The Future of Cars
 

Discuss stuff like fuel economy, hybrid, future engine tech, alternate fuels, alternative forms of propulsion, and future performance enhancements and other technologies. Thought it might be a good idea cuz discussions tend to go in that direction on other threads sometimes.

I'll give it a start: I think it's pretty nice how they're coming out with variable lift systems, it's a major step since it enables a huge efficiency gain under part load without sacrificing maximum torque. I also think gasoline, or liquid fuel/natural gas or something will be around for a while, since the infrastructure needed for hydrogen doesn't exist and battery technology is not at the point where we can get the kind of convenience we expect from our cars. Thus, I think we'll start to see more hybrids coming, but in the form of mild hybrid systems of some sort. With lithium ion batteries it's possible to add nearly no weight by replacing alternator and starter with a single electric motor and small battery pack. They could also go with a second motor directly driving the wheels, which has the benefit of faster starts from a dead stop and reduced clutch wear.

Hybrids and electrics are just a fad. Diesel is the future in my opinion.

I'm curious why Toyota hasn't put together a HSD system with a super-efficient common rail diesel yet.

Diesel has trouble passing emissions, that's why we don't have them over in America at least...Particulate emissions and NOx are the tough ones to solve I think. Also I read that US diesel has a ton of sulfur (our gasoline does too apparently sigh...) which makes things even worse.

I think people don't like the word hybrid since it's associated with the ugly ass Prius, but a lightweight mild hybrid system can be a benefit in every way (aside from cost).

The Honda system would probably be a better application with a diesel. The Germans are bringing over more and more diesels, but aside from VW they are $$$ cars. Also I think the US fuel is pretty close to being up to spec with the sulfur. They were planning on phasing in low sulfur over a certain time period or something?

I'm actually pretty impressed with Ford at what they are doing technically to get more mileage out of the Focus and Fiesta. But so far no diesel or entry level hybrid.

Toyota should do an inexpensive mild hybrid and/or diesel Yaris if they want to stay ahead of the compact competition.

I think one thing manufacturers can do that's VERY cheap and easy to boost fuel efficiency is to add low lift, low duration cams (essentially atkinson cycle, but maybe not as aggressive). Consumers will understand that this is the cheap way to get better mpgs, and it comes at the cost of grunt, but how many Yaris drivers do you see flooring the throttle? They could even make it like, further reduced duration on the low speed cams for VTEC and VVTi. It's cheaper than continuously variable lift at least. I think it's a bit weird how car manufacturers assume Americans want more grunt even in a cheapo car. The rest of the world does fine with smaller engines... If that's really what the market is, then maybe people need to start rethinking their priorities. Can't have it all...

diesel has been around in europe (the uk at least) for a while and is still not as popular as the petrol options - co2 emissions per bhp are very low though, so it makes a good move.

diesels don't sound nice either, and only have a small rev range - granted, lots of torque but it's not an engine for sports cars really

i think electric cars will get better and better - look at the first motor cars they were 24 litre monsters that could barely reach mph into the 20's

now, a 1 litre car can go well in excess of 100 mph

battery technology is what is holding it back...

hydrogen cells are interesting also. but much further away technology wise than electric

Right now most propulsion-system technological progress is stunted by politics. As such it's very tough to make an educated guess beyond a few years.

In the very near term, Hybrid and electric systems are all the rage at the expense of long-term sustainability. As battery and motor technology improves [more efficient, better long-term recycle-ability] these will become a better idea.

Camless engines are another excellent idea. Chrysler did a boatload of R&D on pneumatic valve actuation back in the 80's but then shelved it because at the time it was too expensive. Now, it should be back on the table. Infinite valve lift and timing through servo/pneumatic control is the way forward as it has essentially ideal valve control and virtually no frictional losses. BMW's Valvetronic+VANOS was great last decade, but purely mechanical camshaft-derived actuation is old hat for what needs to be next-gen.

