A New Lease On Internal Combustion

Somnus suggests we check out the latest issue of MIT's Technology Review, where researchers describe how they can dramatically boost engine output and efficiency by preventing pre-ignition, or "knock." How they do it: "Both turbocharging and direct injection are preexisting technologies, and neither looks particularly impressive... by combining them, and augmenting them with a novel way to use a small amount of ethanol, Cohn and his colleagues have created a design that they believe could triple the power of a test engine."

Comments

I find many of life's problems...

[26199]

...become simpler with the addition of a small amount of ethanol.

In a large glass.

Old

[jevring]

Wow, this is yesterdays news. People in the tuning industry have been controlling "knock" in various ways for a long time. Either by raising the octane number on your ful (add ethanol or booster), so that you can had move advanced ignition timing, or simply retarding your timing and using the same octane rating fuel as you normally use

Re:Old

[AP2k]

Even still, water and alcohol injection used to cool the charge is not new, and has been around since the 30's.

Whoever wrote the article doesnt understand why SUVs and trucks have big engines. Its not because they are powerful, its because they need lots of torque. You can pull a trailor up a hill in an S2000 just like you can a road tractor, but the tractor will use much less fuel and less wearing of the engine doing it.B enignes arent going anywhere in SUVs any time soon, despite this seemingly "revolutionary" new technology.

I predict this will end up as a failure just like the last time an engine manufacturer tried this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oldsmobile_V8_engine# Turbo_Jetfire

No matter how novel the technology, when the product's life depends solely on the customer, your product wont usually stay on the shelves for very long.

Re:Old

[iamhassi]

"People in the tuning industry have been controlling "knock" in various ways for a long time."

Exactly. This sounds a lot like water injection, which has been around forever and does increase mpg by about 10% in turbo cars and allows lower octane fuel.

Here's what's going to kill the technology from TFA:
"Ethanol would be stored in its own tank or compartment and would be introduced by a separate direct-injection system. The ethanol would have to be replenished only once every few months, roughly as often as the oil is changed. A vehicle that used this approach would operate around 25 percent more efficiently than a vehicle with a conventional engine."

This is exactly like water-injection and it's why we don't see water-injection in vehicles. No one wants to have a separate tank that we need to remember to fill-up, and the 10% increase provided by water just isn't enough. This is the same story except it's ethanol, not as easy to find as water, and it's 25% better mpg instead of 10%.

We will never see a production ethanol injection vehicle. Vaporware with a capital V

Re:Old

[MightyYar]

From TFA (and this goes for the reply above mine as well as the parent):
"Similar approaches, some of which used water to cool the cylinder, had been tried before. But the combination of direct injection and ethanol, Cohn says, had much more dramatic results."

Show me someone in the tuning industry using directly injected ethanol along with a turbocharger and regular gas. I've never heard of this approach.

Re:Old

[dr_wheel]

I was thinking the same thing when I started reading the article. A quick search at any of the major car enthusiast websites will lead you to dozens of threads on direct injection and forced induction (turbocharging). This isn't news. There are already direct injection, turboed factory motors out there. The 2007 Saturn Sky Red Line, for example, is powered by a 2.0-liter direct injection turbo engine. You may have heard of another auto manufacturer using this same technology in it's diesel engines... VW's TDI (Turbo Direct Injection).

The "new" part comes where they are using ethanol direct injection. It's a new twist on an old idea. See also water-methanol injection:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_injection_(engi nes)

Sure, it's not anything evolutionary. And the article might read like 1st Grade literature for anyone who is familiar with cars and tuning... but it's still interesting stuff.

Re:Old

[drinkypoo]

This is exactly like water-injection and it's why we don't see water-injection in vehicles. No one wants to have a separate tank that we need to remember to fill-up, and the 10% increase provided by water just isn't enough. This is the same story except it's ethanol, not as easy to find as water, and it's 25% better mpg instead of 10%.

But the story is different because the system will know what to do when it runs out of ethanol, which is to say retard timing and reduce mileage and power output until you add more ethanol. Water injection is aftermarket and usually not compensated for automatically.

The mileage improvement is pretty compelling and I think we'll see it implemented if fuel prices rise much more.

Re:Old

[Loualbano2]

This actually is somewhat new.

What they are doing is different from old alcohol injection that merely mixed the injected fuel with ethanol before it went past the intake valve.

This method is using directly injecting ethanol similar to a diesel motor. The advantage seems to be the same effect but with way less ethanol. The article quoted having the ethanol refilled on the order of months.

While the effects of alcohol injection are well known and are not new, this method seems to make it way more practical, which is new.

Re:Old

[MightyYar]

That's great, but the MIT spin-off is using DIRECT INJECTION, not fuel injection. There is an injector that actually squirts ethanol directly into the cylinder, not into the intake. Much higher pressures. Except for a German sports car back in the 50's, no one put direct injection into an automobile until the late 90s. While it is true that this is just an updated version of an old idea, it's still interesting enough to be called news if they can achieve hybrid-like fuel savings with just an internal combustion engine.

Re:Old

[Original Replica]

If the main reason for big engines is high torque, how does Hybrid tech change our engine needs? If we can continue to tweek combustion for a set load (generator) we just need the electric motors and batteries to catch up to the demands of heavy hauling to make mileage improvements in SUVs and Big Rigs. Sure this might be the reapplication of old tech, but every step towards efficency helps. If an ethanol injected engine becomes "cool" with the SUV crowd, then we all win. Many if not most SUVs are status symbols more than heavy haulers. How often do you see someone towing their boat trailer uphill, really, not in a commercial?

Re:Old

[RingDev]

"...limiting their power"

Harsh. Apparently someone hasn't been keeping up on Diesel Technology lately. You know it was an Audi Diesel that one the last LeMans right?

I dirve a little VW Golf TDI. 115hp is nothing special, but 175 lbs/ft of torque is enough to get the car moving in a hurry. The car is almost as quick stock as my '88 Fiero with a 3.4l V6 (about 180 hp and 175lbs/ft).

When you have an engine that can (lightly/medium modded) put out 250 lbs/ft or torque from 1800rpm to 3500rpm, the concern is less about RPM and more about Gearing and shifting. Have you seen the new VW/Audi dual clutch manual automatic trannys? Their 6 speed DSG auto transmissions can upshift in 8ms. With that wide of gear range, and that fast of shifting, having a somewhat* limited rpm band is not an issue.

