9 ms·

Mazda hopes to achieve 56% thermal efficiency with gasoline engine

80 points by hliyan 9y ago

craftyguy 9y ago
They should probably stop investing so much in an engine that requires fossil fuels to operate.
- loverofthings 9y ago
  The moment fossil fuels get more expensive you'd like a more efficient engine.
  - rocqua 9y ago
    Really, when fossil fuels get more expensive you'd like a non fossil fuel based engine. Efficient engines are incentivized by high fuel prices only as compared to less efficient fossil fuel engines.
    - loverofthings 9y ago
      Some stuff does not work easily with non fossil fuel based engines. What better way than to refine current tech instead of inventing a whole new one?
  - smaddox 9y ago
    Not if your system efficiency is limited by transmission and storage. Chemical energy (fuel) is more efficient and cheaper to store than electric energy, and will almost certainly continue to be an important medium in a post fossil fuel world. Edit: I think I responded to the wrong post, but I guess I'll just leave this here as a general comment.
- jk2323 9y ago
  You realize that a "combustion engine" could be run with non-fossil fuels? From Ethanol, Buthanol or sun flour oil? Or even methanol witch could be derived from CO2 via reduction?
- sz4kerto 9y ago
  Stopping investing into a technology that is probably going to dominate the industry for the next 25 years might not be too smart. (EVs are coming, but they're quite far from accounting for >50% of the total vehicle sales.) It's a bit like telling Microsoft in 1990 that focusing on PCs is stupid because mobile computing is coming for sure. :)
  - gisely 9y ago
    Considering that many countries have announced plans to fully eliminate gas and diesel engine production in less than 25 years (e.g. 2030 for China), I think it's quite unlikely that internal combustion engines will continue to dominate the industry for the next 25 years. Also, there is pretty big irony in the analogy that you make. Obviously, Microsoft moved too slowly to focus on mobile computing and they missed the boat. I'm hopeful that car companies which aren't focusing on EVs today will similarly be left behind in a few years.
    - lttlrck 9y ago
      The huge used car market and the fact that ICE production will continue for as long as it is profitable muddies this timeline significantly. Sure ICEs could be legislated out of existence but that’d take a huge financial injection from the authorities - direct to the consumer and infrastructure. I don’t trust any authority to get this right in any sort of timely manner nor spend a the required money to make it happen.
  - kjksf 9y ago
    You call it domination, I call it slow decline. Many governments have announced that by 2040 it'll be illegal to sell cars with such engines. They certainly won't be dominating in 22 years. The question is not "is this business going to be dead" but "when this business will be dead". So it's more like telling MicroPro to to stop investing in their cash cow DOS-based WordStar and port that app to Windows, because the writing is on the wall. MicrPro and many other companies were a bit asleep at the wheel during DOS -> Windows transition and that's why there's no MicroPro anymore and there's no WordStar anymore. Transition to electric motors will take a bit longer but the window to become a significant player in new technology is not infinite.
- oh_sigh 9y ago
  Engines don't require fossil fuels to run - they are merely the most readily available fuels at this point in time.
- kylehotchkiss 9y ago
  Many places in the world (Think anywhere rural in a third world country) won't have the electricity infrastructure to handle electric cars in the near future. High efficiency petrol engines are still a very welcome invention for both the environment and for the many people who depend on petrol/diesel engines to keep the world spinning.
  - reedx8 9y ago
    Except for the fact that you actually don't need any sort of energy infrastructure whatsoever with electricity. All you need will be a solar panel in the near future, resulting in more homes with heat and lights, more people with access to inexpensive transportation, and a more equitable share of well being. Third world countries stand to benefit the most from electrification.
    - cellularmitosis 9y ago
      Using photovoltaics for electric heat is a lot more costly than solar-thermal water heating, so you'll likely see a mixture of those two.
theothermkn 9y ago