I'd like to see emissions standards modified to promote Diesel and HCCI gasoline and dissuade normal gasoline engines. Diesel is the cheapest and simplest way to achieve good efficiency right now. HCCI gasoline is a big step forward for gasoline engines, but their viability is very complicated in terms of processing power. Next generation ECU's will have enough processing power and speed to run HCCI engines, so there's hope.

Beyond that, there needs to be a big breakthrough in infrastructure, technology, and politics to move automotive propulsion systems forward.

BMW's valvetronic and now Toyota's valvematic, Nissan's NEO VVL and Honda's AVTEC does the same thing.... Infinite valve lift and timing. Pneumatic systems are still very expensive and are what you find in formula one engines. It's extraordinary for high rpm operation, but what benefit would it have on engines that rarely ever go beyond 6500rpm?

No, they don't do exactly the same thing. They are relatively primitive, slow, and limited in adjustability in comparison. A big improvement can be had in frictional loss and obtaining ideal valve actuation timing, duration, and lift with a camless system. A camless engine will be able to have fuel efficiency and torque levels that are currently not seen together. Add in WBO2, HCCI, very high pressure direct injection with shaped-combusion pistons, and turbocharging and you have a bill of materials for a state-of-the-art gasoline engine.

It also opens the door for high-RPM operation for production engines. Sprung valve-train is the #1 reason engines are stuck at relatively low RPM, with rod ratio being #2 reason.

The benefit of high RPM operation is usually in improved combustion efficiency through improved induction velocity and swirl turbulence.

what about the turbine system jaguar's developing?

Turbines are very, very loud, and have a narrow range of efficient operation so they can't be used as a standalone power source.

i don't know exactly how they're pairing it but that new jag is a hybrid with turbines... :iono:

Right, turbines that run to charge batteries or provide extra power. They only run when needed, not continually, which solves the part load efficiency problem, but I don't see how they're dealing with noise.

Sound proof glass between the engine bay and driver lol... or u could always wear ear plugs

Except you're forgetting about the noise that goes outside the car :)

Dangit... they're gonna have to put a silences on that thing

So why exactly do we need street engines that rev to 15,000 rpms? What about the increased cost of components to allow engines to rev that high? just saying. They are not the same, but in terms of valve operation, the do exactly the same thing. Take the throttle body out of the equation, and allow for infinite variation in valve lift withing a certain minimum and maximum.

I'm not saying a pneumatic system wouldn't be better, I'm just trying to be fairly realistic about the possibilities. Pneumatic valve actuation is not exactly a new technology. There is a reason why it still hasn't made it to the road yet.

I'm not surprised that some of you favor Diesel engines. But diesel fuel IMHO should be reserved for boats, trains, and tractor-trailers. The only reason Diesel is big in Europe is because Gasoline is taxed through the roof while Diesel is not and Gasoline cars are still fairly common over there despite that. The Diesels having trouble passing American emissions is just a red herring.

HCCI engine, now you're talking, GDI too.

As you guys may have guessed from my subname I'm a big Ethanol supporter, which is here now and made from Corn. But I am realistic in that I know we can support 33% of our Petroleum consumption with Domestic Oil and we should be filling the rest of that gap with Ethanol or Battery Electric cars not foreign Oil. I don't rag on hybrid cars that do their job. And I do rep good hybrid cars. Electric cars that are fun and efficient are cool too. But I also support Mandating Flexfuel, designed to run safely and efficiently on 100% Gasoline or 100% Ethanol(some us even ask for 100% Methanol which is like adding $30 to a $100 upgrade) for all vehicles in the USA. Not mandating that everybody drive on Ethanol, just that we require all vehicles be Flexfuel compatible before they can be sold.

Hydrogen doesn't work for the same reason Natural Gas doesn't. Both need to be either pressurized to super high pressure levels at normal operating temperatures, or frozen at below zero, or for Hydrogen mixed with another element in $$$$ special fuel tanks. Plus Hydrogen is cracked from Natural Gas just like Methanol. Not an ideal system if you could just use the Natural gas right? If you want a system based more on the politics/emotions of zero emissions at the tail pipe when there is a stink cloud somewhere else, Hydrogen is your answer.

