The article mostly makes it sound like Mazda just loves the wankle and wants to find any possibly way to bring it back - even though it has “high” emissions… so coupling it with a hybrid electric motor makes it happen..
That can’t be the whole story?
Wankels have tremendous power-to-weight and power-to-size ratios. Their main problem is reliability. The generally accepted solution to improve rotary engine reliability (oil injection) results in poor emissions. The wide, flat-ish combustion chamber doesn't help the emissions problem, either.
The Wankel is at its most efficient and its most reliable when operating at a constant RPM. Conveniently, the EV generator application demands a pretty flat RPM band. As a result, the engine doesn't need to lean as hard into those emissions-increasing compromises.
Thus, EVs allow the Wankel's benefits over a reciprocating-piston engine to be reaped without the same costs as before. In theory, at least. It remains to be seen if the benefits will outweigh the drawbacks. I'm glad they're at least going to give it a try.
If I understand the article correctly, the "series" hybrid configuration means precisely that it cannot operate at the ideal rpm when charging the battery, because it is always driving the wheels directly as well.
No hybrid ever runs its battery all the way to zero, and series hybrids are no exception. The Chevy Volt (the other notable series hybrid in Western markets) keeps its engine at a near-constant RPM by using the battery to supply torque, even when the battery is "dead." I would expect the MX-30 to do the same.
IME in several thousand miles driving/riding in a Volt, it hums away within a very narrow RPM band unless you hoon it on a dead battery in cold weather. Even then, it's not nearly as wide of a rev band as a conventional hybrid.
I don't get how the engine can be decoupled from the wheels if it's mounted to the same axle as the motor?
I don't think there's a good reason to keep pushing down deadend reliability paths. We should be responding to our hard earned decades of learning and be pressing advantages. Not every novel and viable solution ends up being an enhancement.
Meanwhile hybrids really want a small and lightweight engine because of all the extra equipment.
The engine used in Toyota's most popular cars runs in Atkinson most of the time with a 40% thermal efficiency.
It’s not just the cost of batteries that’s a concern resulting in short plug in hybrid ranges. Weight is a real limiting factor when you also need a gas engine and large fuel tank.
Also it’s not just that you can have extra Li+ it’s also pushing around less dead weight when the engine is off. So you can get fairly close to a 50 mile range difference depending on exact setup.
Alternatively you can have a smaller Atkinson engine and a larger reserve on the battery, but that also costs range while still being heavier.
It might make sense to look into a turbine engine on a hybrid. Though that’s probably been investigated I doubt anyone has invested the kind of time and money needed to make a real shot of it.
They might, but with the current average build quality of the car industry, the rest of the car will die well before that..
Clever indeed.
I bought it for 25k and was the owner from 2009 to 2019, from 60k to over 150k mi. The maintenance was a bit pricey, due to the fuel injection problems and the electronics would fail in extreme heat of sustained 110+ outside temp (southern california heat) or cold (seattle mornings). I eventually sold it for 9k to a collector. Not a bad deal at all.
I completed the purchase of one red new gran touring from Mazda, for delivery. The inventory was already taken, so they tried to swap a yellow and I cancelled. The next shipment was in another 8 months. Obviously, the internet RX8 community was active and I knew what was a reasonable pricing, at the time. I looked locally and I had a salvage checked out at Mazda. It was clean. As I mentioned, I sold it to a collector for 9k ~10 years later, as it was still in near-mint condition, regardless of the title status.
In regards to reliability, not long into owning it I had to get the engine rebuilt due to low compression (luckily JUST within the extended warranty period which Mazda offered due to the very issue everyone in here is mentioning, loss of compression due to failing seals).
That's a strange take.. It took decades to get reciprocating engines to be reliable, even deployed at scale. It also took decades to get jet engines reliable enough to comply with ETOPS requirements, to the point that it was long considered a pipe dream.
If it hadn't been for continuous investments over long periods of time and incremental adoptions of improved technologies, we wouldn't be enjoying any of their benefits today.
Are you proposing that Mazda should put two engines in their cars? Or am I misreading this?
>hard earned decades of learning and be pressing advantages. Not every novel and viable solution ends up being an enhancement.
That's precisely what Mazda is doing. They poured decades of R&D into the rotary engine, and are leveraging that research to their advantage. Their engine's diminutive size means they can provide more interior space in a compact vehicle, which is one of the key benefits of an EV that you can't get with a conventional hybrid. There are innate material advantages to the rotary in this application, it's not just hand-waving.
There's nothing overly novel about series hybrids, either. Chevy proved they can deliver EV driving dynamics and efficiency with ICE convenience, even at a larger scale than Mazda appears to be targeting.
This entire comment perplexes me. I can't tell if you like what Mazda's doing, or if you dislike it.
The F1 MGU-K is geared to the crankshaft via the timing gears. The wheels are absolutely NOT electrically driven, it’s working as a torque fill for the conventional powertrain.
I've seen many very reliable 3 or 4 rotary wankel swaps in RX7 FD3S that output far beyond anything imaginable any V8/V12 could produce. 2000hp is not a joke here, when being run on pure ethanol as fuel input. Apart from fuel injectors, clutch and gearbox, these engines run very stable and reliable.
There was an RX-8 Blue model being sold in Japan which was burning hydrogen directly, effectively producing water as output, which, in the prototype was being converted back to hydrogen via a fuel cell. And this was in 2004.
I wish there were more Wankel engines being used as "pocket generators", because they can reliably run on synthesized alcohol and hydrogen and be a potential generator replacement for all that Diesel based crap that's being used in rural areas.
