Car Engines: The incredible shrinking machine
economist.com
economist.com
Ironically, it seems we're now at the end of the internal combustion era and the abacus makers are desperately trying to refine a soon to be redundant craft.
About the only viable green solution for container ships is going back to sails. Some ships already fly sails (really kites) to reduce their fuel costs, but it's not practical as the ship's only propulsion.
The best solution is probably to switch ships over to burning natural gas or biodiesel instead of filthy heavy fuel oil, but the cost structure is all wrong for this right now.
3d printing a whole engine must surely enable some impressive things. I remember watching a little demonstration using machine learning for the engine timing once you can get the belts out.
The metric measure would be kW.
Among the financial advantages mentioned on the Wikipedia article, only the VAT (presumably?) break has meaning in Europe, or at least in France, since the other advantages are either on taxes or requirements that don't exist here (weight tax, road tax, adequate parking requirement) or insurance (which already depends on engine power here).
It seems to be closer to the existing license-less car category, actually (which are also limited to 50 km/h and barred from entering highways).
Current cars have settled on a certain size, for historical reasons. In fact they seem to be getting a bit bigger. But there's no particular reason for a car to be bigger than a single human being, or other sizes (two humans + one suitcase perhaps). We can use the tax system to change that for the better.
This isn't a pie-in-the-sky unproven idea either. Kei cars are hugely popular in Japan, demonstrating that the market exists.
They're pretty practical - I've driven in a 6 seat Kei-car in Japan, and there are Kei vans and Kei flatbed delivery trucks (all fitting into the smaller dimensions).
Norway essentially does this. Taxes are based on engine size and (I believe) weight. The relative price difference between a large SUV and a small, low horsepower, hatchback is much greater than in most other countries. However based on casual observations in and around Oslo, it doesn't seem to have a huge effect on the size of cars people drive.
The real effect is the 'everybody' owns a Tesla since they are exempt for many taxes and thus cost literally half the price of an equivalently performing petrol powered car.
https://www.gov.uk/vehicle-tax-rate-tables/rates-for-cars-re...
It used to be based on engine size; for years I would get cars with as small engines as possible, simply because it would drop my tax by about 1/3.
As for car sizes... it does seem to be having an effect here. A lot of people I know go for small cars, preferring the little five-door hatchbacks. My last one was a Honda Jazz, with a 1.2 litre engine and an absurd amount of space inside; under the new tax system it'd be classed in category D (£110 a year), but I'd be totally unsurprised if the next model made it into category C (£30 a year). My father has a diesel Nissan Note, about the same size, and that is in category C. He's very smug.
What would the benefit of this be? You do not get anything by saving space because the car still takes up the same space on a parking lot. It's not taking up half the space so you can fit two cars there.
> This isn't a pie-in-the-sky unproven idea either. Kei cars are hugely popular in Japan, demonstrating that the market exists.
But that's because the economics in Japan are completely different. None of the reasons why people buy kei cars would make any sense in Europe. People buy cars here because they travel distances and they don't want to die in the process. Kei cars (same with moped cars or what you want to call them) are death traps on highways. If you are in cities in Europe you don't drive a car anyways.
It's the end of days for human-driven cars anyway. With self driving cars, it seems as if the cars will be bought and owned mainly by large companies (and hired out to end users), so the companies will be able to experiment much more aggressively with different designs and force manufacturers to make them.
If there was a market for kei cars they would exist.
But yeah, kei style cars are redundant in Europe because bikes, scooters , minis, nowadays car sharing, public transport and more space exist.
https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachm...
(Edit: I should say ... in the UK. No idea about other EU countries)
Isn't his accomplished more easily and enforceably by taxing energy? Presumably using less energy correlates with smaller vehicles. You also get the benefit of reducing energy use.
I can't say that it has a better mileage but the power is there, the 50% more HP makes a real difference. I was really skeptical at the beginning, but the progress in engine design is indeed visible.
I'm skeptical how effective that is. Smells like planned obsolescence.
>These include more new materials, such as what the industry calls diamond-like carbon (DLC) coatings for the surfaces of moving parts.
"Diamond like" sounds nice. But it's soluble to steel. I'd prefer Boron Nitride or TiN by physical vapor deposition. But if other contact surface is coated, then you might be able to use that DLC stuff. But if I recall correctly, it's wear characteristics are not that miraculous in bearings.
I'm not sure why it smells like that to you. Perhaps the word "absorb" is insufficiently precise. The correct term is perhaps "counterbalance", and it's purely mechanical. Some modern parts have fluid chambers and flexible rubber components to damp oscillation, but that's not "planned obsolescence" because the parts will very likely outlast the rest of the car.
It's worth noting as well that there's no such thing as "inherently balanced" when you're talking about ICEs (except perhaps the inline 6). Four-cylinders are inherently balanced in one mode (first harmonic), imbalanced in another (secondary imbalance), and exhibit torsional effects that may as well be imbalance.
I have pretty strong gut feeling that the 1st harmonic is more important than the 15 other modes combined. This far engines with odd numbers of pistons have been exception. Until we go to single row star engines, but they got replaced pretty quickly with two row star engines. Which can take the 1st harmonic into account.
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The name was originally given to cars that have normal opening front doors and suicide rear doors which would have a similar appearance when you opened them. Eventually it started being applied to any 4 door regardless of how the doors opened.