Being a fan of green technology I thought it would make a nice change from the politics on this blog to take a look at some interesting engine technology that you can already find in cars today.
The first engine I found was the newly released (at least in South Africa) Smart stop/start system. A few years ago when in Bangkok it always fascinated me how the Tuk-tuk drivers would stop the engines on their vehicles when at traffic, even if it was for a few seconds. I always assumed it was fairly silly that they did this because ultimately how much petrol can one really save? Turns out between 8 and 20 percent and for a change I was wrong. What Smart have done is put automatic stop/start systems into all their cars which means when you’re idling at the robots your engine is technically off, saving you petrol. The beauty is that as the driver you never notice the transition as it is timed to your braking and acceleration.
The second fantastic engine technology is that of the “Twincharger” where a turbocharger and a supercharger are placed on one engine thereby negating the downsides of each technology. As an example a turbocharger tends to kick in at higher revolutions while the supercharger works at lower revolutions. This means the engine is constantly being boosted in power meaning you can get the power of a 2 liter engine out of a 1.4 liter engine. The beauty here is that despite the power you get a combined cycle consumption that is lower or similar to a 1.6 liter engine in the same car body despite nearly double the power. Similar use of turbocharging a smaller engine can be seen by Fiat with their 1.4 turbo engine that kicks out the same power as the 2 liter engined Golf 5 and even Mercedes that have managed to get the same performance from a 1.6 liter engine as they could with a 1.8 liter.
Consequently what would be ideal is to combine these two technologies and fairly soon we’ll be seeing all sorts of combinations as European and American regulation. Personally I’m looking forward to a world where we all get sub 5 liters per 100 kilometers in normal driving. Until then, stop/start and twincharger technologies are the best place to be.
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