Koenigsegg’s 2.0-liter no-camshaft engine makes 600 horsepower
roadandtrack.com
roadandtrack.com
Impressive tech, but I'd by lying if I said this doesn't rub me the wrong way. How do you mean combustion being CO2 neutral? And cool sound, this is one of my pet peeves. Why does a rich guy's wish for a "cool sound" in his sports car justify being a nuisance to other people? Motorbikes are the worst offender here. Sound limitations should be a lot stricter than they are.
I should mention that a lot of motorcyclists feel that loud exhausts are a way of protecting themselves from distracted drivers.
Car safety for occupants and pedestrians has improved dramatically over the last few decades. The same cannot be said for motorcycles.
The simple fact that my own life is at stake, makes me much more aware of my surroundings. This is a well researched neurological fact. Also, a 450lbs projectile has a lot less impact then a 2 ton one at the same speed. It is also significantly harder to hit a child with a 3' wide vehicle then with a 7' wide one..
Car safety for occupants has increased and due to a side effect of aerodynamic design survivability of a pedestrian crash has marginally increased. Due to gigantic A pillars and a false sense of security, the amount of accidents has significantly increased and the safety of other road users is at an all time low.
(450lbs motorcyle + 160lb rider) vs 60lb child = death.
Riding a motorcycle while impaired, is one of the leading causes of motorcycle fatalities. Failing to wear PPE accounts for a significant number of potentially non-fatal accidents becoming fatal. Distracted riding is also on the rise. This doesn't seem to imply motorcyclists are inherently more aware of their surroundings or making better decisions due to the increased danger.
I am very aware of all the leading causes of death for motorcyclists. Your conclusion doesn't make sense though, there is a ridiculous amount of selection bias in there: they only looked at people who died... By and far motorcyclists are very safety concious people, they have to be: those who aren't tend to quit quickly, one way or another. Personally, I have ridden a motorcycle as my primary form of transportation for over 30 years without any meaningful incidents
Your comment was, literally, "what about noisy motorbikes".
Not a motorcyclist, but I’ve heard this from many places. Can say that as a bicyclist, my best pieces of biggest safety equipment were in roughly descending order of importance: having my head in a swivel (vigilance), perfecting a barking shout, really good brakes, and in last place, a helmet. If the helmet comes into play you’re already at least a little fucked.
If I could make bikes louder I probably would.
The one time I’m aware I cut off a motorcyclist, it was his engine that kept me out of his lane (to be fair, he was nearly in my blind spot, which is partly on him)
If generating incessant noise is your only way of staying safe on the road, maybe consider getting something not as risky. Drive a car or take the bus. It works for the vast majority of people, maybe they’re on to something eh?
...Because they don't care about that crap. They are way ahead of your efficiency, often even ahead of the efficiency of a bus. A bike can get 70mpg without very much trouble and some more than 100mpg, and they don't cause traffic congestion in the first place because they occupy little additional space beyond the rider.
Gee, Maybe they're on to something, eh?
No motorcycle causes hearing damage beyond the rider, and this is caused by wind noise not the engine.
The "weaving in and out of crowded lanes" is easily solved: don't be a selfish prick, give them some room..
Noise pollution from sports cars and motorcycles is real.
Live in a dense city and the noise from construction and service vehicles is 100x worse than the occasional sports car.
Okay, if this is how it is, then why are they allowed on the road? Obviously I don't have a problem with people driving this in tracks or shows, only in public roads.
Besides, if the speed limit is, at most, 130kph, why do we allow (again, on public roads) machines that go to 250, 300, or above? Or that speed from a stop to that aforementioned speed limit in 5 or 6 seconds? Again, by all means enjoy them on the tracks (still, within reason with more relaxed emission standards).
Because they meet all of the legal requirements to be operated on public roads.
do you also want to ban usain bolt from the sidewalk because he could run too fast if he wanted to?
My argument is wrong because it is silly. Gotcha.
>do you also want to ban usain bolt from the sidewalk
When Usain Bolt can delete a family from existence with one wrong flick of the wrist, I'll support banning Usain Bolt from running in the sidewalk.
Alternatively, when Usain Bolts running in sidewalks are one of the leading worldwide causes of death.
And I'm pretty sure that if Usain Bolt were running at 30kph on a crowded sidewalk somebody would stop him, which is actually a pretty nice analogy to the obviously beneficial measure of placing a speed limiter on cars.
No, it's so wrong that it is silly. That wasn't supposed to be the reason why.
Stop looking for cheap gotchas.
And how do you plan to get up to that speed? If you’re going to use something with motorised assistance, it will almost certainly be a device that the State will class as a road vehicle. Driving on the sidewalk is illegal.
Any "limit in practice" is not a prescribed limit. The whole point of posted, visible speed limits is that everyone knows what they are ahead of time. They're not a substitute for using your brain.
