8500rpm?
Pff, you girl. I want it to soft cut at 9500rpm and hard cut at 10,000rpm.
With all the power coming after 6000rpm.
Yum.
Steven R
Ford to build 'boring-EV beating' eco-engine in Bridgend
OK, so it's not strictly 'leccy tech, but Ford's EcoBoost petrol engine does suggest a future for near-term environmentally responsible motoring that's a little more attractive than that suggested by this picture of PM Gordon Brown getting gushy over a Think City yesterday. Gordon Brown and Think Gordo and Transport …
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Wednesday 29th October 2008 14:51 GMT Iain
Why oh why oh why
I have asked it before and I will ask it again. Why do the manufacturers of electric cars somehow never manage to make them more attarctive than the original electric vehicle; your friendly neighbourhood milkfloat (not that you see any anymore). I mean, are they all blind, stupid or have spent the last 50 years living in a big, dark hole or at the top of a tall tree?
I guess asking why only the bigger, existing, vehicle manufacturers (Ford, Fiat, etc...) make attractive hybird/electric cars is an answer in itself. They are successfuly, hence big, due to them not living in a hole/head stuck up a tree/Labour minister's bottom
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Wednesday 29th October 2008 14:51 GMT TeeCee
8500rpm
Nah, it's got "Eco" in its name, so it'll be a diesel. 5000rpm max, with all the power delivered between 1800 and 3000 'cos it'll have loadsaturbos and the tits tweaked off it. But it'll have an eight speed 'box to make this work and Ford's legendary disintegrating dual-mass flywheel to stop it loosening your fillings.
I've often wondered with small turbodiesels if it would save effort if they dumped the engine and just made you row the bloody thing around with the gear lever.
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Wednesday 29th October 2008 14:51 GMT Martin Gregorie
Funny numbers
If the new Wunderengin has 20% better fuel economy then surely you'd expect 20% less CO2 rather than 15%. Last time I looked 20% better fuel economy means 20% less carbon going into the engine, so we'd expect 20% less coming out the other end too.
Unless, of course, the real figures are "15% better economy plus 5% advertising bollocks". I notice that the claimed "20% better" doesn't state what engine it is being compared with.
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Wednesday 29th October 2008 15:11 GMT Adam Foxton
@Martin
20% better efficiency but 15% less CO2 could mean that it produces more energy per unit of petrol used in each explosion, with part of this increase created by burning more petrol (i.e. it's still a 1.6, but there's a lower proportion of "wasted" fuel / incomplete combusted fuel).
Or it could be marketing bollocks.
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Wednesday 29th October 2008 15:56 GMT A J Stiles
Is this really new?
Back in the days before catalytic converters, Ford (who exported a version of the Mark One Fiesta to the USA. It was fitted with a special 1.6 litre engine, with sophisticated systems to reduce its emissions to the equivalent level of a 1.3. And its performance to the level of a 1.1) had an engine design which ran on a near-stoicheiometric fuel-air mix; meaning there were next to no unburned hydrocarbons in the exhaust -- and no catalytic converter would be required. Nor would it even work if you did fit one, for want of said unburned hydrocarbons.
Another major car manufacturer (*cough* Vauxhall *cough*) were instrumental in mandating catalytic converters on all vehicles, which brought Ford's plans to an abrupt halt.
Oh, and TeeCee: Look up CVT sometime, willya?
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Wednesday 29th October 2008 17:59 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: Funny numbers
"f the new Wunderengin has 20% better fuel economy then surely you'd expect 20% less CO2 rather than 15%. Last time I looked 20% better fuel economy means 20% less carbon going into the engine, so we'd expect 20% less coming out the other end too."
Erm, no.
A 50mpg car takes 1 gallon to drive 50miles.
With 20% increase in economy gives 60mpg.
A 50mpg car takes 0.83 gallon to drive 50miles which is a reduction by 17% not 20%.