*I say somewhat because the vast, vast majority of drivers will never spin their engine over 3500 rpm. Hondas, Subarus, what have you, they are all designed (stock) as commuter vehicles. And if you have to turn 7k rpms to get your car off the line, it's not going to hold up to daily driving.

-Rick

Re:Old

[SenseiLeNoir]

Erm, I have a Diesel Jaguar X-Type (Yes a Diesel Jaguar, I am from the UK)..

Despite its "lower" Horsepower figures, and so on, in the Real World it competes well with Larger Petrol Engines. The main reason? Its Torque is available very low, and remains constant throughout. This is what is needed in the real worl, not nessasarily high RPMs, but sufficient power at ALL RPMs. Most 4 cyl petrol cars I have driven only start providing real Torque at 4000rpm, and peak at about 5500, running out of steam at 7000rpm, increasing cylinder count can improve the point at which the torque arrives, but lowers the overall torque output, compared to a similar displacement, lower cylinder engine.

My Diesel, starts providing torque at 1500 reaching max at 1800/1900, and remaining at that high point up to its max rpm of 4500rpm. Combined with an appropriately built 6 speed Gearbox, It certainly doesn't feel like I am about to run out of RPMs whilst driving.

And all this power, does not come at the expense of fuel economy, I have been able to get nearly 60 Mpg, on a motoway at 60mph, and nearly 75 to 80 mpg in the slipstream of an Articulated Lorry (Semi-Truck for US folks).

MAkes you think, diesel has come a long way since the old days, and is a very popular option here in Europe.

Rudolph Diesel

[LiENUS]

Congratulations You've discovered the same thing as Rudolph Diesel except that you don't quite have it right. You don't need to use ethanol or port injection ditch both of those and use good ol fashioned vegetable oil. 0 preignition and you can turn the boost way up on a tiny engine.

Re:Rudolph Diesel

[JesseL]

0 preignition and you can turn the boost way up on a tiny engine. It's actually more like 100% preignition in a diesel, but they're built to withstand it without grenading.

Re:Rudolph Diesel

[LiENUS]

It's actually more like 100% preignition in a diesel, but they're built to withstand it without grenading. By design its impossible for diesel to have pre-ignition unless somethings wrong. so its 0% preignition, there is however 100% detonation which is a completely different thing. Pre-ignition is where your intake charge and fuel mixture ignite before your spark plug fires. Since diesels have no spark plug there is no spark plug firing event however intake charge also lacks fuel. So it can't ignite before it is supposed to. The fuel is injected after the compression stroke has already been made and the fuel ignites as soon as it injects, thus 0% preignition 100% detonation.

Re:Rudolph Diesel

[LiENUS]

Preignition is ignition before its supposed to happen. It's impossible when your cylinder is filled with nothing but air. They run on Detonation, not preignition.

Re:Rudolph Diesel

[Tony Hoyle]

I just topped up my little diesel car.. cost me £30. Last time I topped up is November... winter really gets the bills down :p

The thing gets about 68mpg normally and according to the official stats could get 75mpg if I drove a bit better.

So although diesel costs more per gallon (due to the huge tax difference in this country - it's taxed more.. used to be taxed less then everyone bought one so the gov. upped the tax to rake in some more cash) you still get a much lower cost per mile running cost.

Internal Combusiton?

[Reverend528]

This headline made my brain spontaneously combusit.

Not the final solution

[dal20402]

I suppose my first question is, when the owner inevitably lets the ethanol run out, what happens? Can the engine computer dial down the boost enough to prevent detonation? Or does the engine just have to shut down?

That aside, it's always great to improve internal-combustion efficiency, but the real solutions will have a more dramatic effect than this. My own view is that the solution should be a plug-in series hybrid with about 60 miles of electric-only range and the ability to run maybe 400 more with the engine providing generator power. This would not seriously compromise the essential attributes of modern cars, while *dramatically* (think 80% or more) improving their fuel economy in many real-world usage patterns.

Then we should have nuclear power behind all those 220v outlets... and 90% of cars should be much smaller, with people able to obtain bigger trucks for big jobs on demand from time-share or rental companies... a guy can dream, can't he...

Re:Not the final solution

[Rei]

and 90% of cars should be much smaller,

Americans would never accept that. You might as well just say "and fairy princesses should fly down from candyland and give us all ponies to ride."

I think a more realistic possibility is that vehicles will just get much lighter. As an example, if Boeing can make the Dreamliner out of carbon fibre, perhaps it's not that long before we start seing reasonably priced, mass-produced carbon fibre car bodies. There's also reasonably good odds of significant price reduction in titanium and titanium alloys, and aluminium use is becoming more widespread in the automotive industry.

My ideal "dream" situation? A "grid" transportation system, in which vehicles are networked together without any humans behind the wheel (except "offroad"). electric vehicles which get their power from the road (standing wave transmission, perhaps). Autoconvoying and optimized speeds to greatly reduce traffic, increase road capacity, and reduce wind resistance. With vehicles much lighter from being pure-electric without need for even carrying the power source, high speed "bulletways" with coils of wire embedded in them, so that vehicles with halbach arrays (magnetic arrays with highly lopsided fields -- near double-strength on one side, near zero on the other) can employ "Inductrac" style maglev, eliminating rolling losses and having very little maglev losses at high speeds.

  * Greatly reduced wind resistance and no rolling losses.
  * Still your own, personal vehicle (the profiles would likely be a bit different from present day for optimal convoying, though)
  * Never having to drive. Play, sleep, work, chat, whatever during the trip.
  * Less need for roads eating up cityspace
  * Less traffic
  * Much faster travel, to the degree that airlines would be needed much less often.
  * Much less energy use
  * Independent of oil.
  * No need to even be in your vehicle while it's moving -- automated delivery, automated pickup of your kids or groceries (if the store will load for you), etc.
  * The great economic benefits of travel being automated and fast.
  * Much less space used up downtown for parking, as vehicles can drive themselves to and from less convenient parking without you.
  * No speeding tickets
  * Very few accidents (no human error, no drunk driving, etc)

The benefits go on, and on, and on. Unfortunately, we have all of our existing infrastructure to deal with. Thankfully, it can be moved towards in stages. First hybrids, then plugin hybrids, then electrics, then grid-power electrics. First radar-assisted braking (like we have now), then wireless transponders to assist traffic, then increasing wireless information exchange and planning. Once vehicles are light enough, all-electric, and are designed for high-speeds with automated operation, inductrac-style maglev becomes realistic for long stretches.

Re:Not the final solution

[Osty]

* Never having to drive. Play, sleep, work, chat, whatever during the trip.

