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Looking To Better Engines Instead of Electric Vehicles
hlovy writes "Don Runkle thinks it's engines, not batteries, that will make automobiles cleaner and more efficient. 'We unabashedly say that we have the best solution,' says Runkle, the CEO of Allen Park, MI-based engine developer EcoMotors International. The startup, which brought in $23 million in Series B financing this summer from Menlo Park, CA-based Khosla Ventures and Seattle billionaire Bill Gates, has designed an opposing piston, opposing cylinder engine that uses fewer parts than traditional motors do and generates more power from each stroke of the engine, CEO Runkle says. He says the 'opoc' engine is smaller, lighter, and less expensive than the motors already out there, and a more viable option than switching automobile fleets over to electrical power."
If you bothered to RTFA instead of trolling, they explicitly talk about how you can add an electric motor to this engine to really put the mpg off the charts. Basically he's saying that, short term, this will boost the mpg of cars until all electric cars are cheaper / the infrastructure for them is built.
"The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants." ~Thomas Jefferson
You mean someone like...HITLER?!
Raters gon' rate.
Maker of supposedly cleaner engines thinks that cleaner engines is a better idea than electric vehicles. In other news, maker of windmills thinks wind energy is better than solar. Manufacturer of solar cells disagrees. BP thinks they're all full of shit.
Worse, take a look at the submitter's profile - very few posts (though going back a ways) and a whole lot of story submissions pimping some company or other. I'm catching a whiff of an ad campaign here.
I don't know the limit of efficiency that this new engine design will deliver, but at any sane value this does not solve our biggest problem here in the United States (and probably other nations as well.)
Everything we do is regulated by oil. Our food distribution runs on diesel, our manufacturing runs on diesel. Our military runs on diesel. Our workforce requires gas to get to work. Every facet of American life is dependent on oil based fuels without which our economy, our military, our industry, our agriculture and our commerce will fail. Even with extreme improvement in our ability to harness these fuels, it is extraordinarily unlikely that we can produce enough fuel to be self-sufficient. In short our national security and our very survival are in the hands of foreign powers.
In the best of circumstances this would be worrying, depending on close allies for your ability to survive is harrowing, but sustainable. We are not in the best of circumstances, The nations that produce the majority of oil are not staunch allies, but nations with populaces that are predominantly anti-US. At any time the structure in these countries could break down and we could find ourselves at war with them. This would be a war that even if we win could destroy us as a nation. If we conserve all our fuel resources for the War effort, which we would have to do if we want to win with conventional weapons, we would find ourselves bereft of fuel and the fuel production infrastructure itself most likely in shambles due to the war. Our way of life would be over just as surely as if we had been conquered by a foreign power.
We need to switch to electric not because it is more efficient (although it is) not because it will create jobs (though it will) not because it can be more environmentally sound (although it could be); we need to switch to electrical power because it keeps our vital infrastructure requirements in our own hands. It is a matter of national security, no nation can prosper if it id dependent on unfriendly nations for its very survival.
Little Brother, watching the watchers
Tried to figure out how this thing worked and I found this video here: http://www.engineeringtv.com/video/Opposed-Piston-Opposed-Cylinder
Some good technical questions and answers, as well as a working illustrative model of the engine.
Like a VW, Subaru, or BMW bike? This is new?
Ok, they may be taking this to a new level, but this design has been around for quite a while.
No. I thought the same and wondered why it was different from a flat 4 layout. This has two pistons per cylinder, each pushing away from each other. It's also an advanced two-stroke. (I remember in the late 80s and early 90s when all the talk was about how two-strokes were going to be the next big thing.)
You need to watch the linked video to see how it works. It's actually kinda cool. Each pair of opposing cylinders can act as an independent unit, so you can shut one unit down when you need less power. The guy claims significant fuel consumption savings.
Drill baby drill - on Mars
The VW Beetle used a horizontally-opposed engine, which is not the same thing as an opposed-piston engine. In an opposed-piston engine, each cylinder is double-ended, with a piston at each end and no head. A horizontally-opposed engine uses ordinary single-ended cylinders with a head and one piston.
No, I don't know anything about this stuff. I just know how to use Google and Wikipedia.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
I agree, let's stall for more time and wait until we're actually in trouble before we do anything! Forget future problems, all that matters is now!
Filthy, filthy copyrapists!
If you go to the site he has a bit more info including a graphic rendering of the engine >> EcoMotors International
As I understand it, "traditional" flat engine, or opposing cylinder engine technology uses multiple crankshafts and cylinders and are often based on two-stroke engine technology. Certainly none of the examples I saw or read about in the wikipedia article (Opposed-Piston Engine) seemed less complex, nor efficient.
This engine, uses two cylinders, each containing two opposing pistons, and only a single crankshaft to obtain 4-stroke emissions benefits without the added complexity of synchronising multiple crankshafts. Also, they're proposing that multiple such powerplants could be daisy-chained together to provide additional power when it is required. In theory, 1-4 of these modules connected thusly could give you performance up to that of an 8cy car, but use as few as two cylinders when the extra horse-power isn't necessary (by "turning on" extra modules as necessary, then turning them back off again when it isn't).
In theory at least, that should radically improve the available efficiencies of modern engines without needing to alter the existing fuel-distribution network, and without a loss of available horsepower when such is required. In that light, I would say it does represent "something new" (as opposed to your assertion to the contrary).
-AC
Everyone makes that same sorry mistake, extrapolating an unfavorable curve to infinity as if problems don't have gradual solutions. Lost of Bruce Sterling et all sf postulated worlds full of junkies, so many that society fell apart. Marxists had their nightmare fantasies, and when the world moved beyond tose conditions, they refused to recognize it, failed to adapt, and killed hundreds of millions to prove it.
The world just doesn't work like that, Hydrocarbons won't vanish overnight. They just get more and more expensive, and as the expense climbs, people come up with solutions.
The English burned up all their wood, then found coal, then found oil, and that is how things work.
It doesn't work by flying spaghetti monsters suddenly turning 90% of people into junkies, or sucking all the oil out of the ground in 5 seconds flat.
The biggest problem the world has is the damned fools that think they, and only they, can see the future, and if the world doesn't start working on their pet solution RIGHT NOW, everything is going to hell in a handbasket.
They refuse to believe that anyone else is smart, let alone smarter, that people have always found solutions, and that emergencies on a global scale just don't pop up out of thin air (except killer asteroids and rogue solar waves).
Give it a rest, smarty pants. Get on with your life. Stop living a daily nightmare, you will just scare yourself to death.
Infuriate left and right
Really? The Reagan administration is sitting on funding and permission for the United States Air Force to go ahead with a program in 2009 and 2010?
Mainly because of a bill passed in 2007 by the Democratic majority that came into Congress following the 2006 elections.
Zombie Reagan has more power than I thought.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/jan/30/air-force-liquid-coal-fuel
http://www.govexec.com/dailyfed/0109/013009kp1.htm
"We don't want new sources of energy that are going to make the greenhouse gas problem even worse," House Oversight Committee Chairman Henry Waxman, D-Calif., said in a recent interview.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/23811258/