(Also in practice if you go too fast you'll run up against physics and literally burn up due to atmospheric drag.)
> And how do you plan to get up to that speed?
OP's example is a world-class track sprinter. Usain Bolt just runs fast (for 100-400m).
In my state, non-motorized bicycles may use the sidewalk freely. When riding on the sidewalk, cyclists are considered pedestrians. They (like all other pedestrians) must be courteous to other pedestrians, but there is no speed limit.
In theory, on a long enough sidewalk without ramps, alleys, obstructions, etc, a cyclist could plausibly exceed 30 mph without being discourteous to anyone or endangering others. There are some sidewalks like this in the industrial parts of my town, although I'm certainly not suggesting anyone try it.
I don't understand the point of stating the blindingly obvious as though it could serve as a useful retort. Obviously there isn't a prescribed limit. That doesn't elide the point—a limit doesn't need to be a bright line in order to exist in practice.
Vehicle capabilities are separate from driver responsibility. Nothing would be possible if we banned things just because they have the potential for harm.
Why is it such a bad idea to just fit in speed limiters and be done with it?
And that last part? It's pretty much an empty argument, as if we don't already regulate/restrict/ban many things with the potential to cause harm (cars included).
Beyond that it's not necessary because most people follow the law. The same irresponsible people who speed like crazy would also remove the speed limiter. Also there are general driving conditions, emergencies, private roads, and other situations where people use the full capability of their vehicles. And police are still need to patrol the roads for more than just speeding.
Overall a built-in speed limiter just limits freedom, costs more resources and enforcement, punishes responsible owners, and prevents them from enjoying their vehicles because of a tiny percentage of bad drivers. In fact Germany's autobahn with completely unrestricted speeds has a better safety record than other freeways which shows that fast cars at high speed are not the issue at all for safety.
FYI, I think this new car is estimated at over 500kph max speed.
I'm not a rich guy, and I don't find it to be a nuisance in most circumstances; I appreciate the sound of high performance engines, and so do many other people.
outside of hn, I've never really encountered anyone who was more than mildly annoyed by loud exhausts.
That said, no car is really loud sub ~3000 rpm, at least not in the way I imagine you're implying. That is all this (or most any) car would need to muster for driving down the streets of London or any city.
The problem is that some owners get really aggressive with the throttle in places they really shouldn't. I'm with you, that is annoying, but that is by no means an isolated "super fancy car" problem. Motorbikes, modified scooters, tuner cars, trucks tuned for show instead of work.
This whole thing is about how some folks can't help but flaunt their opulence/excess. Talking it out on the car is like talking down to Tesla for including autopilot knowing that some drunk drivers will simply use the feature to take themselves home.
As someone who loves cars, I wildly disagree. There are modded cars that idle across the street that wake me up through my double-paned windows. A very popular mod is to add a downpipe to some cars, which is illegal in California (for emissions reasons), but people still do it and holy fuck it is just so god damn loud. It's great at the race track, not so great when you want to sleep. Sometimes cars are just loud and obnoxious.
In a past life, I had a '69 Ford 250 with a big-block 390 that would beg to differ... but it got between 4 and 6 mpg so even in 2001 that was too expensive to keep...
can imagine non car people getting at least as mad, at louder cars.
My neighbor owns a couple of Porches with modified mufflers and a very loud motorcycle. I've argued with him at length about how his choice of noise intrudes on our peace, especially late at night. The bass vibrations travel further and will seem louder in different parts of the house, loud enough that two people conversing need to speak up. It's very bothersome.
The more pressing thing is that if you keep asking for a big brother, don’t be surprised when you get one.
These days a lot of manufacturers homologate to meet multiple standards, so we get euro4ish stuff in north america too, stock at least.
After market exhausts that aren’t engineered to be deliberately louder are stupid and annoying to other people.
Excluding intentionally loud exhausts, the intake on a lot of bikes generates more sound than the pipes, at least at speed.
The bike is less loud than an old car. Just don’t rev like a maniac in the evening when streets are empty and you’ll barely notice it above the normal noise.
Now the parrot ... that little dude is something else. We’ve tried everything and you can still hear him a block away if he wants you to.
joking but its very frustrating dealing with neighbours like that, but at the same time they do sort of have the right to their own hobbies.
Maybe take up a loud hobby yourself. Cathartic leisure jackhammering. Good for grip strength.
I think ford mustangs are becoming a contender for this honor. :)
I discovered this after making the now-regrettable choice of living very near a busy major road. I hear a lot of vehicles. (Sometimes so loud that I can't understand the TV in my own living room.)