I'm not sure I'd put that in the "benefit" column. I enjoy driving. What I fear most when people start talking about future transportation technology is that almost everybody assumes that driving is a chore and nobody should have to do it anymore. While it would be great to get the people who don't like driving off the road (the people who eat, read, do their makeup, change clothes, etc all while driving), if the solution involves removing my own ability to drive then I'm against it.

Note that I didn't say anything about what I would drive. Electric, hybrid, magnetic, petrol, whatever, I'm fine with it as long as I'm allowed to stay in control of my personal vehicle.

Re:Not the final solution

[Rei]

it seems that Americans ought to be happy to borrow/rent/timeshare large vehicles on the relatively infrequent occasions when they are necessary rather than paying the fuel, parking, and maintenance costs all the time

Do most Americans want to own their house or rent?
Do most Americans want to own their furniture or rent?
Do most Americans want to own their TV or rent?
Do most Americans want to own their computer or rent?

On and on. People want to own "their stuff". Whether you consider it image or not, it's a basic fact. Ownership makes people feel comfortable. It's also convenient, and America is nothing if not a convenience society.

"What, walk a block to where the neighborhood cars are parked, just to drive to a store that's five minutes away?"
"What, have to put all of my baby's stuff in the car after hauling it there, then take out out and haul it back, every trip?"
"What, have to replace this mirror that I knocked off when I could superglue it back on just fine, because the guy over on 2110 East Maple will throw a fit if I don't?"
"What, I have to reprogram the radio every time I drive?"

(and on, and on, and on)

This is a culture for which driving to pick up pizza is too much work, a culture of TV dinners, a culture in which food companies have started to make peanut butter and jelly in the same jar so that you don't have to open up two jars. And you expect people to put up with *that*? Heh, Good Luck.

Re:Not the final solution

[ThousandStars]

Americans would never accept that. You might as well just say "and fairy princesses should fly down from candyland and give us all ponies to ride."

Americans would and eventually will accept smaller cars, at least as soon as gas prices rise high enough. This could happen through any number of methods, including declining oil production, wars in oil states, or Pigouvian taxes. The latter makes a lot of sense because it would help prevent the first two in a feasible time horizon and with few negative externalities save creating a tax that would probably never die (hence bloating government) and potentially increasing the mass difference between very large and very small cars, leading to additional fatalities when they collide.

Still, the benefits for both geopolitics and the environment would be enormous. It would also be much simpler to implement than the grandiose and probably error-prone systems like the one you propose.

We saw a natural example of what happens to auto sales when prices increase two summers ago: SUV sales dropped precipitously and Honda sold even more Civics than it usually does. Prices have a way of making the unthinkable reality, whether Americans will "accept" them or not.

Why stick with petrol?

[shplorb]

This sounds an awful lot like a modern diesel engine. Modern diesels are turbocharged and use common-rail injection to achieve insane pressures at the injector heads (for really fine atomisation of the fuel), which directly inject into the cylinder. I believe the newer engines even stagger the injection during the compression and combustion cycles too to achieve more power and cleaner burning.

(NB: I'm not a revhead so I might be talking shit)

Re:Why stick with petrol?

[drinkypoo]

You're correct about all that, but the insanely high pressure is probably as much about getting the fuel into the chamber as it is about proper atomization. See, in a gasoline engine the fuel is [typically] drawn in with the intake air charge, although they are using direct injection sometimes as well. But in a diesel the ignition timing is controlled by injection timing. Diesels are typically over 17:1 compression - my Mercedes (currently defunct) is 22:1, PLUS an 11 PSI turbocharger. So you need considerable pressure just to get the fuel into the chamber. My Mercedes is old-school, it uses indirect injection (think CVCC, it's got a prechamber) but it also uses a mechanical injection pump that basically consists of a cam that runs five cylinder-type pumps (think hydraulics) and is driven by a connection to the crankshaft.

Re:Why stick with petrol?

[drinkypoo]

Check out one of the new-model Volkswagen TDIs. They're back on sale even in California. Most people have a hard time even knowing they're a diesel if they don't see (or comprehend) the badging. With low-sulfur diesel you can use a catalyst, so the emissions are even quite good. (And if you run on veggie oil, or biodiesel, they're even better.)

I don't get it

[roman_mir]

How do we go from this:

A vehicle that used this approach would operate around 25 percent more efficiently than a vehicle with a conventional engine.

to this: ...Cohn and his colleagues have created a design that they believe could triple the power of a test engine, an advance that could allow automakers to convert small engines designed for economy cars into muscular engines with more than enough power for SUVs or sports cars.

does a 25% increase in efficiency translate into tripling the power output?

Re:I don't get it

[dal20402]

Yes. Note that I don't actually believe the claim about tripling power, at least not with a whole lot of *very heavy* reinforcement of the block and heads.

For example: (Note: Numbers strictly pulled out of ass.)

2.4l conventional engine: 150 hp, 30 mpg

2.4l Super-Mega-Monster-Gas-TDI-Ethanol engine: 450 hp, 12.5 mpg

Your engine is 25% more efficient per hp and is generating 3x as much power.

Of course, the real application they have in mind is to create reinforced motorcycle-size engines that can power sedans, or small car motors that can power SUVs. If your 2.0l engine can create 360 hp, big torque, and get 17-18 mpg, you've reinvented a turbodiesel, except that your engine is (even with reinforcements) way smaller and lighter.

Re:I don't get it

[coredog64]

In addition, there's also a point at which a significant reduction in the size and weight of one item (read: That big fucking cast-iron engine under the hood) can drive you towards significant structural reductions in the rest of the vehicle (read: Suspension, the unit-body structure that holds up the engine and transmission, etc. etc.) which then makes it easier to decrease aerodynamic drag without compromising the payload envelope (i.e. where the doofus GP poster sits). You then see an increase in installed efficiency.

The simple example for this is the motorcycle: An 1100cc motorcycle is insanely fast and gets kick-ass fuel economy where the same 1100cc displacement in your run-of-the-mill Suzuki econobox means you're insane to drive it on the highway.

