about 200-300 amps of current. At 42 Volts (three times the nominal run voltage of 14 V), you drop that down to 66-100 amps.

Of course, you have all the infrastructure of 12V lights and gizmos, all of which have to be replaced. So it isn't going to happen anytime soon.

If you have a picture of a 1500 watt PEP ham amp mounted in your car, that's just something I've got to see.

On the other hand, if you have a centimeter-band yagi running 5 watts, that'd be pretty cool too :)

I think that because of the battery weights, the older bigger styles of cars may be better targets for diesel-electric hybrids. You have to haul a lot of battery with the current technologies.

Check out the US Army HumVee project here and a little more information here. Several minutes of dedicated web searching should turn up more informative links, but hear's the gist I remember from news stories:

• The original point was to reduce IR and noise signals, in particular to not have a good IR signal for a missile to home in on (but don't those electric motors get really hot ? anyway . . .)
• The batteries in the bed of the vehicle provided some protection from large anti-vehicle landmines (this might be wrong, I'm remembering it, it wasn't in the linked stories above)
• It could climb a steeper grade due to the weight of batteries lowering the center of mass
• Better fuel mileage
• better acceleration (I was surprised to learn that most electric motors can accelerate a car pretty well, if the car isn't loaded down with batteries to give it a decent range)
• smaller payload due to all that battery weight

I have wondered what kind of diesel generator they have. I wonder if you could do better than a piston engine with a small turbine whose rotors or blades were permanent magnents forming the armature of a high-speed generator.

Anyway, I would not mind having an econoline van with this type of setup on a smaller scale.

For example the new Honda hybrid...Why try and make it look all futuristic when it comes out just plain ugly. My friends and I boggle our minds trying to figure out why Honda doesn't convert an Accord or even a Civic over to the hybrid engine. The words out of everyones mouth i talk to about the hybrid car are the same..."It's so damn ugly."

It almost seems like they have contemporary artists designing cars now instead of engineers.

that if your electronics glitch, your engine won't run poorly... it just won't run.

Then there will be the car running on an MS O/S. Needs to be rebooted at least once a day.

Most high-end engines have this feature. BMW, Mercedes, and Lexus have electronic valve control for their very expenise v8 engines that get incredible horsepower for their size.

Other features seen on engines now are injectors on each cylinder head, much like a deisel. I have a 2000 GMC with their new V8 5.3 L, 327. Goes fast as hell and still gets around 25mpg. Which is not wonderful but for a half-ton truck with 300 hp... not bad. 5 years ago you would get 15 mpg for 300 hp.

Actually what amazed me is just how computerized my truck is. If I ran out of coolent a cpu would monitor and control oil and rpm's so i could over 100 km with no coolant. My brakes, 4-wheel disc, have a sensor that makes for even wear on all four discs. Each cylinder is monitored to make sure they have 'optimum burn.' Then of course there is the plug in diagnosis. Which has been around for some time but the information you can get on the entire vehicle is amazing.

I have a feeling that none of this will matter until someone works to remind the average luser that what they "know" about diesels is wrong. It seems that by far the majority of the American populace thinks that diesels are more expensive, slower and less reliable, none of which is true.

Right now, the diesel manufacturers seem to be pulling an IBM. They have a better product but seem allergic to actually advertising it. The timing is perfect for a strong ad campaign right now while the US gas prices remain higher than normal ("Wondering why guy who passed you was smiling? His car only needs a fillup once a month and it was cheaper, too")

[1] In practive I significantly outperform the sportier vehicles as well, but that's a function of the rather bovine drivers that are so common in San Diego: "Whoa! The light! It's green! It's been green for 30 seconds! Ooops, almost stepped on the gas ahead of the rest of the pack. Mustn't get out of line! Listen to that rude driver honking at me just because the light's turning yellow now. He'll only need to run the red a little!"
(In other words, slower hardware + good software > faster hardware + lousy software)
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If you want to work in the San Diego area building websites and don't want to work in Dilbert's world, I'm hiring.

lower cost for fuel

Not recently.. At one point Diesel was up to US$2 per gallon with regular 87-octane gasoline at about $1.60 per...

It's been done though -- apparently the big diesels on some of the commercial rigs had a computer controller that behaved one way in the EPA's test rig and another way on the road. I read a lot of stories about it but I never found out exactly how they did it -- maybe they only shifted into "fuel-efficient but dirty" mode when they had been running a long time. Here's one of the stories.