Not sure I would call the KATech opoc motor a advancement. It looks complex, and has many high mass parts in motion. This will drain efficiency, unfortunately. One of the major losses of energy in a internal combustion engine is the reciprocating mass and the loadings it produces on the bearings, and losses in the cylinder bore from friction of the piston traveling in the bore. This engine manages to increase all of those losses, by doubling the piston count, and tripling the losses for connectivity to the crankshaft (normal piston attachment via rod to crank, 2 rods for opposing piston and two crank attachment points -— all this just for one cylinder).
Additionally, their ECT (electrically controlled turbocharger) seems bogus as well. Currently, this technology is desired by both OEMs and the aftermarket, however, the problem is with the power density in the brushless motors available to drive the turbocharger, vs. weight & size required to actually perform the job. For example, to generate boost pressure you need around 20 to 30hp electric motor drive for the compressor wheel to generate useable boost. Currently, that takes a fairly large electric motor to develop that kind of power (too much for a small package item like a turbocharger, even using rare earth magnets and high quality copper). Bigger turbos, like for diesel trucks, in OEM form, can supply 100hp from the power turbine to the compressor side of the turbo!
Also, the site seems very shady. They claim improvements in efficiency and big claims for their ECT technology, but they post no numbers... which leads me to believe they have a questionable motive in their “innovations”. I suspect they are fleecing non-technical investors, kind of like EEStor did with their super capacitors.
Finally, their generator as described is far too complex. Something about locking stators and rotors, and wear balancing between two opoc motors. This would completely defeat the simplicity of a normal three phase alternator.
Of course this is probably all a moot point anyway... I suspect Apple will do electric only.
But the piston engine itself has a lot of life left in it, but it won’t look much different from what we have now -— just more precise control over valve operation, fuel injection events (and ignition timing for non-compression ignition engines), and turbocharger sequencing.