Since when is this news

[Ninety-9 SE-L]

Um, we figured this out decades ago. Race engines types of higher octane solutions to raise boost and compression. Methanol, Ethanol, Alcohol, Race fuel. It's simple chemistry. Pure gasoline packs more energy but is unstable, additives like Ethanol raise octane ratings making the fuel more stable but packing less punch (energy per volume of fuel). E85 is equivalent to 108-116 octane, good stuff, but not for a Buick. Throw it into a regular car and you need to suck down more fuel to get the same output, however, throw it into a high compression or high boost engine, and you can more effectively make power. High compression engines are definitely more efficient, ask me how I know. I run 12:1 on 93 octane and get 37MPG on the highway, my car also runs 13s at the track. Before I went high compression, I made about 30MPG on 87 Octane. Calculate this out and I save money even though I'm paying 20c more per gallon. This is racing technology and it's not even remotely new. The only thing that's new is E85 is available at more places and cars are being set up to run E85. If you put E85 in a regular car, you're an idiot. If you buy a car that's supposed to run E85, make sure that it's set up to make the most out of the fuel and never go back to standard gasoline.

Re:Since when is this news

[Andy_R]

The difference between this idea and simply mixing ethanol into the petrol is that the ethanol is injected first, so it vapourises, cooling the compression chamber down, in a similar way to a water injection intercooler. Quite how they arrive at a huge power gain from this isn't adequately explained though, and they do seem to ignore the difficulties of strengthening an engine enough to cope with triple the power, and a few thousand freeze/thaw cycles per second, and the extra weight that's going to add.

Getting a lot of power from a small engine isn't very difficult, the Brabus tuned version of my Smart Roadster (review here) gets over 100bhp from a sub 0.7 l engine, and my less tuned 80bhp version give me about 60 mpg (and thats using our smaller british gallons!). The downside is you don't get lots of torque, which is why you'll only find this engine in a light sporty car, not an SUV.

Re:Since when is this news

[tygt]

give me about 60 mpg (and thats using our smaller british gallons!)

You mean the little ones that are only about 120% the size of the US gallons?

brief review of article

[Xiph]

Yes, i'm whoring on the firstpost reply... Daniel Cohn from MIT claims to have increased the efficiency of a regular car engine, by altering the fuel injection system to combine direct injection, turbo charging and alchool into one system.

A vehicle that used this approach would operate around 25 percent more efficiently than a vehicle with a conventional engine.

They state that it is key to overcome the knock effect, from when the gas explodes before it's supposed to be ignited by the sparkplug. This is done by using the cooling effect of evaporating alcohol. They also recognize the fact that these addons makes the engine more expensive, but claim that it will be offset by not needing as large an engine. (It does not appear as if it has been properly analyzed). They claim that because it's a hybrid of existing technologies it could be ready as soon as 2011.

This should be a lot more accurate than the original summary.

Re:brief review of article

[suraklin]

This means that gas stations would have to be retooled to provide ethanol. If you're going to retool the gas stations to provide ethanol, you might as well retool them to provide hydrogen instead

If you had bothered to read the article you would have come across this paragraph.

The researchers devised a system in which gasoline would be injected into the combustion chamber by conventional means. Ethanol would be stored in its own tank or compartment and would be introduced by a separate direct-injection system. The ethanol would have to be replenished only once every few months, roughly as often as the oil is changed. A vehicle that used this approach would operate around 25 percent more efficiently than a vehicle with a conventional engine.

So this could be something that is refilled when getting routine maintainence instead of a weekly fillup.

Re:brief review of article

[Anonymous Coward]

Who gives two shits about making petrol engines 25% more efficient when Diesels are already 50% better in practical applications.

Once again, this just shows that what Americans don't know about car technology could just about be crammed into the Grand Canyon.

Volkswagen already have quite a few turbocharged FSI petrol and Diesel engines - take a look at how efficient they are before swallowing this MIT bullshit.

Re:brief review of article

[dgatwood]

I missed the "every few months" part. So that removes the safety concern. It still doesn't address the other problem, though.

Jiffy lube says to change oil my oil every 3,000 miles or three months. The manufacturer says 5,000 or six months. Even if I forget to change it and go 7,000, my car does not stop running because my car does not burn oil. If yours does, this probably indicates that your rings are worn or some such problem. Indeed, I could drive for 400,000+ miles on synthetic oil in cool weather without my car suddenly stopping. That's a little extreme, but you get the picture. By contrast, if I run over the limit on changing the ethanol, the car will likely stop running. And that will either be another gauge that people will have to learn to watch or another idiot light that they will ignore and then their car will stop.

The point is that it's a significant change to the way the vehicle is maintained, with no real benefit when compared with today's alternative fuel technology, and it won't be out for four years, by which time fuel cells should be leaving such designs in the dust.

Re:brief review of article

[voidptr]

If you're going to retool the gas stations to provide ethanol, you might as well retool them to provide hydrogen instead. Except for that minor detail that ethanol is liquid at room temperatures, and otherwise behaves alot like gasoline for the purposes of storing and dispensing it. The cost to refit an existing gas station to carry ethanol is likely orders of magnitude lower than a refit to supply cryogenic hydrogen.

In addtion, you could concievably blend 87 octane and Ethanol on-site to provide E85 to existing flex-fuel vehicles that can use it today. There's no installed base of hydrogen vehicles like that to transition on.

Re:brief review of article

[Andy Dodd]

"And that will either be another gauge that people will have to learn to watch or another idiot light that they will ignore and then their car will stop."

With modern engine control systems, it isn't too hard to back off the timing and the boost when the alcohol runs out.

They'll get a "low on alcohol" idiot light, and while their car will not stop, it will run like shit and they'll go get a refill.

Re:brief review of article

[MasterOfMuppets]

Not really, if you run out of Ethanol, the engine will run fine, but with reduced performance due to the increased knock, or more accurately due to the retardation of the timing/change of the mixture to avoid the possibility of increased knock.

Not changing your oil at the manufacturers recommended interval is foolish and stupid, and imho you deserve engine trouble if you dont! An ethanol topup is the least of your worries if you don't follow the cars basic maintenance requirements.

Re:brief review of article

[tkrotchko]

"Jiffy lube says to change oil my oil every 3,000 miles or three months."

Undoubtedly because Jiffy lube makes a lot of money from people wasting oil this way.

"The manufacturer says 5,000 or six months."

Unlikely. I think 7,500 miles is more common. BMW suggests 15,000 miles, but does use a simple computer that estimates gallons burned and tells you when the oil needs to be changed. The result is cheaper for the owner and better for the environment.

I only bring this up because Consumer Reports debunked the 3K oil change rule about 10 years ago with actual engine teardowns. Globally, imagine the effect if people are changing oil twice (or 3 times) as often as necessary. Even if everyone was recycling the old oil, but when you figure a decent percent just dumps it and it winds up in the water, or soil. It's just terrible for the environment.