One of the issues with Ethanol is that it is government subsidized, I believe, and there are conflicts with food crops if we could produce enough domestically to replace gasoline.

As a fuel though, it would be my first choice as a biofuel.

Natural Gas and Propane have been used for ages in conversions in Canada. They work, but as a performance fuel, they suck. Plus they will eventually be facing the same issues as petro diesel and gasoline, in terms of supply.

Bio-diesel from algae (which theoretically can massively out-produce canola and other oil crops on a per-acre basis) may be the big break for separation from foreign oil. It also gets closer to carbon-neutrality over its life cycle. However it is facing some practical extraction and growth issues. It can also be used to produce ethanol from the waste carbohydrates of the algae.

What I would like to see is Bio-diesel for the majority of the transportation needs, with Ethanol filling the performance fuel role.

I agree to an extent. Currently, how we get hydrogen isn't exactly the cleanest and storage is an issue. However there is a lot of big advances being made in these areas. Hydrogen isn't that hard to get from pure water; Iceland has proven that with hydrogen fueling stations powered by geothermal energy. And, new catalytic alloys will soon allow us to get the gas from dirty water. There's also development for storage using metallic alloy powders to act as a sponge to store it more efficiently within the tank.

Here's a link to the science daily archives for the Hydrogen keyword, feel free to browse the articles.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/search/?...ort=relevance#

and here's a link to a Scientific American vid on the subject:
http://www.hulu.com/watch/23322/scie...hydrogen-hopes

But there are massive infrastructure issues with hydrogen. Ethanol and bio-diesel are easier to integrate into current fuel infrastructure.

I'D rather stick on electric or hybrid car than turbines. Turbines I think is noisy.

The government subsidies are there to compensate for the poor suitability of corn for ethanol production. Brazil runs a lot of ethanol in their fuel, but they use sugarcane which is cost effective. It's not clear to me that using corn for fuel affects the food supply though; In the US we have plenty of food, and in fact we give a lot of food away as aid. I think that in itself is a problem because it reduces incentive to produce food in nations receiving the aid.

Ethanol however is pretty great: High latent heat of vaporization + high octane = very good efficiency with higher compression. I hope they can improve the process to the point where we can all be running ethanol the way Brazil is.

Ethanol is the worst! It vastly decreases fuel efficiency, and it raises the price of corn for no reason. We have it in our fuel because the commodity traders can manipulate the price of corn with sleazy government deals. 30% of all corn in the US goes towards ethanol, which is an amazing amount considering that it is only 10% of our fuel.

However it is the best performance biofuel.

High octane, high latent heat of evaporation for cooler, slower burning intake charge plus best power fuel:air of about 7:1 combined with 12500 btu heat energy equates to more power potential with higher compression, more advanced ignition, or tons of boost.

But, yes at the expense of shitty consumption.

All Domestic fuel/power sources receive some sort of government subsidy. People pick on Corn Ethanol or Oil for getting billions of subsidies and ignore that they also pay billions in tax revenue too. Which also ignores the economic benefits they also bring. The options are often subsidize local business or they'll go somewhere else!

Subsidizing does encourage a market even though I also believe it is one of the more inefficient methods of growth because it is based on tax revenue. If we just let big money do the work we'd have a repeat of the Rockefeller's Standard Oil. It is a choice of lesser of two evils. Or the better of two evils if you prefer. You have to base your decision on the facts and likely possibilities not just the politics and not just the science either.

The Cellulosic Ethanols are stuck in the test tubes until Ethanol hits critical mass. Right now they can produce more Ethanol from Corn than the Market wants. Also expensive Gasoline tends to help encourage funding for alternative fuel research, a good by-product from a (generally) bad thing.