At first I assumed it obviously must be motorcycles. But one day I gazed out the window and watched traffic for a while, and to my surprise, I learned there really are a whole lot of cars which have been modified to be super loud. I didn't exactly collect stats, but it's not obviously more one than the other.
The biggest offenders here in the PNW are actually pickup trucks. Having worked in the automotive industry recently, I know that pickup trucks are one of the only profitable classes of vehicles left for dealerships. It's really an unfortunate situation. People are willing to overpay for gargantuan vehicles that make too much noise, use too much fuel, and pose a severe risk to pedestrians, so they can build some kind of macho identity. This really seems like an area where governments should step in and put upper limits on vehicle size and noise generation.
The expense and hassle are both significant, but being away from that noise would be pretty nice. It's interesting to hear the perspective of someone with firsthand knowledge of the situation.
One thing I realized in this process is that you can find quiet and you can find walkability, but if you want both, that's way more difficult.
Also, in my experience, the loudest vehicles are all that way due to aftermarket modifications. And they're probably breaking noise laws that already exist but just aren't enforced.
Haven’t given that much thought until now, but I guess you are completely right. One person driving a loud motorcycle or car through a dense city at night, can potentially disturb/wake up hundreds of people or more.
> Why does a rich guy's wish for a "cool sound" in his sports car justify being a nuisance to other people?
Seems like a good solution for everyone...
My car makes cool sounds, and they’re for me.
Just like people who say sports car owners just want to impress others.
My car brings me joy, when I’m driving it everyone else might as well not exist outside of their occasional attempts to merge into me.
If someone truly wants their car to sound a certain way for others, then the car isn’t the problem, the person is.
They’d find some other way to get under you skin if it wasn’t noises...
One of the loudest exhausts commonly encountered is unaffectionately referred to as a “fart can”
It’s nice in the way dog shit brown is a nice color
In that technically it is opinion that that defines if it’s nice, and if you ask enough people you’ll find some who like it, but most people (including car people) do not find it nice and insult their owners.
If anything car enthusiasts trying to get a better sound go to great lengths to cut some of the loudest resonant frequencies an engine produces (referred to as drone)
-
My car is not exceptionally loud and won’t wake up even a suburban neighbor (I live in a city now so it’s parked in an underground garage). If I take it to a race track and wring it by it’s neck, shifting as close to redline as possible, it’s certainly not as quiet but not many cars are in that setting...
The Koenigsegg would probably not be loud puttering around, these cars are designed for refinement. If it’s waking up a neighborhood, it’s because the driver is treating said neighborhood as a raceway, and at that point sound is very low on the consequences that can have.
I read elsewhere that they can run the engine on a wide range of fuels, so I think they mean it's CO2-neutral if you run on biofuels.
I'm not a big fan of biofuels, but I think they can have some role in a transition period if you have a mostly battery-electric drivetrain with an engine as range extender... and this car is a pretty good model for that. Remember that the production of batteries is limited, so it might be better to build 2 million cars that use a range extender once in a while, rather than 1 million cars that runs only on batteries (I say this as someone owning a pure battery electric vehicle btw).
But I think the key for this kind of transition vehicle is an ultra-simple and compact generator. Maybe something that is modular and can be swapped with a battery pack later. I think free-piston engines is what we need (I'm guessing they need something like Freevalve though, so maybe Koenigsegg's research contributes there)
And this "nuisance" is overstated. The amount of harm that enthusiasts do in terms of noise and air pollution are absolutely negligible - don't clutch pearls.
Edit: why is it important to understand car enthusiasts? I don't understand people who are enthusiastic about fucking children either. I don't need to understand everyone's enthusiasm, especially if it's actively harmful.
Again, you don't understand enthusiasts. You have a single stereotype based on the most obnoxious motorcyclists. This is pearl clutching.
Also most people live outside of high-rises.
Because auto modification teaches discipline and determination and is practice for other general skills. This is nothing like fucking children and the fact that you'd equate the two is evidence of your [un]righteous indignation. Your rage is misplaced.
Edit: imagine being this pissed off at computer enthusiasts for buying multiple GPUs and overclocking their machines. It's about the same level of absurdity.
If the noise was a unwanted side effect, I'd find this a lot less offensive. Anyone who does anything with the main purpose of harassing others is an ass and should be punished accordingly.
Why are you comparing car enthusiasts to child abusers? In the same post as "poisonous attitude" even?
Here too, except in winter. I'm out in the country, in the northeastern US, in hilly country. Late at night, with the windows open, I can hear bikes for maybe 5-10 km. I can even tell which roads they're on.
Edit: In the winter, there are the snowmobiles, but our windows are closed.
Most US municipalities have noise ordinances for a reason. If you feel someones vehicle violates that, file a complaint with the local non-emergency police line.
Surely people can just shut tf up?