Re:brief review of article

[sleigher]

This is similar to alcohol injection, and has been going on for a very long time. The main difference is where and when it gets injected but the effect is the same. Cool the combustion chamber so you can run more boost. Works great! Now if we can get the car companies to make small turbo charged motors with ethanol/alcohol injection we will be doing great. You can run a small tank in the engine compartment with alcohol and inject it straight into the intake as boost levels rise. This stops detonation which allows you to have ALOT more power. Generally you run so little alcohol in the mixture that it isn't really flammable. Here is a SMC kit for alochol injection

http://www.rjcracing.com/SMC_Alcohol_Injection/smc _alcohol_injection.html

--

Re:brief review of article

[coredog64]

Amazingly, the diesel is not right for everyone.

As an honest-to-goodness engineer with several semesters of propulsion classes, it never ceases to amaze me
that the group of internet fora readers has a massive intersection with diesel fanbois who just can't seem to
get it through their thick-as-a-diesel-engine-block skulls that engineering is about compromise and there
is no such thing as the one best way.

Re:brief review of article

[profplump]

Diesel isn't right for everyone. But it is right for a lot of applications where we currently use gasoline, particularly in the US, due primarily to poorly targeted emissions standards, institutional inertia, and public perception. None of those are technical problems, and they're only engineering problems if you're trying to selling something and the business requirements conflict with the technical ones.

You can't tell me that a gasoline engine is the best way to drive a low-voltage (i.e. low-speed) generator in a system with a sufficient power buffer to allow load adjustments to happen over a period of up to several minutes. I've actually worked on systems that did fuel->electric->rotary motion in a non-propulsion setting with much tighter load-match timing requirements than your average hybrid car, (moreover it was a system that was previously fuel->rotary motion just like hybrid cars) and I really can't fathom why you'd chose a gasoline engine for such an application. That's the kind of silliness that leads to diesel fanboys -- it's a counter to the silliness that puts gasoline into applications where diesel *is* the right choice.

Re:brief review of article

[MrNaz]

As an honest-to-goodness consumer, I can tell you that after driving a diesel VW and an equivalent petrol model, I wouldn't give two hoots what kind of fuel the thing uses as long as I buy less of it.

I don't know why spin doctors with lots and lots of letters after their names can't get it through their thick as a university textbook skulls that all the BS about engineering compromise and economic considerations don't change the fact that consumers don't care about the technology getting them from A to B, so long as it gets them from A to B.

For the overwhelming majority of applications, diesel does that as well as petrol, and don't tell me otherwise or I'll run you over with any of the hundreds of diesel vehicles available in Europe from tiny hatchbacks through to heavy earth moving equipment.

Re:What new technology?

[Rei]

It might be a while. They're still busy relocating Jimmy Hoffa's body, plotting out new wars in the Middle East, and assassinating more people connected to the moon landing hoax.

Re:Pretty soon, you'll have a turbo Diesel

[drinkypoo]

You can already do alcohol/nitrous injection into a diesel engine for power, and water injection has been fairly common for diesel performance for quite some time now. But because diesels don't have knock (they OPERATE by compression/hotspot ignition) this technology is utterly inapplicable there.

Kids and car enthusiasts did this decades ago

[Oz0ne]

Seriously. Direct injection, fine tuned control of timing, and turbo charging all put together is what you see in a large number of hobbiest race cars. Drag, autocross, whatever. A lot of times they'll skimp on tolerances thus reducing the reliability of the engine, but it's not at all uncommon to take a solid normally aspirated engine and triple it's output with some good planning and bit of machine work.

I've personally never added a turbo where there wasn't one before, but I HAVE done machine work, timing work, and injector work. I've taken a car from 220 hp to 290 hp with no detriment to the mileage, just better fuel/air mixtures and precise timing. It doesn't surprise me at all that people who've actually studied combustion instead of working on it for fun have been able to triple the output.

What's surprising is how inneficiently tuned a lot of engines come from the factory.

What would you say...

[Skadet]

What would you say to some nice ethanol?

I'd say, "Don't get too comfortable in that glass!"

Check out the 07 MINI - it has this stuff already.

[sbaker]

The '07 MINI Cooper'S has a 4 cylinder 1.6 liter direct-injected twin-turbocharged engine - and since most fuel in the US now contains 10% ethanol, I'd say the "experimental" technology these guys are pushing is already out there in at least one production car. The problem with knocking has been nailed a bazillion years ago - just about all modern cars have an anti-knock sensor that can richen the mixture if it detects signs of knocking - but with high octane gasoline - it only very rarely has to actually do that - so the "problem" of knocking isn't really there. The only time the MINI actually does something like that is when the dumb user filled the thing with regular low-octane gas instead of 'the good stuff'.

Add to that that the MINI has goodies like electric oil, power steering and water pumps that can actually be turned off (rather than merely bypassed) when not needed - so the engine reaches it's most efficient temperature faster and you aren't burning fuel circulating fluids that don't need to be circulated yet. It has computer controlled inlet and exhaust valves - so the timing is infinitely variable - and can be varied separately for each cylinder. For short bursts of accelleration, the car has an 'overboost' feature from the turbo - which won't help you much for prolonged hard accelleration - but is great for a rapid burst of speed for overtaking, blasting out of a corner (FUN!) or blowing away those bloody ugly Scion xB's at traffic lights (a personal mission of mine, I might add).

Turbo lag, premature combustion

[hcdejong]

If they use this to increase turbocharger pressure, I'd expect turbo lag [1] to become a problem again. It'd be better to increase the compression ratio instead. Or maybe combine ethanol injection with some of the variable-compression designs that have been surfacing lately.

Also: why would premature combustion still be a problem in a direct-injection engine? It should be possible to inject the fuel when it is needed, and not before. Or would that lead to timing problems?

1: turbo lag is the delay between pressing the accelerator and power output rising. It's affected by the size of the turbocharger, boost pressure and a few less important factors.

Re:Hard to hide now

[Rei]

Huh? You mean this Cobasys?

"Cobasys, the First Name in Nickel Metal Hydride Battery Solutions, provides commercial NiMH battery systems for the hybrid electric vehicle (HEV), electric vehicle (EV) and 42 Volt transportation markets. The NiMHax brand for EV, HEV, HD HEV, and 42 Volt systems, provides flexible standardized architecture for a wide-range of vehicle solutions."

