Posted on 08/09/2017 2:45:14 PM PDT by Red Badger
A new car engine will eventually come on the scene. This week's car watching sites have reacted to Tuesday's announcement from Mazda with interest. At a time when the total focus appears to be on electric cars as our driving future, Mazda is ushering in a type of car engine that they call Skyactiv-X.
The Hiroshima, Japan-datelined Tuesday announcement from Mazda said it is introducing the world's "first commercial gasoline engine to use compression ignition."
Reuters quoted what Mazda R&D head Kiyoshi Fujiwara told reporters. "We think it is an imperative and fundamental job for us to pursue the ideal internal combustion engine." He said, yes, electrification was necessary but "the internal combustion engine should come first."
Mazda's company release elaborated that this was a commercial gasoline engine using compression ignition, where the fuel-air mixture ignites spontaneously when compressed by the piston.
Mazda's combustion method is tagged Spark Controlled Compression Ignition.
Jalopnik said "Mazda's powertrain team has brewed up a fancy new engine that, like a diesel, uses compression to activate the combustion process." David Tracy in Jalopnik explored what their Spark Controlled Compression Ignition is all about. Tracy said, "it's a homogenous charge compression ignition engine sometimes, but it seamlessly changes over to a regular spark-ignition engine under certain engine operating conditions.
The Mazda release said the method overcomes two issues that impeded commercialization of compression ignition gasoline engines: "maximizing the zone in which compression ignition is possible and achieving a seamless transition between compression ignition and spark ignition."
The company said that compression ignition enabled "a super lean burn" (condition in which the ratio of gasoline to air is reduced to a level that would not ignite in a spark-ignition engine) that improved engine efficiency up to 20 to 30 percent over the current Skyactiv-G.
Autoweek's Jay Ramey similarly said reliable operation of these engines had eluded automakers until now.
Ramey wrote that "A homogeneous charge compression ignition (HCCI) gasoline engine has been something of a holy grail for internal combustion engineers for decades."
Interestingly, Mazda's design will use spark plugs to achieve ignition under conditions such as low temperatures. CNET's Andrew Krok: "The engine will function like a traditional gas engine at low revs, using spark plugs to ignite the air-fuel mixture in the combustion chamber. At higher revs, though, the plugs will deactivate and the gas will ignite under piston compression alone."
Top Gear's Craig Jamieson also commented that "developing plugs that can sit idle, then work, for instance, is a massive engineering challenge on its own."
Reports said that the new engine 'SkyActiv-X' will debut in 2019.
I always hear people saying “they don’t make cars like they used to” and I’m glad they don’t.
Jaguar diesels are over 10% of sales, with most being the SUV. Jag has benefited from Mercedes and Audi dropping their diesel models.
The XE and F-Pace have been hot enough commodities that some diesels have been sold to buyers that weren’t looking for them at first.
LOL!!
I think it’s unlikely the government will allow the free market to work like that - though they should. Call me a cynic but I think some congressional committee will weigh the bribes and decide what technology we should all live with for the next fifty or so years and that will be that.
Multi fuel has been around for a long time. Yep, ran on kerosene through a carburetor.
Not a combustion engineer, but instinctively that sounds pretty iffy to me.
This is an interesting development
“That brings back childhood memories!.....................”
When I was a kid, we had an old car that kept running after turning off the ignition ...
Great concept, It is a diesel with a slightly lower compression ratio to ignite gas instead of diesel. A turbo charged or supercharged diesel will do the same it the pre-pressure is removed. The magic pre-ignition difference between gas depending on octane and diesel has been 12 to one vs 15 to one. So 13 or 14 to one would make a gas engine a diesel with the proper fuel timing and the injector mounted in the combustion chamber rather than in the intake manifold. I honestly don’t know why they did not do this years ago. And per BTU it would be very much more efficient than convention gas engines.
When I was in high school my shop teacher once put together a continental jeep engine. He started it and then reached down while it was running and jerked the coil wire off. It kept running just as smooth as it would normally but was self combusting like a diesel. He then tore it back down and showed us what he did. He had drilled a small hole in the side of the valve lip. This was maintaining an orange “Hot Spot” in each cylinder which helped it ignite with just compression and turned it basically into a diesel.
It was actually pretty cool... Kind of like how the Mann pocket system works.
Those gas/kerosene tractors were all over the place when I was a kid.
A neighbor had one that was called “the arm breaker” due to the number of arms that were broken starting it over the years.
Fortunately my family went straight from horses to a gas powered tractor.
Still had to hand crank it though. :-(
High compression = good burnouts. Whew hoooo!!
It uses gasoline, NOT diesel for fuel.
“but under high compression it always liquefies.”
gasoline is a liquid at low pressures. My can of gas sitting in the garage is NOT boiling!
“with 60% of the cobalt they require coming from child-labor death mines in the Congo! “
Not.
” I honestly don’t know why they did not do this years ago. “
The article explains that.
I would like to see this technology turned out on the NASCAR race track.
Didn’t Mazda have the first consumer vehicle with a Wankel engine?
The Mazda gasoline compression ignition engine is an 18 to 1 ratio.
The current models that still use spark plugs are 14 to 1 which is the highest in the industry. That’s why my CX-5 gets the same fuel mileage as a Toyota Yaris despite having a bigger engine and being a much larger vehicle.
I get 28.1 mpg in the suburban driving that is driving on Guam
Amazing. I can still remember that sweet smell along with that Doppler-like engine scream.
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