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Whats the future of gasoline engines?

Posted By Scott Klarr on Jun 02, 2008 at 5:01 am

With the way gas prices are on the rise, what will be the future for automobiles, or more specifically, gasoline engines? We all know that new technologies have already been progressing the last few years such as electric-based hybrids and flex fuel among others. While these new technologies will take hold and start to gain footing, I personally don't see the gasoline based engine disappear anytime soon.

Even though the first practical internal combustion engine was created nearly 200 years ago, and even described by Al-Jazari 800 years ago, very little has changed in the way our engines operate. Sure, we have made many indirect improvements such as adding computers to control timing and the air/fuel ratio, but we are still using the basic design that is extremely inefficient, especially when it comes to wasted heat energy and incomplete combustion.

I believe that the future of internal combustion engines will combine many of the following technologies, mostly already tested and in use independently today, to create a whole new breed of efficient gasser engines.

• Crower six-stroke engine design
• Smokey Yunick's adiabatic engine design
• Variable valve timing
• Variable compression
• Displacement on demand
• CVT transmissions
• Light-weight components (aluminum, carbon fiber, aluminum composite)
• HHO (oxyhydrogen) injection
• Chemicals (acetone) added in-line with gas to reduce surface tension & promote atomization

Yes, all of these things exist today, but car companies simply aren't combining all these ideas together yet. Why? Unfortunately the trade-off is additional engineering and production costs because of the added complexities. That is why for the last 50+ years, our automotive engines have remained closely the same with only small improvements.

However, with gas prices become a crisis to everyday life and government restrictions getting tighter and tighter, manufacturing companies will have no choice but to produce higher cost engines that are more efficient.

If you know of any other technologies that you think should be on this, please leave a comment!

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