Doesn't look very blocked to me. Let's search for more info. The company is greatly expanding...

http://www.chevron.com/news/press/2005/2005-05-18. asp

"ORION, MI, May 18, 2005 -- Cobasys, a leader in advanced Nickel Metal Hydride (NiMH) battery technology, today announced the grand opening of its new 84,000 square-foot headquarters in Orion, Michigan. The engineering, development, administrative, sales and marketing facility currently houses 175 of the company's 220 employees, and is expanding to accommodate anticipated employment growth of an additional 25 percent through 2006."

Further searches reveal that all sorts of cars are using Cobasys batteries -- for example, the Saturn Vue. Two companies also produce batteries on license from them -- Panasonic and Sanyo, which produce other hybrid car batteries. It looks like the negative press Cobasys has earned is because it aggressively enforces its patents against NiMH interlopers (one of which happened to produce the EV1's batteries). Looks, by all means, like they want to be the only ones selling NiMH in the US, and selling them in bulk -- not that they don't want anyone selling them.

From what I've seen, I have to agree with Wired.com's automotive blog:

"Chevron should be lauded for investing in technology that reduces the demand for its main products (gasoline). The company realizes that hybrids are a great opportunity, so following the "if you can't beat 'em, join 'em), they are profiting from the growth of hybrids."

Oil companies will either adapt (by becoming "energy" companies) or die as the world slowly changes energy sources. That doesn't seem to stop the "it's a conspiracy to suppress energy-saving technology!" nuts.

Re:Why funny?

[LiENUS]

the beauty of a diesel is it runs on any oil, used cooking oil, cod liver oil, diesel fuel oil, motor oil. Properly setup itl'l run on used motor oil, used transmission fluid, used any oil.

Audi RS4

[mihalis]

Audi already uses direct injection and uses a compression ratio of 12.5:1 in its 4.2 liter v8 achieving 100 horsepower/liter without a turbocharger, see 2007 Audi RS4 review at Edmunds.COM

I'm intrigued to imagine what they could do if this ethanol based charge cooling works out. I'm already forced to put 15% ethanol in my Audi V8 (sadly NOT an RS4), living in NYC, but if this works out maybe I can support the farmers AND have a powerful car for the weekends (I commute on the subway).

Re:Check out the 07 MINI - it has this stuff alrea

[jumpingfred]

What!? Most fuel in the US contains 10% ethanol? Only 1/8th of the Gas in the sates has ethanol.

http://www.eere.energy.gov/cleancities/blends/etha nol.html

Re:Check out the 07 MINI - it has this stuff alrea

[GameMaster]

You either need to read the article or, if you have, brush up on your reading comprehension skills. The technique used in the article is supposed to allow them to push the turbo pressure much higher than any modern car can handle, even when using high octane fuel. They're talking about using a separate direct injection system to pump a small amount of pure ethanol into the cylinder out of phase with the gasoline. It would cool the cylinder enough to stop knock when the gas is injected at extreme pressures. Supposedly, you would have to replace the ethanol about as often as you have to replace the oil (every few months).

Next time, please try reading the article instead of seeing "ethanol" and "turbocharger" in the summary and shooting your mouth off.

-GameMaster

Buy a direct injection turbo charged car today!

[Spoke]

People have long known that ethanol fuels have high octane ratings (the measure of how knock resistant a fuel is).

People have also long known that turbo charging an engine is a great way to extract more power out of a small engine.

People have also known that direct injection allows you to reduce the tendency to knock since it lets you inject fuel into the hot engine at the very last second - reducing the amount of time the air/fuel mixture has to heat up.

And guess what? Mazda produces cars today that has both direct injection and is turbo charged. For example, the MazdaSpeed 3.

It's 2.3 liter engine produces 263hp and 280lb/ft of torque and has an EPA fuel economy rating of 20/28mpg. So yes, while it does provide good power and decent gas mileage, it's nothing earth shattering compared to turbocharged cars without direct injection.

The engine has a very high compression ratio for a turbo charged gasoline engine (9.5:1), especially one that pushes over 15psi of boost into the cylinders. That is direct injection working for you.

For example, the slightly bigger turbo charged 2.5 liter Subaru WRX engine has a compression ratio of 8.4:1 and maximum boost of 11.6psi is rated at 230hp/235lb/ft of torque (though it is admittedly underrated) with similar fuel economy as the Mazdaspeed 3 considering that it is all-wheel-drive (20/26mpg EPA). The more powerful WRX STi has the same 2.5l displacement, 8.2:1 compression ratio and a bigger turbo pushing 14.5 psi is rated at 293hp/290lb/ft of torque but less fuel economy, 18/24mpg.

Unless there is a lot of potential still to be found by combining these 2 technologies, I see it as more of an evolution rather than a revolution. Perhaps a 1.0 liter engine would be able to muster 120+ hp/torque but I find it hard to believe that it could achieve mileage ratings significantly higher than a hybrid. And you still can't turn the engine off when idling or coasting down hill.

So how about a direct-injection, turbo-charged, atkinson cycle hybrid and combine the best of all technologies?

This is not news, or a discovery.

[a4r6]

For anyone that knows their stuff about car engines, this article is a joke.

Both turbocharging and direct injection are preexisting technologies, and neither looks particularly impressive. Indeed, used separately, they would lead to only marginal improvements in the performance of an internal-combustion engine. Really? So there aren't people slapping large turbochargers on little 3 liter supra engines and increasing the engine output 5-fold? Or is that only marginal?

That aside, the problem with this is that a turbocharged engine at full output is very inefficient. A larger naturally aspirated engine will always be more efficient than the small turbocharged engine of the same maximum output. That's because a lot of energy is wasted compressing the intake charge, more than can be made up for with the displacement decrease, even with the newest fanciest garrett turbos. The only merit efficiency-wise of turbo engines is engine efficiency at low loads (when the engine is not under boost) relative to the maximum output. There is obviously a balance to be struck here, and that's why 18 wheelers have big v8's with turbo chargers, rather than even bigger engines or smaller engines running under high pressure. Designing a motor vehicle is always a balancing act, and in most cases a turbo is not helpful because of the cost, reliability and other shortcomings versus the benefits.

Recently, car makers have started using direct injection to combat preignition that can damage an engine. It allows them to run leaner fuel mixtures, higher compression and more aggressive spark timing, improving the power/efficiency of engines. Direct injection has the exact same benefit with turbocharging. There are no compounded benefits from mixing the two technologies.

Re:What new technology?

[AK Marc]

Are you implying that they haven't done things like, say, help innovate Lithium-based batteries, then prevent their use in electric cars?

Equivalent (but inferior) to WATER injection.

