[taildragger]

In my humble opinion, this makes Diesels look like boat anchors.

The Green Car World has already asked the million dollar question.

Will you GM add a HCCI engine to the Chevy Volt?

They have been aloof about the answer, but with the display engine being a 3 cylinder version of the Eco-Tech, you can see how that could be done.

[Eddie01]

GM most certainly will if the HCCI can be design and production validated by summer 2010.

I doubt GM can considering HCCI is currently prototyped with low efficiency subsystems like temp/mix conversion.

General Motors is a great company pouring a majority of resources, their best and brightest into every aspect of fuel efficient vehicles to blitz the market with advanced hybrids.

Take note of the SUV hybrid variants available this fall with all Pickups following next year.

As for the Volt, the technology going into the cockpit is stunning. The fact that the show car styling is mandated, the human machine interface/features ground breaking and the interior styling uncompromised will make the Prius look like a VW “Thing” for the same money.

Mark my words.

General Motors is a great car company! Killing old stereotypes of the bygone dark days will take time, but they will die and soon.

Eddie01

[B Knotts]

I don’t see the point. It’s like a diesel, but less flexible, and requires a specific fuel with less energy density. Where’s the advantage?

[conservatism_IS_compassion]

I haven't researched the details, but from what I see on this thread it's far from clear that this is a superior approach. A "homogeneous" charge diesel engine is discussed in my 50-yo I.C. Engines textbook. It was called the "dual fuel diesel," and it operated on a homogeneous, slightly lean, mixture of natural gas and air. The mixture was lean enough that it needed something to trigger its combustion - a pilot charge of diesel fuel.

The description stated that it ran smoother than a diesel, since the flame propagated through the combustion chamber rather than exploding due to the cascading effect which occurs in a regular diesel fuel after it is injected. More efficient that a standard diesel, as well - "may be the most efficient prime mover in existence" was the characterization - but it had one supreme drawback, controllability.

Since there was no possibility of throttling it, the only way to control its output was to control the RPM by controlling the torque load. It was used in Alaska at a site where natural gas was naturally available and other fuel was expensive. It was used for electric power generation . . .

But in a world where hybrid cars are now in serial production, it's not obvious that load control would still be a show-stopper issue - at worst you could just run the engine when you needed to charge the battery, and shut it down when you didn't. But I presume you would still have an NO_X issue to deal with . . .