Because law enforcement will tell you they have bigger things to deal with, so while nuisance makers are learning to shut tf up, people triggered by noise can learn to chill tf out.
Do you live in a dense urban populace? There is no room for excessive noise-makers here. Go bother the countryside if noise is your thing.
Excessive is the ear of the beholder. If you feel that it's excessive, call the non-emergency line.
There are ordinances.
So yeah, burning things may not be necessarily bad. Unfortunately no one seems to be investing in similar technologies to apply to other sectors of transportation such as aviation and shipping. It would seem to me to be much more realistic to design an engine for a airliner that burns a biofuel than to design a battery electric version.
The people who have embraced biofuel (e85) the most are car guys looking for more power. E85 has good knock resistance (high octane rating) like race fuel, but is far cheaper. It also has a greater cooling effect upon injection (because you need to inject more, as it is lower energy density).
If moving from gasoline to ethanol ultimately reduces pollution, it's going to be faster to achieve. We don't have to swap out everything at the consumer level, especially since many cars can run on E85 already.
Continuing to push electric cars is great, but it'll take a lot longer and require a high infrastructure investment to make it truly practical.
As I've stated elsewhere, the main problem is the supply constraint, and it's always a trade-off with food production. It means E85 is still expensive, and hasn't shown promise to scale to become cheaper. And the only way it can scale is to use more land, which must come from somewhere. Even if you don't care for the loss of biodiversity, the destruction of carbon sinks may nullify the purported carbon reduction of switching fuels.
Hybrid vehicles with regenerative braking don't require infrastructure changes and reduce carbon output, all while the consumer spends less on fuel.
I'm a huge fan of forests, wetlands, bushlands, heathlands, prairies, and other wild landscapes. If land use in agriculture dropped, my preference would be to see that land go back to the trees, wild-flowers, and the many creatures that live with them.
We've not forgotten that the impetus for this thread is a 600-hp engine designed for the next Koenigsegg supercar, right?
The Nissan Leaf and Tesla Model 3 are here today and are already practical cars, and are down-right affordable compared to a Koenigsegg. If you take purchase price out of the equation, the other Tesla cars are also practical in terms of range and electricity costs.
I hope those buying a new ICE car in 2020 who could afford otherwise have taken a credible look at buying an electric car instead.
You have to weigh it against the benefits to judge it.
A simple truth, yet so very often ignored.
There are serious challenges to recycling or repurposing lithium batteries:
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-019-1682-5
Granted there might be another battery breakthrough that could resolve this:
https://www.androidauthority.com/graphene-batteries-explaine...
At this stage, we should be exploring all options as some are likely not to pan out as expected.
Hybrid vehicles are still an economical option, preferably paired with high-efficiency ICEs, and could tide us over until better energy storage options become available.
It doesn't have to, biogas/syngas and by extension ethanol can be synthesized from just about anything (with various levels of input energy depending on cellulose levels), all you need is basic bioreactors/fermentation from organic material to yield CH3CH2OH (Ethanol) [1}. I met a guy with a syngas company from Germany that was doing that and he told me things like switch-grass in Brazil were a boon for them.
I could easily see this being a viable use of compost material, I'm thinking of low hanging fruit like grass trimmings, and food waste found in local communities that's created and requires additional energy to transport afterward, and yield ethanol from when energy usage is low from local power stations/renewable energy sources. Also, eco-centric places like Boulder County compost bins are readily accessible and are separated (and fined if not) this includes the restaurant Industry, which have to use biodegradable bags, making separation relatively easy to other counties in the US.
In CO there is a startup/company that takes composted material, and creates rich potting soil to gardeners and the MJ industry:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbestreptalks/2017/04/10/on-a...
When I was doing my farming apprenticeship in Switzerland, it was common for every Dorf/Community to have a distiller in some capacity; in my case it was the apple and pear orchid owner who would create schnapps for anyone who brought sufficient material for a fee.
I got to know him, and he brought me on his farm/orchid for a few jobs when he found out I had spent some time on a Vineyard in Croatia and had a background in Biology--I helped make wine and Rakija in Croatia, as it was a simple reaction, at scale to sell to support the farm as horticulture was only 15% of profit that season and a 'better use of my time.'
The language barrier with the Swiss farmer was intense at times, (Mundarts are hard) but I realized that this was all sanctioned with the local canton: such that if he collected a tax on their behalf on the yielded amount of alcohol everything/anything he charged per hour of labour was his to keep. He would then report that to the canton come tax time.
It's really a viable method to reduce (perceived) waste and turn into a Value Added Product--local farmers/residents brought batches of fermented cherries/apricots/apples/pears to this distiller that were unfit for Market or just local waste in their yard to make family schnapps. Rather than like the US where, as I found out during my undergrad, the State requires you taint the Ethanol synthesized in a lab to ensure its not consumable and deter 'bootleggers.'