[Ungrounded Lightning]

Turbocharging already gives about a 2-to-1 boost while avoiding the knock limits - and it doesn't require a second tank, just higher-octane gas (which, at current price levels, doesn't command all that high a cost premium over regular). So the claimed 3-to-1 boost, while a significant further improvement worth going after, isn't as big a jolt as the standalone description would make you think.

(My commuting vehicle is a 4-cylinder turbo - and 15 years old. It has 100k miles on it and I'm rebuilding the vehicle around it at a cost of about 8 grand - suspension, tranny, major engine service - because I can't get an equivalently performing vehicle on the current new market at any reasonable price. That's apparently because adding a turbo to a small passenger car has enough downsides that the public isn't interested. (Or perhaps because the auto companies' marketing departments are totally clueless.))

Direct WATER injection of a high-compression ALSO gets this 3-to-1 or better boost. It has the same advantages as the alcohol injection at less cost: Higher power, reduced preignition, etc. But you can go even farther, since water won't, itself, combust.

You also get more efficient transfer of heat to mechanical advantage by using the vaporization of the water powered by the heat of the regular fuel.

And water is easier to find and cheaper than ethanol when it comes time to refil the second tank.

This has been well known for a long time.

The reason it hasn't been built into production engines so far: It requires two tanks of consumables. Run out of one and the engine has to stop, or run in a degraded mode. Auto makers haven't wanted to add that sort of operational complexity due to liability and consumer satisfaction issues.

This "new" idea has the same drawback, only moreso, since the second consumable liquid is less generally available and already highly regulated.

= = = =

On the other hand, we've now got much more flexible computerized control of the engine. With the compression boost provided by a turbo (which can be disabled by software control if the alcohol or water runs out), a car with an empty second-fuel tank can still run while meeting emission requirements and without self-damage. You'd lose 2/3 of your peak power and your MPG would drop. But the car would remain legal, street-legal, and unharmed.

So perhaps it's time to revisit direct cooling-fluid injection, dual-consumable, internal combustion engines.

But if so, unless research shows that ethanol has some BIG advantage over water, using water would have the advantage that you don't need to modify the support infrastructure.

Re:Equivalent (but inferior) to WATER injection.

[Ungrounded Lightning]

"You also get more efficient transfer of heat to mechanical advantage by using the vaporization of the water powered by the heat of the regular fuel." I don't believe this is true. When water is converted to steam, some energy is used up in the heat of vaporization. This energy doesn't increase the temperature of the water at all, it is the energy required for the phase change. So instead of that energy being used to increase the combustion temperature (thus increasing combustion pressure), it is used up converting the injected water (or any injected liquid) to a gas.

The vaporization increases the volume of gas enormously - in an enclosed space. That increases the pressure drastically. So the heat of vaporization did a bunch of work without necessarily changing the temperature of the water. Meanwhile, lowering the combustion front propagation rate lets the combustion run at a higher temperature - adding more of the heat at high temperature and improving the carnot cycle efficiency. (The water is under considerable pressure and the drops are microscopic. So they get very hot BEFORE they boil. Further, things are happening so fast they can superheat far above even the raised boiling point from the local pressure.)

Think of the liquid water as working fluid you didn't have to compress before ignition.

I haven't done any thermogoshdarnic calculations to check this. Perhaps somebody with more knowledge can fill us all in.

Meanwhile, steam engines that end up with the steam superheated are noted for efficiency, despite having the same heat-of-vaporization issues - even those that don't get to scavenge low-temperature heat for the vaporization step. Unlike ordinary steam engines, internal-combustion droplet-flash-boiling can add most of the heat of vaporization at a temperature far above the softening point of the metals containing the process.

Re:Check out the 07 MINI - it has this stuff alrea

[hardburn]

The '07 MINI Cooper'S has a 4 cylinder 1.6 liter direct-injected twin-turbocharged engine - and since most fuel in the US now contains 10% ethanol, I'd say the "experimental" technology these guys are pushing is already out there in at least one production car

As the article notes, direct injection has been around for a while (since the '50s). Turbochargers are older than that. The idea here uses direct injection in a novel way.

. . . just about all modern cars have an anti-knock sensor that can richen the mixture if it detects signs of knocking - but with high octane gasoline - it only very rarely has to actually do that - so the "problem" of knocking isn't really there.

The problem isn't stopping current engines from knocking. The problem is to increase compression ratios or boost of an engine without introducing knocking. Increasing the amount of gas in the mixture only makes your fuel efficiency worse.

The key to this new idea is that the ethanol is injected separately from the regular gas (specifically, during the compression phase). Naturally, you'll need a separate tank of ethanol, which the article claims would need to be replenished about as often as a oil change.

As we know from thermodynamics, matter going through a phase change from liquid to vapor will suck away a lot energy. Ethanol has the nice quality that it will go through a phase change at a lower temperature compared to water.

Thermodynamics also tells us that as pressure increases, so does temperature. In a normal engine, the piston will compress the fuel/air mixture, thus increasing the temperature of the mixture. If the temperature gets too high, the mixture will ignite on its own. This is more likely if your engine has too high of a compression ratio or you're using some kind of boost system (turbo or superchargers). This is why cars with turbos often have intercoolers.

What they're doing here is increasing the compression ratio and/or adding a turbo. You can choose to slap on an intercooler if you wish. As the piston goes through the compression stroke, the fuel/air mixture gets hotter as before, but then some ethanol is injected, which vaporizes, thus cooling the mixture. The mixture is then ignited by a spark plug normally. Brilliant.

Re:Check out the 07 MINI - it has this stuff alrea

[Alien Being]

Knock sensors detect detonation, not pre-ignition. Besides, richening the mixture defeats efficiency. The idea is to run lean without detonation.

Injecting ethanol separately from the gasoline is different than mixing it, and it's nothing new. Oldsmobile made turbocharged cars with alcohol injection 40 years ago and people have been adding it to turbo Buicks for a long time as well.

Direct injection's time will come, but I'd wait at least a decade for the industry to be ready to handle 1000psi gasoline rails.

Electric water and oil pumps are a suckers bet. Don't plan on a long life for that engine.

Re:New Technology

[couchslug]

"You can still find push-rod engines being built today..."

Within the right rpm range, they are perfectly suitable for many installations.
OHC engines are nice for high rpm use, and a dandy martketing feature, but pushrod engines can do the job from industrial equipment to Top Fuel drag racing.

