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Lotus Teases With a Fuel-Agnostic Two-Stroke Engine
JohnnyBGod writes "Lotus claim to have invented a new, more efficient engine design. The two-stroke, flex-fuel engine can achieve, according to the surprisingly technical press release, 'approximately 10% better [fuel consumption] than current spray-guided direct injection, spark ignition engines.' The engine has a sliding puck arrangement to control its compression ratio, and has direct injection and a wet sump, to eliminate fuel leakage to the exhaust and the need to mix oil with the fuel, two common problems with two-stroke engines. Lotus engineering have released a video explaining the engine's operation."
So where is this magical Ford engine at now? A one-off prototype car is no better than a single experimental engine.
Dude, Chill!
Let's assume you're right and it could have been done 30 years ago (it couldn't but I'll get to that later). It's newsworthy because no-one has done this before, in fact it's more newsworthy if someone has a really obvious idea that no-one has done before. I'm sure the first person to stick an internal combustion or steam engine on a cart was told it was a really obvious idea, but the first horseless carriage still deserved to be big news. I'd certainly class a major engine development as being as newsworthy as the latest revision of the Linux kernel being released.
As I understand the article they're using direct injection similar to that used in modern performance diesels. This is a relatively new technology that requires very high pressure fuel injectors which are still a developing technology and weren't available 10 years ago never mind 30. Don't forget mechanical engineering is a much slower moving field than software - they have to design and test things in their field before they release them ;-)
"The weirdest thing about a mind, is that every answer that you find, is the basis of a brand new cliche" -
You are assuming that ethanol is a green fuel. I'm not so sure about corn-based ethanol. Future technology may change that, but I am uneasy using a subsidized food crop to make fuel for cars.
If Slashdot were chemistry it would look like this:Cadaverine
No one outside the USA uses corn for ethanol. It's only grown in the USA because it gets stupidly high government subsidies making it cheaper than everything else. If you drive across France, you'll see lots of bright yellow fields growing rapeseed, which is used to produce fuel.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
I have lived in Europe and the US - people in Europe really have a hard time understanding the American way of driving. Every winter we (family of 4, plus dog) take a trip of 2000 miles round trip, and most summers we take another of 1000 miles. A 400 mile round trip camping trip is something we do twice a year. No way am I going to rent a van 4+ times a year, I love my minivan and all its creature comforts.
Look at the statistics - Americans have almost twice as many cars per head as in Europe, and they drive each of those cars almost twice as far each year. The fact that we get our fuel "almost for free" may not justify such behavior, but it does help explain it.
I think that a lot of Europeans kid themselves that their virtuous behavior is due to a moral superiority when really, if fuel suddenly cost one third of what it does now in Norway, I'd predict in a couple of years you'd be seeing a lot of V8s on your roads.