Eventually, you'll run up against the limit defined by the Carnot efficiency. I wonder where this engine will stand in relation to that. Will they be able to burn at a higher temperature in order to drive the raw efficiency up? Perhaps with a improved catalytic converter? Or are these all improvements in internal friction? What does the technology actually look like? The article was frustratingly scant on details. Ah. You can track down the video explanation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N_No3KSaTrM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N_No3KSaTrM Contrary to the appeal to the layperson's mechanical intuition in the video, they give away that they are apparently speeding combustion at the top of the stroke, resulting in a better approximation of "constant volume heat addition." This will result in a higher top temperature in the combustion chamber, and is the real reason for their "pushes longer and harder" explanation. This will come with added NOx production, so they'll have to have better catalytic conversion, with a couple caveats. It may be that the emissions rules are on a per-mile basis, so that the total NOx of the engine is lower per mile because less fuel is burned. They may also just be hitting markets with laxer restrictions.
- thibautg 9y ago
  There was a nice explanation in an article from Ars Technica a few days ago: https://arstechnica.com/cars/2018/01/mazdas-skyactiv-x-shows-the-internal-combustion-engine-has-a-future/ https://arstechnica.com/cars/2018/01/mazdas-skyactiv-x-shows...
  - aidenn0 9y ago
    That's the Syactiv X which will not achieve 56%. This article is for the following generation (Skyactiv 3)
- IntronExon 9y ago
  It’s probably simpler than that; “hopes” really means, “hasn’t yet, may never.”
  - mastax 9y ago
    "Elon Musk hopes to launch Falcon Heavy in late 2012"
userbinator 9y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brake_specific_fuel_consumption#Examples_of_values_of_BSFC_for_shaft_engines https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brake_specific_fuel_consumptio... 56% is slightly more than the efficiency of very large low-speed two-stroke diesels (one of the most thermally efficient piston engine types), so I remain very skeptical.
jxub 9y ago
Mazda is for me quite an admirable example of traditional car company, esp. compared to the likes of Volkswagen, as the ratio of quality/economics is really good and their new designs are gorgeous given the price range.
- jagger27 9y ago
  > their new designs are gorgeous given the price range. Definitely. Compare their designs to anything else from Japan and you'll find that they manage to be modern and interesting without being too angular and aggressive (see new Honda Civic, esp. the Type R and the Prius Prime). Besides that, their driving experiences are tuned for pure joy. The CX-5 is by far the best handling mid-size SUV, and of course the MX-5 is unmatched. Best of all, they still somehow find the time to experiment and create masterpieces like the MX-5 RF. Now if only they can deliver on Apple CarPlay and Android Auto, then they'll really check all the boxes. Source: a 2017 MX-5 soft-top was first brand new car.
  - vesrah 9y ago
    To be fair, the CTR is a car meant to appeal to a certain audience. Mazda sells nothing that caters to said audience.
    - vinay427 9y ago
      They had the MazdaSpeed3, which didn't look nearly as polarizing as the current CTR. Granted, neither did the previous Civic Si or Type R.
pasbesoin 9y ago
Stick one in a well-made plug-in/hybrid, and I'm sold.
jerkstate 9y ago
I'm glad the article references Formula 1 engines. The current generation is really a technical marvel, and was the first thing to come to mind when I read this headline.
DrScump 9y ago
Can this principle be applied to ICE using other fuels, like ethanol?
- petre 9y ago
  It works. Even with wet ethanol. https://escholarship.org/uc/item/6cd5b6vq https://escholarship.org/uc/item/6cd5b6vq
ggm 9y ago
Good to have stretch goals. EV have stretch goals too, as do battery tech designers and power generation and storage. So.. given this is a 25 year stretch goal, what will EV look like then? I think we can predict they will be better than this 57% heat efficiency or not. I like phev as an interim, but Mazda have to invest now to have a story in phev. This incredible goal in ice engine efficiency could be part of that.
- lafar6502 9y ago
  what kind of heat efficiency you mean?
  - ggm 9y ago
    The Carnot heat engine efficiency. That's what the 57% is talking about in the proposed improvements Mazda are projecting. Getting a single F1 engine there for a circuit is one thing. Getting a road car under varying driven conditions there, on a production line.. that's another. If the 57% was demonstrated they'd have said a deadline inside 25 years. If they project out more than Five, it's a bet, not a certainty.

