I was just wondering how much everyone here follows the development of new technology like HCCI?
I feel like majority of people aren’t familiar with it. I have been doing some research and I think it has potential as an improvement on automobiles, but most people aren’t talking about them at all…
Makers keep finding ways to improve the efficiency of the plain old gasoline IC engine. Latest is going to smaller turbo 4 (and 3) cylinder engines. Mazda’s going after high efficiency w/o turbos. Parts of various technologies are being incorporated. And then there’s hybrids, and more diesels, and plugin hybrids. But diesel+hybrid is expensive.
I agree. The diesel hybrid concept has to be where both excel. It probably isn’t in prarallel where the motor continually cycles off and on short trips where diesel doesn’t have a chance to warm to peak efficiency.
Locomotive like situations and later long haul trucks work. But , hybrids are too expensive to easily recover cost compared to cheaper gas motors. Think how much diesel requires in a Jetta and Hybrids in Prius for cost recovery. The two together, given the higher cost of diesel fuel to begin with would take a real heavy use situation or very long times and then, mainly in series hybrids which are less efficient to begin with.
Here where I work we’re converting a GM EV1 into a plug in hybrid with a turbo diesel engine:
http://www.howard.edu/ceacs/dean/EV1-Automobile.htm
It’s a research test bed and not registered to drive on public roads.
HCCI is a gas engine that can operate in a diesel mode, Honda was experimenting with it with pretty good results but so far it hasn’t been made commercial. It really increases the complexity of the engine, but it gives a big boost to highway mileage. Around town, it stays in the spark ignition mode so there isn’t much gained there.
HCCI is not a diesel hybrid in the sense that we usually think of when hybrid is mentioned. It is not a diesel-electric hybrid (train) or gas-electric hybrid (Prius) but a gas-diesel hybrid, no batteries or electric drive.
Yeah, are any of you familiar with MSCI (Multi-stratified Compression Ignition) that is being designed at Argonne Nat. lab? It is fairly similar to that of HCCI, but looks fairly promising. It is too early in development to tell for sure, but it sounds promising. I have read a few places that GM has made a few protoypes of HCCI engines and are getting fairly close to commercializing it in a mass produced consumer vehicle.
These weird configurations have researched before,wouldnt get my hopes up-Kevin
( CS, I thought all those were supposed to have been destroyed[and the public thought they had some sayso?]
kmccune, GM took all the cars off the public roads.
They gave a few to universities with the batteries and motor controllers removed to render them immobile.