Personally, at the time I thought it would be a viable alternative to using dirty diesel on the various amounts of farm equipment: tractors, combines, haulers etc... as MPG is not really a big concern as much as cost of operation/job is. But if E85 could be produced locally to run cars then all the better. I do love the sound E85 inline 6 engines make (JZ and RB series) at the track.
1: https://projects.ncsu.edu/project/foodengineer/231/notes/bio...
Making oil a non-fossil fuel could be the best of both worlds.
It's a thing:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biogasoline
> Biogasoline/Biopetrol is gasoline produced from biomass such as algae
>> Companies such as Diversified Energy Corporation are developing approaches to take triglyceride inputs and through a process of deoxygenation and reforming (cracking, isomerizing, aromatizing, and producing cyclic molecules) producing biogasoline. This biogasoline is intended to match the chemical, kinetic, and combustion characteristics of its petroleum counterpart, but with much higher octane levels. Others are pursuing similar approaches based on hydrotreating
Laws are designed with a balance for freedoms. Any large city already has plenty of noise pollution beyond the occasional sports car going by. It's more about irresponsible behaviors like people revving at midnight than the car itself.
Loud vehicles are a nuisance to society, and an unnecessary one.
I'll ignore the ad hom, it's already addressed by my previous comment.
People can start up lawn mowers and chainsaws to annoy you too, but we don't ban them either. Instead there are rules around when it's acceptable to use them so you don't do yard work at midnight.
Popular areas of London and NYC are loud, yes. Don't live in loud areas if you want a quiet place. No different than living next to an airport or freeway.
Although there is of course very obnoxious drivers out there, I believe a healthy level of sound from motorcycles can save lives; a lot of drivers complain they can’t see them. One of the reasons i was initially scared of ebikes
It's still a stretch. We need to try to be carbon negative, not just carbon neutral.
I’d imagine that the Konigsegg buyer probably doesn’t care about maintenance costs but they might be irritated at the service intervals.
I wonder how much maintenance that will be?
https://www.roadandtrack.com/new-cars/car-technology/a312246...
For another comparison the 3 cylinder 765cc engine from Triumph (street version) does about 120 or 125 with a red line of 12.5k if I recall correctly. In racing form (i.e. the moto2 engine version) it pushes about 140 (I think mostly via tuning and a bit higher red line). This is naturally aspirated but probably a good rough guestimate for bounds of what you can do on regular fuel and air. This also shows you why just ramping up the compression won't get you there, you need to change the air pressure too. For the street version of the triumph engine the service interval is something like 10k miles, valves every 2nd one.
If you scale that linearly you still "only" get close to 350 , so you have an idea of how much stress is on this design to push 600 on 2l.
By comparison the inline 4s in motogp make 250+ from 1 liter, so that's getting closer. They do probably represent something close to what is possible without induction though.
-Removed, I misunderstood the original post, still you can design an engine with more power if torque requirements are low, and they claim 280hp at 2l which is a lot but doable if you don't intent to run it like a roadcar and have infinite budget like with those super/hypercars-
Agree low torque requirements help, which has a lot to do with the rest of the drivetrain, i.e. how you want to actually deliver power and at what speeds.
If it makes you feel any better, I have to pause for a beat any time I try to put an adjective in front of 'tolerances' to make sure I don't sound like a dope.
~16 m/s for automobile engines
~25 m/s for Formula one engines
~26.5 m/s for Koenigsegg’s 2.0-Liter
If we extrapolate from this, where high performance drag cars typically last minutes (20 years ago they only lasted seconds), that would mean this engine might only be good for a couple of hours of driving around the track. Assuming this is true (I am not saying it is), this engine would be pretty worthless for anything other than being a collector's item or being used for 1 or 2 races before it had to be retired.
"Even" one season? If they last more than one race it means they didn't push it hard enough so it makes sense that the engine last just marginally more than the race.
That said, from my impression it is usually the turbo or the hybrid systems that break down, it's rare for the actual engine block to be the issue barring specific production issues.
[1]: https://autoweek.com/article/formula-one/mercedes-f1-engine-...
Edit: old numbers updated
Similarly in current F1, they know quite well how much life they have of the engine, and how much life a quali lap takes from the engine compared to a calm outlap.
If the regulations mandated a single engine per season they could do it, though they'd mostly just turn everything down.
RMS has all sorts of interesting properties, being directly proportional to effects that result from the square of the quantity being measured such as force on the connecting rods or acceleration of the piston, but mean piston speed is easier to calculate from familiar quantities to an automotive engineer like stroke and RPM. I wonder if engine longevity is actually proportional to mean piston speed or RPM, it would be easy to mistake the 7% difference given all the confounding factors...
If something is proportional to one, it's naturally proportional to the other.