80 points by hliyan 9y ago

craftyguy 9y ago

They should probably stop investing so much in an engine that requires fossil fuels to operate.

loverofthings 9y ago
The moment fossil fuels get more expensive you'd like a more efficient engine.
- rocqua 9y ago
  Really, when fossil fuels get more expensive you'd like a non fossil fuel based engine. Efficient engines are incentivized by high fuel prices only as compared to less efficient fossil fuel engines.
  - loverofthings 9y ago
    Some stuff does not work easily with non fossil fuel based engines. What better way than to refine current tech instead of inventing a whole new one?
- smaddox 9y ago
  Not if your system efficiency is limited by transmission and storage. Chemical energy (fuel) is more efficient and cheaper to store than electric energy, and will almost certainly continue to be an important medium in a post fossil fuel world. Edit: I think I responded to the wrong post, but I guess I'll just leave this here as a general comment.
jk2323 9y ago
You realize that a "combustion engine" could be run with non-fossil fuels? From Ethanol, Buthanol or sun flour oil? Or even methanol witch could be derived from CO2 via reduction?
sz4kerto 9y ago
Stopping investing into a technology that is probably going to dominate the industry for the next 25 years might not be too smart. (EVs are coming, but they're quite far from accounting for >50% of the total vehicle sales.) It's a bit like telling Microsoft in 1990 that focusing on PCs is stupid because mobile computing is coming for sure. :)
- gisely 9y ago
  Considering that many countries have announced plans to fully eliminate gas and diesel engine production in less than 25 years (e.g. 2030 for China), I think it's quite unlikely that internal combustion engines will continue to dominate the industry for the next 25 years. Also, there is pretty big irony in the analogy that you make. Obviously, Microsoft moved too slowly to focus on mobile computing and they missed the boat. I'm hopeful that car companies which aren't focusing on EVs today will similarly be left behind in a few years.
  - lttlrck 9y ago
    The huge used car market and the fact that ICE production will continue for as long as it is profitable muddies this timeline significantly. Sure ICEs could be legislated out of existence but that’d take a huge financial injection from the authorities - direct to the consumer and infrastructure. I don’t trust any authority to get this right in any sort of timely manner nor spend a the required money to make it happen.
- kjksf 9y ago
  You call it domination, I call it slow decline. Many governments have announced that by 2040 it'll be illegal to sell cars with such engines. They certainly won't be dominating in 22 years. The question is not "is this business going to be dead" but "when this business will be dead". So it's more like telling MicroPro to to stop investing in their cash cow DOS-based WordStar and port that app to Windows, because the writing is on the wall. MicrPro and many other companies were a bit asleep at the wheel during DOS -> Windows transition and that's why there's no MicroPro anymore and there's no WordStar anymore. Transition to electric motors will take a bit longer but the window to become a significant player in new technology is not infinite.
oh_sigh 9y ago
Engines don't require fossil fuels to run - they are merely the most readily available fuels at this point in time.
kylehotchkiss 9y ago
Many places in the world (Think anywhere rural in a third world country) won't have the electricity infrastructure to handle electric cars in the near future. High efficiency petrol engines are still a very welcome invention for both the environment and for the many people who depend on petrol/diesel engines to keep the world spinning.
- reedx8 9y ago
  Except for the fact that you actually don't need any sort of energy infrastructure whatsoever with electricity. All you need will be a solar panel in the near future, resulting in more homes with heat and lights, more people with access to inexpensive transportation, and a more equitable share of well being. Third world countries stand to benefit the most from electrification.
  - cellularmitosis 9y ago
    Using photovoltaics for electric heat is a lot more costly than solar-thermal water heating, so you'll likely see a mixture of those two.