So they are a bit closer than you :D
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Wednesday 29th October 2008 20:49 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: Re: Funny numbers
"f the new Wunderengin has 20% better fuel economy then surely you'd expect 20% less CO2 rather than 15%. Last time I looked 20% better fuel economy means 20% less carbon going into the engine, so we'd expect 20% less coming out the other end too."
Erm, no. (with correction)
A 50mpg car takes 1 gallon to drive 50miles.
With 20% increase in economy gives 60mpg.
A 60mpg car takes 0.83 gallon to drive 50miles which is a reduction by 17% not 20%.
So they are a bit closer than you :D
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Wednesday 29th October 2008 20:49 GMT Anonymous Coward
RX-8? No thanks.
"You want an RX-8, silky smooth power all the way to 9,000rpm, and a little beyond."
Silky smooth = sounds like a hair dryer on amphetamines. Call me old fashioned but I like an engine that sounds like its got a pair, not something that sounds like it should be giving Tracy a blow dry.
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Wednesday 29th October 2008 20:49 GMT Anonymous Coward
Hotpots?
What's with the unrelenting macho tone to this article and the comments? Anyone who exhibits concern for the environment is "gushy" and EVs are "boring". Disagree and you're "a girl" or don't eat hotpots (s'cuse me ... "don't eat hotpots"?).
When you're not writing here I bet you all claim to be sensitive New Men, in touch with your emotions n' all that!
PH, 'coz she's a real "hotpot".
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Wednesday 29th October 2008 20:49 GMT TeeCee
@A J Stiles
Also Rover with the original "K" series Metros. They were getting 50+ mpg out of them in "on the road" testing from the pre-production prototypes even back then. They were running waaay beyond stochiometric, well into "lean burn" territory. This is what killed it as the EU cat legislation mandates near-stochiometric burning. Oh, and it was Merc that lobbied like living Jesus to prevent Maggie getting a cat exemption for lean burn vehicles, not GM.
While the emissions from the beast were very slightly higher than a cat equipped one (CO2 wasn't the headline-grabbing trendy emission at the time), once you took into account not refining so much fuel or transporting same around the country in tankers, it won big time.
Had the focus been on CO2 back then, small catless lean-burn petrol cars might have been clocking in at around 65mpg by now.
PS: I know quite a bit about CVTs. Actually the best option for efficiency at the moment is a multi-ratio DSG 'box as the transmission losses are lower. The best niche for CVTs is in disguising the odd power delivery of Atkinson cycle engines as they do quite nicely in Toyota's Hybrid systems.
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Wednesday 29th October 2008 20:49 GMT Danny Thompson
2010 again? WTF??
Okay, I give up. WTF is so special about 2010 that every single manufacturer is incapable of producing any product (ZEV or Hybrid) until that magical year? Has someone in the industry cartel that no-one will actually retail any of this stuff until then? Its the same with Motorcycles. Apart from a few independents (i.e. Vectrix, Tesla and maybe a few more) the incumbents all say 2010. Is there a conspiracy afoot?
Mines the one with the tin-foil hat on the hanger
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Wednesday 29th October 2008 20:49 GMT James
@ Ian S
"They'll be claiming the Pirius (sic) will save us all (which does 45 mpg on a good day)"
The Prius is that bad? My two litre diesel averages 45mpg (50+ on motorway cruise), is a country mile better to drive and has plenty in reserve for overtaking (not ironic, honest) Prius-tards and other morons who think 35-40mph is acceptable in 60mph roads.
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Thursday 30th October 2008 00:05 GMT Anonymous Coward
Why these cars look awful
Ok - it works like this:
* Eco geek (like me) has idea to make EV.
* Gets VC to help start making it.
* Takes a while as others are very patent encumbered - has to be re-engineered from ground up.
* VC starts entertaining other notions for ROI.
* Big oil or existing car company takes note, offers VC the ROI.