Also, 8,500 RPM isn’t ‘especially high revs’ these days...
And finally, it still produces 500HP on pump gas - even that is outrageously more than any other 3cyl engine available.
Besides, if you have one if these you have a bunch of other cars.
Sadly, I don't expect to see this in regular Ford or Toyotas any time soon. The cost benefit combined design upgrade and tooling change is just not practical.
They only lack top end power compared to the 1000cc inline-4 engines which sit in track-focused supersports.
Which is like saying, "I found the Ford Focus RS lacking in power compared to a Porsche 911 Turbo S".
skeptical tech from one will transfer to the other.
I used to work for a supercar company, our unit price made certain tech possible, not even thinkable for mass-auto.
That said, Hyundai recently developed their Continuously Variable Valve Duration system, which looks to solve changing valve duration more affordably in an all mechanical system.
BMW started putting them in motorcycles recently.
I have also seen a system that swaps between two different cam lobes entirely, offering two different cam profiles which can also vary valve duration and not just timing, but you're limited to two settings again, where these newer systems offer complete variability.
I might be misremembering, but I thought the new bmw system was dual cam - so exactly what you are suggesting, a trade off in the middle, but not vvt.
At any rate, variable cam systems in bikes have certainly been around since the early 80s with one of the 400c cbrs. They never really caught on but there are a bunch of variations.
[1]: https://www.autozine.org/technical_school/engine/vvt_4.htm
Honda had VTEC engines even back in the 80s, they physically choose between (three, if I recall correctly) cams.
These are not pure VVT systems, although they are not continuous like the Hyundai.
Mechanical cams are going to be more reliable than a pnuematic system.
maintenance is going to be much different than the other 99.9% of cars that use a timing belt/chain.
Skeptical that the incumbents like Bosch wouldn't have already tried this in some form they have the OEM EMS / fuel rail industry major market share.
As with all things mass-auto it's down to unit price economics vs how desperately do we need to put this in the cars to meet emissions regs.
This tech has a long history and research behind it.
IIRC, batteries get 13% cheaper per year, and that means price halves every 5 years or so. Right now 1 kWh of batteries (including BMS) costs about $100. So in 2025 one kWh of batteries will probably cost only $50.
Electric vehicles purchase price will simply be cheaper unless ICE vehicles get subsidies. At that point, for economical consideration you'll need to have pretty compelling reasons to buy an ICE vehicle.
Ultimately even gas station network will be decimated and gradually fade away.
Extreme environments, heavy machinery, etc.
ICE are never going away.
There will always be collectors and niche uses for ICE vehicles (e.g. backcountry 4x4) even if they get largely displaced by EV
No OEM is going to sink billions into R&D when they know everything will go electric in the near future.
So while you may be able to by an ICE Catapillar D10 or a John Deer Tractor or other machinery in 2050, I'd bet it's engine isn't any different to the 2020 version. Same goes for sports cars.
Flat panel yield was a problem in the 1990s, every screen had dead pixels. The magic of film grain and a Pentax SLR wasn't that special, kids today don't even know or care. The warm colours of old lightbulbs are forgotten too. Yet there was amazing analog engineering and precision mass manufacturing with these products.
ICE is going that way. The yield on the battery part is being solved, aka range/price. For performance the electric motor has no equal and things like regen are game changing. In time ICE will have specialist applications such as for creating electricity to charge a battery in remote locations, that will be about it. The tech innovation and investment has moved on to electric power trains. The horse has gone and it is too late to shut the gate. Nostalgia is not enough for ICE particularly when the baby boomers have moved on.
This is obviously not true; when I go to a hardware or home improvement store, there is all sorts of information on the color temperature and purported color reproduction quality of the light bulbs. And "warm white" LEDs that are supposed to imitate incandescent are ubiquitous.
If you look at the temperature variance across the planet, you'll realize that there's vast numbers of people for whom batteries are never going to be an option.
https://jalopnik.com/a-detailed-look-at-the-koenigsegg-gemer...
sounds like the blue-collar jobs of the future like car engine mechanic would need a Stanford AI degree.
Camshafts definitely got to go. Like carburetors it has been a solution from pre-electronic age. The variable timing has been a workaround for the last 3 decades, it is kind of a complication on top of the camshaft approach. These days though i don't understand while mainstream car manufacturers wouldn't just go for the fully independent valve approach like that "Freevalve", i.e. each valve is driven by its own solenoid/pneumo/hydro actuator controlled by the computer - such approach looks simpler and cheaper to me (may be because i'm in software :)
Basically, AI=bullshit in any marketing copy at this point.
It sounds like they did connect the engine mechanically to the drivetrain, with the electric motors mostly assisting. But why not have it just directly drive a generator, with some decent sized batteries? An engine that only runs at full power at a single RPM to charge batteries doesn't benefit much from elaborate valve technology.
