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Diesel-Like Engine Could Boost Fuel Economy By 50%
bonch writes "Autoparts manufacturer Delphi has developed a diesel-like ignition engine running on gasoline, providing a potential 50 percent efficiency improvement over existing gas-powered engines. Engineers have long sought to run diesel-like engines on gasoline for its higher efficiency and low emissions. Delphi's engine, using a technique called gasoline-direct-injection compression ignition, could rival the performance of hybrid automobiles at a cheaper cost."
It's probably inevitable-- it's just a question of when. Battery cost per kWh has been decreasing at around 10% per year, and gasoline is getting consistently more expensive. It seems incredibly unlikely that both of these would stop moving toward the crossover point.
Seems a bit redundant really, I mean everything is moving over the next two decades to electric anyway.
Until we see new power plants being built I am not so sure we will have a large scale transition to electrically powered vehicles. Various parts of our electrical grid are already pretty stressed out and seeing periodic brown outs and black outs. This could put a damper on large scale adoption of electric vehicles.
Don't forget that, when considering the extra mining and transportation of rare earth metals required to build a hybrid car, its overall environmental impact might not be any better than a conventional gasoline engine. My choice would be to buy a gasoline powered car with 50% improved efficiency over hybrid--at least until battery technology (and China's environmental policies!) improve.
You keep using that word "justice." I do not think it means what you think it means.
If by "economic social justice" you mean "ways I believe that I should spend your money" and if by "unjust" you mean "bad because it is not how I would allocate your resources," then maybe.
But "justice" is the application of law to achieve a fair, reasonable, and consistent outcome. If your neighbor gets fined $100 for leaving trash on the street and you do the same thing but don't get fined, that's unjust.
Enabling or subsidizing somebody else to have access to something that they do not currently have may be altruistic or philanthropic and it may even be a good idea, but it's got nothing to do with justice. "Social Justice" might have meant something once, but it's been hijacked in pursuit of so many agendas (because everybody likes Justice, right?!?) that it's about as meaningful as the names of laws, where you regularly see things like "The American Equal Opportunity And High Paying Jobs For Everyone Act" that does nothing like what the title says.