Preignition is NOT knock

[Alizarin Erythrosin]

Preignition is when the fuel/air charge ignites at the point of lowest compression, and then the engine has to compress this hot, expanded gas. This is how holes get burned in pistons. Knock is detonation, where the fuel/air charge does not burn in a controlled flame front, i.e. it suddenly detonates. It requires that timing advance be backed down a bit.

Yes, THAT Cobasys

[Engineer-Poet]

You are quoting Cobasys' press about itself. This is not unlike citing the "Live green, go yellow" campaign as "proof" that GM's products are all ecologically beneficial, or "Carbon dioxide, we call it life" as proof that Exxon-Mobil is likewise.

Other people have different things to say about Cobasys:

Boschert describes many obstacles hindering widespread production of PHEVs, but none are more important to her than the difficulties that EV developers encounter when they try to obtain large-format nickel metal hydride (NiMH) batteries.

And this, which killed the electric RAV4:

Chevron then put the battery rights under control of a Joint Venture, "COBASYS," and decided to fund a lawsuit against large-format (electric car battery) competitors such as Toyota-Panasonic.
Chevron's lawsuit led to a settlement agreement with PEVE (and Sanyo, etc.) whereby Toyota paid $30M to Chevron, Toyota was granted the rights to use "small-format" batteries on the Prius, and Toyota agreed not to build "large-format" versions of its batteries (needed for plug-in cars) for export to the U.S. until 2014.

There's plenty more, just perform the search suggested at the first link.

It appears likely that the advances in Li-ion and carbon-backed lead-acid will make it far more difficult to keep the next round of batteries out of vehicles. Regardless, the delay in availability of mass-market PHEV's and EV's has meant many billions or tens of billions of dollars in additional revenue for the oil companies and oil exporting nations. (The current administration shares responsibility for e.g. terminating the Partnership for a New Generation of Vehicles, which would have delivered 80-MPG sedans about.... now.)

The take-home lesson? Don't believe everything you read.

Power vs Efficiency

[Doc Ruby]

Cohn and his colleagues have created a design that they believe could triple the power of a test engine.
[...]
A vehicle that used this approach would operate around 25 percent more efficiently than a vehicle with a conventional engine.

Triple the power doesn't mean triple the efficiency, if "antiknock" means more fuel is burned. 25% more efficient is more like it. Fuelcells are typically 50% fuel efficient, compared with 40% maximum (to date) internal combustion. That's about a 25% efficiency increase, it's already here, and it's just getting started. Plus the drastically reduced pollution (especially Greenhouse pollution) means huge energy efficiency at the end of the cycle, when climate disasters are avoided. Meanwhile fuelcell efficiency is just getting started, racing towards 80% (over triple typical internal combustion efficiency) and beyond.

So while this advance might be good for the market that's not ready for fuelcells, the fuelcells still look better. But at least we've got scientists and engineers working on fuel efficiency, and not just ways to squander the remaining fuel for combustion engines. That's a big change in efficiency in itself.

NiMH Batteries?

[kad77]

So producing hundreds of thousands of tons of NiMH or LiON batteries for cars is better for the planet than buying a 40mpg gasoline vehicle...

I've got some new crack-vitamins for you!

Re:New Technology

[zzatz]

The benefit of OHC is higher RPM, allowing a small displacement engine to pump the same volume of air as a larger, slower engine. Smaller displacement may mean lower weight for some components, but OHC adds weight for others. When taxes are based on displacement, OHC is a clear win.

But OHC has drawbacks, too. Higher RPM also means more frictional losses pumping that air, and to a lesser extent, higher frictional losses in other areas. OHC also requires more parts, increasing cost and weight and reducing reliability. For the same displacement, the heads and drive train will weigh more for an OHC engine than for a pushrod engine. This is especially true for the V layout, where both banks can share a camshaft in a pushrod engine, but you need two (or four) cams and a heavier, more complex cam drive train.

Pumping losses kill efficiency at high RPMs. For racing or for a sports car, efficiency is secondary to power/weight ratio. Turbo- or supercharging improves power/weight even more, but again lowers efficiency due to friction, lowers reliability due to increased complexity, and increases price. That's OK when maximum power is the concern. When getting the most power out of a given volume of fuel has priority, large slow engines rule.

Both pushrod and OHC engines can be designed for whatever compression ratio and combustion properties you want. Neither has an advantage there.

High revving engines are ALWAYS the result of rules or taxes based on displacement. Eliminate taxes based on displacement and substitute taxes on fuel, and you'll see a shift towards pushrod designs.

Re:What About Failures?

[squizzar]

As far as I know most modern engines are pretty much entirely computer controlled. The added complexity is the few lines of code that detect the ethanol tank is empty and switch to a different set of performance characteristics (lower boost, different fuelling and timing etc.) Given that a lot of cars will modify their performance based on driving style (K-series Rover engines I know for a fact do) - drive hard and the engine will respond quicker, drive conservatively and it will favour economy and that the difference between engines of similar capacities and differing performance is quite often determined electronically, it seems that the electronics are in charge of these decisions, so there is little complexity to be added. The simplest solution is to make an empty ethanol tank a failure that drops the engine into the limp-home mode (usually restricted to about 30 Mph) until it is refilled.

Cobasys passed up lots of sales

[Engineer-Poet]

It would be news if Toyota had infringed on their patents, there was money to be made, and they *didn't* sue.

And the outcome could have been "Toyota agrees to license the prismatic cell technology from Cobasys". This would have made Cobasys a lot more money than keeping Toyota out of the market for another 7 years.

Carbon-backed lead acid is not *that* impressive, and if it has the typical lead-acid chemistry reliability, let me be the first to say "no thank you" to a car full of them.

The whole point of the carbon-foam backing is that it eliminates the grid-corrosion failure mode and doesn't have enough room for large sulfate crystals to grow.

Li-ion: see this post for my take on Li-ion.

Neither the lithium iron phosphate nor the lithium titanium spinel chemistries have the fire failure mode (the Saphion demo pierces a cell, and nothing much happens). Some people think Altair Nano is dodgy, but they're claiming 0-100% charge in 5 minutes and 80% charge in 60 seconds. Oh, and 15,000 cycles so far with more than 80% capacity remaining. A123Systems isn't far behind, and they've been shipping product in power tools for a while.

It's always easy to say "NotYetHereTech will revolutionize the world!"

It's harder to deny stuff that you can buy off the shelf today. A few years ago, a small Li-ion cell was a lot of money. Today, you can order cars (Tesla roadster, eBox) powered by the things. The trend is clear.

Not that I'd expect you to admit this, because you're a troll.