Don't hold your breath.
And I think Christian said they were making 1 car per week at the moment.
https://www.autoblog.com/2019/03/04/koenigsegg-affordable-su...
[0] https://www.autoblog.com/2014/01/28/nissan-three-cylinder-ra...
Ford's new Escape has a 1.5L turbo I-3 on the base model.
And Ford also used to have a 1.0L turbo I-3 in some models of Fiesta and/or Focus, although it was kind of obscure and may have only come with a manual transmission (in the US).
Also, the first Freevalve engine to be put presented in a car was in a normal sedan from a Chinese manufacturer: https://www.motorauthority.com/news/1107384_1-6-liter-camles...
This very much feels like the transition from brushed to brushless motors to me - super cheap compute power and sensors unlocking a much more efficient way to drive electric motors. As far as I know there's no _real_ advantage to brushed motors except in dirt cheap applications where a potentiometer is the most expensive speed controller you can afford.
This engine could be a game-changer in countries that have the same taxation. I wish this engine can become mainstream.
I wonder how well these claims will hold up. Seems like a very big deal if true.
Edit: I knew their cars were expensive, but it seems Koenigsegg cars start around 2mm and up to to 10mm? I'm gonna guess that there's zero chance of just buying an engine for $10k and throwing it in another car like an LS swap
Would there be any efficiencies compared to say, an ordinary gasoline piston engine with a camshaft, driving that generator?
I'm guessing yes... which leads to the next question:
Would a diesel motor (again, to drive a generator) be more effective than this one which uses gasoline?
Why or why not?
I guess part of my confusion stemmed from mixing up the camshaft and the crankshaft (the former seems relatively straightforward to replace in a conventional motor, the latter not so much...) O:)
This could be interesting when it comes down market a bit. Especially given the flex fuel ability.
Build turbocharged Honda K20A (20 year old engine) does 500whp.
>Koenigsegg says, in theory, a naturally aspirated TFG could make 280 horsepower.)
again just like build K20A NA :)
There are other forums to jerk off about pathetic road-legal electric go-karts.
I read that as "we don't give a fuck about emissions because we like vroom vroom and we plant a few trees to not feel bad about it".
I agree about the weight problem of large lithium batteries, and light hydrogen fuel cells may not deliver enough pick power, so I don't have a good solution for hyper cars. I just think that ICE engines shouldn't be in cars ASAP.
Thankfully we don't have our cities full of horse poop anymore.
But when I’m there, I never really feel comfrtable walking around. It’s full of people on bicycles who don’t give a damn about pedestrians.
Also you should focus on industrial uses like container ships and coal power plants that create 1000x more pollution if you're really that serious about it. The world is moving as fast as it can, but oil is used for more than just transportation and it's not changing overnight.
I think they just want to have a super fast car for a few people, and to do so you need to pollute with an ICE engine.
That is to say, a 4500 lb Tesla Model S has 5x the road-wear of a 3000lb Toyota Camry.
If all Tesla Model S drivers were willing to pay 500% the road-taxes to make up for their 5x damages that their cars do to our roads, I think I'll be cool with them using their road-destroying heavy batteries.
And the F150 drivers too, while we're at it.
The cost per mile in terms of road damage is mainly a function of axle weight and designed load and volume of the road surface. The damage per mile per ESAL (Equivalent Single Axle Load) can vary from $0.03/ESAL-mile to $5.90/ESAL-mile when you exceed the design load of the road. Low volume roads will have a higher ESAL because of natural wear exceeding use-based wear.
Since passenger cars will never exceed the design load of a road, this is not a factor in our analysis (but it’s a very big deal for heavy trucks, particularly on rural roads). Since low volume road wear is predominantly due to natural causes and not road-use we should probably exclude those as well.
Just to put this in perspective, the cost per mile per ESAL of $0.09 (a relatively high volume road that operates within vehicle weight design spec), gives us road damage for a light passenger car (3,000 pounds) or 0.0002 ESAL which equates to $1.80 per 100,000 miles.
Increasing to an ESAL of 0.001 results in a wear cost of $9.00 per 100,000 miles.
Basically all road wear comes from heavy trucks with an ESAL > 1. This is compounded when those trucks exceed the design load of the road, which can add another up to 500x multiplier on the damage per mile driven.
The damage/road wear cost for passenger vehicles is a barely even a rounding error by comparison.
Based on this simple analysis, I do not believe it is at all justified to claim that Teslas (or EVs in general) have “road-destroying heavy batteries.”
[1] - https://pavementinteractive.org/reference-desk/design/design...
However, the value of having those major highways is still extremely high to passenger cars and trucks alike.
I benefit greatly from well maintained roads, even if my use of those roads is not damaging the road basically at all.