theothermkn 9y ago

Eventually, you'll run up against the limit defined by the Carnot efficiency. I wonder where this engine will stand in relation to that. Will they be able to burn at a higher temperature in order to drive the raw efficiency up? Perhaps with a improved catalytic converter? Or are these all improvements in internal friction? What does the technology actually look like? The article was frustratingly scant on details. Ah. You can track down the video explanation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N_No3KSaTrM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N_No3KSaTrM Contrary to the appeal to the layperson's mechanical intuition in the video, they give away that they are apparently speeding combustion at the top of the stroke, resulting in a better approximation of "constant volume heat addition." This will result in a higher top temperature in the combustion chamber, and is the real reason for their "pushes longer and harder" explanation. This will come with added NOx production, so they'll have to have better catalytic conversion, with a couple caveats. It may be that the emissions rules are on a per-mile basis, so that the total NOx of the engine is lower per mile because less fuel is burned. They may also just be hitting markets with laxer restrictions.

thibautg 9y ago
There was a nice explanation in an article from Ars Technica a few days ago: https://arstechnica.com/cars/2018/01/mazdas-skyactiv-x-shows-the-internal-combustion-engine-has-a-future/ https://arstechnica.com/cars/2018/01/mazdas-skyactiv-x-shows...
- aidenn0 9y ago
  That's the Syactiv X which will not achieve 56%. This article is for the following generation (Skyactiv 3)
IntronExon 9y ago
It’s probably simpler than that; “hopes” really means, “hasn’t yet, may never.”
- mastax 9y ago
  "Elon Musk hopes to launch Falcon Heavy in late 2012"

userbinator 9y ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brake_specific_fuel_consumption#Examples_of_values_of_BSFC_for_shaft_engines https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brake_specific_fuel_consumptio... 56% is slightly more than the efficiency of very large low-speed two-stroke diesels (one of the most thermally efficient piston engine types), so I remain very skeptical.

jxub 9y ago

Mazda is for me quite an admirable example of traditional car company, esp. compared to the likes of Volkswagen, as the ratio of quality/economics is really good and their new designs are gorgeous given the price range.

jagger27 9y ago
> their new designs are gorgeous given the price range. Definitely. Compare their designs to anything else from Japan and you'll find that they manage to be modern and interesting without being too angular and aggressive (see new Honda Civic, esp. the Type R and the Prius Prime). Besides that, their driving experiences are tuned for pure joy. The CX-5 is by far the best handling mid-size SUV, and of course the MX-5 is unmatched. Best of all, they still somehow find the time to experiment and create masterpieces like the MX-5 RF. Now if only they can deliver on Apple CarPlay and Android Auto, then they'll really check all the boxes. Source: a 2017 MX-5 soft-top was first brand new car.
- vesrah 9y ago
  To be fair, the CTR is a car meant to appeal to a certain audience. Mazda sells nothing that caters to said audience.
  - vinay427 9y ago
    They had the MazdaSpeed3, which didn't look nearly as polarizing as the current CTR. Granted, neither did the previous Civic Si or Type R.

pasbesoin 9y ago

Stick one in a well-made plug-in/hybrid, and I'm sold.

jerkstate 9y ago

I'm glad the article references Formula 1 engines. The current generation is really a technical marvel, and was the first thing to come to mind when I read this headline.

DrScump 9y ago

Can this principle be applied to ICE using other fuels, like ethanol?

petre 9y ago
It works. Even with wet ethanol. https://escholarship.org/uc/item/6cd5b6vq https://escholarship.org/uc/item/6cd5b6vq

ggm 9y ago

Good to have stretch goals. EV have stretch goals too, as do battery tech designers and power generation and storage. So.. given this is a 25 year stretch goal, what will EV look like then? I think we can predict they will be better than this 57% heat efficiency or not. I like phev as an interim, but Mazda have to invest now to have a story in phev. This incredible goal in ice engine efficiency could be part of that.

lafar6502 9y ago
what kind of heat efficiency you mean?
- ggm 9y ago
  The Carnot heat engine efficiency. That's what the 57% is talking about in the proposed improvements Mazda are projecting. Getting a single F1 engine there for a circuit is one thing. Getting a road car under varying driven conditions there, on a production line.. that's another. If the 57% was demonstrated they'd have said a deadline inside 25 years. If they project out more than Five, it's a bet, not a certainty.