The Future Of Engine Technology
Discussion
What are peoples thoughts on this?
Personally, I think that it's in Quasiturbine engines, at least while fossil fuels are still in use. Read all about them here:
http://auto.howstuffworks.com/quasiturbine.htm
www.quasiturbine.com
Personally, I think that it's in Quasiturbine engines, at least while fossil fuels are still in use. Read all about them here:
http://auto.howstuffworks.com/quasiturbine.htm
www.quasiturbine.com
Back to the original post, Felix Wankel did a whole lot of designs for pumps (and pumps which could use IC to make power) and the possibilities are endless. One of the snags is the lever action which makes torque. Quite a few of his ideas are going to need revs and gears to make the torque they lack.
Personally I see the electric car is the way things will go.
Take the Tesla electric car for instance. It has a range of 250 miles per charge, a charging time of around 3.5 hours, goes from 0 - 60 in 4 seconds and costs about a penny per mile when recharged at off-peak hours. Gone forever are the electric cars with a range of under 100 miles, a limiting factor for most buyers.
Take the Tesla electric car for instance. It has a range of 250 miles per charge, a charging time of around 3.5 hours, goes from 0 - 60 in 4 seconds and costs about a penny per mile when recharged at off-peak hours. Gone forever are the electric cars with a range of under 100 miles, a limiting factor for most buyers.
RazMan said:
Personally I see the electric car is the way things will go.
Take the Tesla electric car for instance. It has a range of 250 miles per charge, a charging time of around 3.5 hours, goes from 0 - 60 in 4 seconds and costs about a penny per mile when recharged at off-peak hours. Gone forever are the electric cars with a range of under 100 miles, a limiting factor for most buyers.
And where do you propose to get the required amount of copper from? Old bits of cable and immersion heaters?Take the Tesla electric car for instance. It has a range of 250 miles per charge, a charging time of around 3.5 hours, goes from 0 - 60 in 4 seconds and costs about a penny per mile when recharged at off-peak hours. Gone forever are the electric cars with a range of under 100 miles, a limiting factor for most buyers.
I think the most promising approach will be a low power high efficiency power source (steam engine, jet turbine, piston engine?) filling up a short term storage system (flywheel, battery, fuel cell?) for acceleration and hills etc with a final drive system that provides regenerative braking for stop/start traffic.
It'd be interesting to see what the optimum engine would be without any specific outside influence... CO2 regs are making engines be generally more efficient, but an insistence on single measurements for cycles that the performance is assessed against (ie, urban mpg vs extra urban), means we can actually have cars that are heavier and less effective and only partially more effective appearing really good.
Ie, Prius vs small lightweight small engined diesel.
An engine twice as 'dirty' in a car half the weight almost makes as much sense as a really efficient engine in a car that is then laden with batteries and junk to optimise something so the 'stats' look good.
Also making these engines. That quasiturbine looks fairly complex, I'm sure when made to say Rover V8 type specs it'll be as nice as a Rover V8, but to be as good as it needs to be, with super high tolerances and more exotic materials, will it just cost more to make and be a little delicate?
Is anyone actually keeping an eye on anything but the operational cycles of these kinds of new engines?
Is sacrificing more operational efficiency for longevity and ease of building worthwhile?
All still very interesting, but I'm a cynic first when it comes to changing things for the sake of policy that wasn't driven from a natural demand for being 'better' but simply from people in Brussels looking at a few paper stats. That said the quasiturbine does look like the kind of thing made 'better', but it's things like the Prius that get my back up because they are really not the way forward at all.
Dave
Ie, Prius vs small lightweight small engined diesel.
An engine twice as 'dirty' in a car half the weight almost makes as much sense as a really efficient engine in a car that is then laden with batteries and junk to optimise something so the 'stats' look good.
Also making these engines. That quasiturbine looks fairly complex, I'm sure when made to say Rover V8 type specs it'll be as nice as a Rover V8, but to be as good as it needs to be, with super high tolerances and more exotic materials, will it just cost more to make and be a little delicate?
Is anyone actually keeping an eye on anything but the operational cycles of these kinds of new engines?
Is sacrificing more operational efficiency for longevity and ease of building worthwhile?
All still very interesting, but I'm a cynic first when it comes to changing things for the sake of policy that wasn't driven from a natural demand for being 'better' but simply from people in Brussels looking at a few paper stats. That said the quasiturbine does look like the kind of thing made 'better', but it's things like the Prius that get my back up because they are really not the way forward at all.
Dave
Edited by Mr Whippy on Friday 21st September 10:13
Gassing Station | Engines & Drivetrain | Top of Page | What's New | My Stuff