So you need a weighted analysis of use and value as well as wear & tear to come up with a “fair” allocation of costs.
Even people who don’t own a car benefit greatly from those roads, due to their logistical necessity for everyday life, not to mention mail and package delivery to their homes. To the extent that passenger car drivers overpay for their commensurate road wear & tear, car owners are subsidizing non-car-owners because the goods they buy are cheaper than they would be if they had to pay for the true fully loaded logistics cost.
You could charge the trucking companies more. Then prices of transported goods would just increase to compensate and we’d all be roughly back in the same place maybe? Non-car owners would be worse off.
To the extent that roads are being subsidized more than rail then this would distort the market and limit freight volumes. I have a feeling that the markets are not tremendously out of balance, and that it’s not like we’re sitting on massive unused rail freight capacity that just can’t operate profitably because roads aren’t expensive enough? But that’s a whole different topic.
I think the argument made by some transport people is that if we made (particularly) the trucking industry pay more directly, as you say we would be roughly back in the same place except variant freight methods (e.g. rail for long distances) might become competitive enough to bring overall costs down.
I don't know the truth of this, but we've been subsidizing trucking long enough that I don't think current rail capacity is a good indicator one way or another. It seem plausible - it's clear there is a market distortion but not clear exactly what it is.
One nit-pick, it's not clear the non-car owners would be worse off so long as whatever payment mechanism we used didn't create a free-rider class of passenger vehicles.
I will admit I stumbled upon this conclusion and felt it was ironically juicy and a bit provocative, but it seems like pretty solid macroeconomics to me!
This is all complicated though by the way we actually pay for all of this, so it's not as simple as car owners subsidizing. It's not like the gas tax covers this.
A better comparison- a Mercedes S Class, starts at 4,500lbs to the 4,800lbs of a Tesla Model S.
In both cases there’s a mere 300lb difference (less than 10%), which is way under the 1500lbs/ 50% difference your argument is based on.
Some people like to compensate with cars what they lack in other attributes.
hauling a couple cubic meters of manure
hauling hives with live bees
hauling a large trailer (we have ones that attach to a platform installed in the middle of a pick-up truck bed, like a smaller version of commercial truck transport)
hauling dry ice, compressed gas, liquid nitrogen, or anything else that could displace the air in a cargo van
hauling roadkill, especially things like skunks
hauling small vehicles such as ride-on lawnmowers, ATVs, go carts, motorcycles, etc.
Biofuels are not environmentally friendly, at all.
It's pretty sad to see this effort fall on deaf ears. Someone here doesn't care, but it's not Koenigsegg.
They could be, plausibly, but that technology has not been commercially demonstrated yet.
Completely carbon neutral is difficult for any product of course. E85 is 15-24% gasoline too, which is neither renewable or carbon neutral.
I still don’t think its a very good idea (cars are thirsty, infrastructure expensive, worse than both biogas and EV’s for climate etc).
It makes no sense to get all up in arms about carbon emissions from sports cars. As a fraction of the market, even if you include more mainstream manufacturers like Porsche, they’re totally inconsequential.
But of course, if you are really just using carbon emissions as a way to preach and brag about your morally superior lifestyle and/or political positions, expensive sports cars are a great target.
I'd say no. We should not burn carbon without serious need, as rarity or not. This particular case is more complicated though - they are developing technology which may be a net saver in CO2 emissions in which case it sorta pays for itself.
This would require a ban on holiday air travel.
No ones needs a sports car. Or a 40” TV. Or to go golfing. Or Broadway shows. Movie theaters - for that matter, no one needs movies at all! Recreational international travel - totally unecesssary. Why does anyone need more than one house? A house larger than 2,000 square feet? Why does anyone need more than 2 kids?
These aren't even sports cars. These are hyper cars. They're rich people collectibles on wheels.
You reduce the Lithium-Ion battery size, and then increase the range of cars. Li-Ion is also extremely heavy, reducing range, increasing wear-and-tear on the road.
In overall costs, hybrids make sense today. We need another magnitude of improvements before Li-Ion batteries can completely replace ICE.
But we are absolutely at the point where Li-Ion can augment cars in hybrid form. Maybe in a few years, a Cobalt-free battery would be mass produced (or other chemistry that doesn't need to be sourced from war-torn nations).
And in the meantime, increasing ICE efficiency by 30% (on TOP of the Hybrid savings) is only a good thing.
The range isn't really a problem for new electric cars and the weight will hopefully go down. Personally I think that the hybrids I can afford drive like shit compared to the fully electric cars I can afford.
Making ethanol from wheat or similar is bad, but from forest products in forest-covered countries seems ok.
I don’t think a number of hypercars makes any difference to the climate issue. For the rest of us the solution is probably BEVs