This isn't news to me, they still haven't gotten around the, "more energy invested than returned" dilemma. Even if it does happen there are still far more concerns than the source. And Hydrogen fuel has no legitimacy in a debate on alternatives that are sustainable IMHO. It's really cool that it can generate power with no emissions except water vapour but it isn't a practical alternative nor can it be practical without $$$$$$$$$.

The government subsidies are there to encourage more and faster growth than the market would normally allow or support. Ethanol was successful in the early 20th century, the Model T was designed to be flexfuel, but that competition was eliminated with Prohibition.

And Brazil uses cheap migrant workers vs expensive machinery. They're even worse off than us though because if world Sugar prices rise farmers will sell sugar cane on the world market instead of selling it for Ethanol. And don't forget it took a Military Dictatorship 20 years of mandates and subsidies before Sugarcane Ethanol was self-sustaining as an industry. The later Civilian government backed off on the subsides when Sugar prices really shot up in the 90's which was also when world Oil was cheap. They also have 25% Ethanol/75% Gasoline for their regular fuel too. Definitely something to seriously think about before you go thinking Sugarcane Ethanol is a silver bullet :iono:.

Sorry I didn't mean to try to monopolize this thread.

Anybody want to talk about underpowered POS econoboxes as a serious alternative :D?

Could you expand on what I posted on why Ethanol is the best biofuel for performance use?

But the negative side effect is that you need to make sure your fuel system can handle it because it's a bit corrosive?

No it doesn't decrease fuel efficiency. It has lower energy density but permits more thermally efficient engine operation. If you could convert gasoline to ethanol with no chemical energy loss, you'd be using less.

It's not that hard to upgrade the fuel system for ethanol, but it is a cost that isn't necessary if the car is never going to see ethanol fuel.

@ Allch Chcar I think POS econoboxes ARE the solution. You can only go so far with technology and whatever. In poorer countries people don't even really care about performance, they just want something that moves, and doesn't break. For the majority of drivers around the world even in rich countries this is how it is. People want some degree of comfort, reliability, and utility. Which is why I think car companies should start cutting down engine size and implementing something like what the Geo Metro had, a fuel efficient cam with lower intake duration. Less cost, less weight, less power. Can't have everything. Besides with the green movement, less and less people are asking for power and instead are being careful with the gas pedal. Those people certainly won't notice a difference from cutting max torque by like 20%. While it's good to see stuff like GM and Ford moving to smaller displacement + turbo, cutting power on everything that really doesn't need it is necessary for fuel efficiency gains that don't hurt the wallet at purchase.

I have a Car & Driver mag with a review between the new gen Prius and Insight. For shits and giggles they added in an old 3 door Geo Metro. The Prius had the better mileage between it and the Insight.

But the Geo matched the Prius!

Small Nuclear Fusion Reactor

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Pickles

:lol:, cool story bro!:w00t: I'm going to guess you're trolling and therefore pulling my leg, so I'll try to be nice. Back in 2001 the media was obsessed with the studies saying that Corn Ethanol could only provide 10% of our Fuel if 100% of our farmed land(at the time) was converted to Corn for Ethanol. 2011, so much for that idea!

The price of corn has been artificially low since the 80's thanks to Government subsidies. Now that Corn is at it's proper market driven level many Corn Farmers are taking less subsidies for growing corn and buying new equipment! This is revitalizing the rural communities!

Blaming speculators for high corn prices? Most Corn farmers don't sell at the speculator price which is for open market corn contracts, most of them(90% I believe) sign contracts with big companies. And remember Raw Corn is sold in 56lb bushels, $4 is 7 pennies per pound! That doesn't put anyone out of business but is sure pisses off the bean counters at big corps when a raw products doubles in price.

Infact, Kraft participated in a major anti-Corn Ethanol "smear" compaign. Because they are a big cheese. And they were cheesed off :bellyroll:. Maybe they'll start feeding their cows grass instead of corn! Oh wait, that's serious business :|.