* The conditions attached are never as absolute as "do not make this car" - too obvious, they are "Make it look like this, and we'll give you the money".
* The new look plays right into the plastic POS style, ensuring not many buyers. VC see's little point promoting it - already made their money from Big Oil.
* Car is only bought by a few eco geeks with money. Not many are made, not many are sold - car is effectively buried.
* Big Oil, and VC profit.
It is really quite simple to see how this formulae works. Perhaps it needs some billionaire philanthropist like Shuttleworth to make this thing really work without selling out.
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Thursday 30th October 2008 08:37 GMT oh shit
Yes, it's true, Virginia, the TDI did beat (the snot out of) the Prius(tard)
Yes, a VW TDI produced ca. 50mpg on a test published in USA-Today several years back. The Prius produced a bit less, while reporting a bit more on the fuel computer. Toyota's apology after the test was "the fuel tank is flexible" and "the software was" not right.
The entire "electric vehicle" craze ignores simple physics. The only credible defense is centralized pollution at the generating plant + centralized recycling of the (really nasty) batteries.
I use DirectPV solar as an offset for light loads and to keep the starting batteries topped up. That's the only feasible vehicular use of solar. Too much hype has gone into EV, and there are *engineers* who don't understand the many orders of magnitude difference between what solar can do on a car and the propulsion (let alone A/C) power requirements.
Let's all be good engineers and ground ourselves in the impossibility of perpetual motion machines and other notional constructs. Burn the dinosaur based (if that's really what it is) fuel carefully, rather than ranting about what completely impossible or impractical thing you want to replace it with.
Drive less. Drive when you need to. Adjust your needs. Examine if it's a need or a want. The entire "reduce, reuse, recycle" mantra is incorrectly and heavily biased toward some supposed perfect "recycle", while many lose the idea of "reduce" and "reuse". For cars and driving, "reduce" is a great thing to keep in mind. Combining trips can be as effective as a 30% to 100% increase in mpg.
Getting that 30% to 100% in mpg could be costly without that approach, perhaps even simply illusory for 100's of years.
Ok, so I've now probably bored you, and my abject apologies, but let's all be serious and careful engineers in this discussion. It doesn't help anyone if we spout impossible goals. All we look like then is congress-critters.
-Me
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Thursday 30th October 2008 10:21 GMT rhydian
RE: Vendicar Decarian
Yes, RX-8 wankel rotaries suck fuel down at a hefty rate, but do produce a fair bit of horsepower (not sure about the torque mind) but they do sound like turbines rather than engines.
Engine acoustics are important, would as many people have bought economical Turbo Diesel engines in their new cars if they still sounded like 1980s/1990s Peugeot XUD/Rover L-series motors? They were like tractor engines.
The answer to all this is to buy a twinspark alfa romeo. Under 3000rpm it's quiet and relatively economical, but get to a good road and you can open it out to 8000rpm with a nice wide power band thanks to VVT and Italian engineering. And of course it sounds like a proper engine...
Paris: Because she likes a screamer...
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Thursday 30th October 2008 13:05 GMT Anonymous Coward
PDI Power
I want a car with some go, I want it to make me feel special (as in really good not the other type of special), I want it to make a noise consistent with the performance, I want a car that is safe and is not too bad on the environment.
I got a car that is balanced enough to tick most of these boxes... see if you can guess what it is?
It does 50+ mpg (my best is 74.6 over a 20 mile journey)
The book top speed is 137mph (on a track it will do 142)
Standard I have taken it up santa pod and done 16.2 second quarter (34mpg that run :( )
Its a 4 star car
Made from 2003 - 2007
Its German (The make isn't but the parts all are)
Yes you got it, its a Skoda Fabia VRS ! a 1.9PDTI with 135Hp!
Now show me an Electric car that matches it and is within the same price bracket and I will switch, until then I will be the one running my car on heavy oil!
This topic is closed for new posts.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