That corrosion is from the best part of all Alcohols, oxygen. Oxygen is used by all fuels in an Internal Combustion Engine where it is pulled into the intake. Alcohols bring some of their own oxygen which cools the intake and the combustion chamber with an effect called "latent heat of evaporation" but Alcohols take up more space for an equivalent amount of energy as a negative. The bonus is that they can run more efficiently and generate more power. They also tolerate higher dynamic compression either from turbocharging or high static compression.

I've heard that the PH balance is not really that acidic for E85 from the pump, 6.4 was what I heard with 7.4 being neutral. Ethanol is mixed with Gasoline at the pump and they are bound, albeit weakly, so it's not as bad as running straight Ethanol.

There are plenty of books and websites on E85 conversions. And I think E85 conversions would be better in a separate thread or a separate forum :iono:. I don't want to cause any trouble. There are other forums for stuff like that. Like E85performance.net they're mostly Muscle/Pony cars but there are some other guys. I actually only signed up at Hondatech to read/comment on E85 builds besides visiting the CR-Z subforum that is.

:w00t: I agree with you on the econoboxes.

Upgrading the fuel system is only if your serious about running E85. It's pretty safe to say you could run it stock, many people do that, but I wouldn't do it out of a heap of caution. And because I'm pretty serious about running my car on E85 without a proper setup, the only problem is I don't have the money to do it right! Argh!

And don't expect to save any money with E85. Local prices are $3.39 for E85 vs $3.67 for Gasoline, gouging!

Of course! And at half the price!

To the Prius' credit, the Geo is quite a bit smaller. However the Geo with the fuel efficient cam does something like what the Prius does: expand more than compress = more efficiency! I really wonder if consumers actually would be bothered by the loss of power as fuel prices go up. To me it's a no brainer: you want a cheap car that's great on gas? forget performance completely! Whatever happened to accepting compromises?

Are you really saying that on a sports car forum where people complain about 200BHP being insufficient?:bellyroll:

:flame: suit on.

And yes the Metro xfi had fewer piston rings and a lower profile cam and taller gearing to improve efficiency. No Atkinson cycle with lots of intake overlap though. I've seen examples on Wikipedia of cars in Europe and Japan with Atkinson cycle on econoboxes. The Mazda Demio has a 1.3L with Atkinson Cycle. Honda being Honda they have DiSi instead of vtec on the Fit and City in both Europe and Japan.

I think they had reduced duration, which has basically the same effect. I guess I just wasn't paying attention then, I thought Atkinson cycle wasn't really used lol, guess it's just America then. Wikipedia article on Atkinson cycle only lists hybrids :shrug:

lol power can be had, you just need more money obviously!
One exciting thing about continuously variable lift is turbos have the potential to have lower impact on fuel economy, since at low load the turbo doesn't have to push/suck (i don't know how turbos are set up sorry :( ) through the throttle, which requires it to sap energy from the exhaust stroke with backpressure. Toyota please PLEASE stick valvematic in the FT86, use good gearing, and change people's perceptions about sports car=gas guzzler! In the future I see the potential for a sports car comeback. Afterall sports cars are some of the lightest and lowest cars, they require less energy to move!

Until they can figure out a better way to make ethanol than by fucking with a food source I will never be in support of it.

Problem with that reasoning is, you're not even close to being short on food, neither am I, neither is anyone else in the US. We clearly have excess production capacity for food. Nevermind poor countries that can't afford to import, they need to ramp up production, not receive more aid. The beauty of using food crop to make ethanol is the crop is easy to grow and cheap. That said the process is still pretty inefficient and everyone would love to see some improvement in yield, especially from corn.

The XFI cam is the opposite of Atkinson cycle. It has less duration whereas the Atkinson cycle has more duration.

I only found the non-hybrid Atkinson engines looking through Mazda's foreign engines. I knew they existed in the past but I didn't know they were making them like that.

Wow, Matador, you get pretty angry sometimes.

Corn Ethanol is made from feed corn, it's about as edible as grass. If you were paying attention to the US Agriculture news you would know that we're getting food and fuel without any shortages. We've had record corn crops and improved yields the last few years.

Success? You decide.