Imagine a solar roof on your house that produces hydrogen with some fuel cells (which also produce heat for your home). This could be the optimum cycle for use in a decentralized home, as chemical energy storage has no loss compared to li-ion batteries that have a limited lifetime. The multiple use of hydrogen (e.g. a stove just needs to burn the gas) also makes it very low tech, and possibly much more reliable than a circuit based system where transformers might fail over time.
But of course, can't sell decentralized approaches via gas stations, so it will never take off...
There's an extremely good reason "rural" applications are reliant on diesels. It's not uncommon for a diesel engine to hit 300k+ miles and still operate reliably. And not to mention simply. They are relatively easier to maintain than a standard gasoline engine.
Diesels also greatly benefit from being on a fixed power band. It's why they work so dang well on large ships.
Where as rotary engines(rx-7's at least) need a rebuild every 80-100k miles. So I think without really knowing what you're doing mechanically or having access to a mechanic that can repair those kinds of engines you aren't going to be super reliable with a rotary.
Green hydrogen approaches via rotary engines does seem quite interesting. I think if the reliability of the rotary could be improved that could have some serious merit. Or at least making small enough generators that you can easily ship them out to be replaced/repaired could have serious merit.
The maintenance thing is concerning, though. Nobody knows how to work on these things. As an RX-7 or RX-8 owner, you're either doing most of your engine work by yourself, or you're driving very long distances to go to a specialty shop. We can pray that it's reliable enough for this to not be a problem, but if these engines start failing, it's going to be a huge mess.
Side note - the geometry of a Wankel rotary engine makes a diesel version impossible - you can't get enough compression. Diesel rotaries do exist though. An American company called Liquid Piston is making them for the Army. The intent is to use them in diesel generators, since the resulting generator is much smaller and lighter than more traditional diesel generators.
Oh, no. You don't want to be cooking over a flame capasble of melting platinum. You will utterly destroy your pots and pans temper. I do jewelry work, hydrogen gas is one of the hardest gases to properly work with. I'd rather let a newbie play with oxy-acetylene than a hydrogen torch.
People think "Fire is fire" and no, no it is not.
Built Nissan VR38DETT V6 produces 2000hp. A full billet block will produce 3000hp+. Nissan GT-R guys(T1, ETS,AMS) Let's not even get into the big block V8's because these things will run all day at that hp and be a whole lot more reliable than anything mentioned here.
You've got it backwards.
The Prius's Atkinson engine makes low-end torque *worse*, and then relies upon the EV Motor to drive the car at low speeds (0mph to 10mph) before the ICE kicks back in.
If ICE is operating, its at higher RPMs where the generator can still be useful (low RPMs like 500 are too low for the Atkinson engine to be effective in any way, the computer instead increases the RPM to maybe 2000, and uses all the power to drive a generator instead)
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So you see, the name of the game is efficiency at all costs, with EV-motors assisting whatever compromise you built into the motor. In the case of Toyota, its absolutely undrivable crap for low-end torque ICE, but a powerful enough 60hp to 100hp electric-motor that can handle the low-speeds and stop-and-go traffic, smoothing out any problems.
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IE: The engineers build a highly compromised ICE engine (the Atkinson engine) that has a far narrower band of usable RPMs than a normal vehicle. Then they smooth out those problems with electric motors.
It sounds like Mazda is doing the same trick here with their Rotary engine, but the Rotary engine doesn't have the crazy-good efficiency curves that the Toyota Atkinson engine has. Efficiency isn't the "only" name of the game however, but Mazda now needs to find out a good way to market this engine / highlight its strengths.
Yes: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atkinson_cycle
However, these modern Miller cycle engines are being called Atkinson or Atkinson-Miller cycle for some reason.
So you have compact size, good power to weight ratio, and power limitations that don't really matter for range extender purposes. Lots of potential.
I can't find the article right now, but I'd swear I remember discussion here a handful of months ago about a startup marketing a similar EV range extender engine design.
He said that they had to put really big brakes on it. I guess for some reason you can't just have a clutch. Personally if I was going for eco I'd want something more clever than "bigger brakes" but maybe building something like a Hybrid Synergy Drive is harder than building a turbine.
There's no compression braking (engine braking) with a turbine engine.
The EcoJet is just one of many examples of his cars that have been improved in this way.
You can tell Jay genuinely loves cars and the history of the auto world. He's indulging his hobby interest in a way that will preserve these vehicles for future generations to see and learn about. As far as ways rich people can spend their money that's a pretty cool one in my book.
https://bandimere.com/previewing-the-brakes-plus-jet-car-nat...
If you want to use a gas turbine for producing power, you will set it up such that most of the energy goes into the work generated, rather than the exhaust, so it would be a cooler, slower exhaust, similar to an IC-engine.
(A ducted fan is still a propeller.)
> They produce very little power, just enough to power the Auxiliary Power Unit (that manages the plane electronics, air-conditioning etc.).
The APU is a completely separate gas turbine that doesn’t rely on the main engines. As a consequence, the APU on an airplane will also have its own exhaust.
> If you want to use a gas turbine for producing power, you will set it up such that most of the energy goes into the work generated, rather than the exhaust, so it would be a cooler, slower exhaust, similar to an IC-engine.
Yes, obviously. At the same time, I was under the impression that turboprops and turboshafts on airplanes and helicopters still produced enough jet exhaust to represent a safety hazard, and in those applications you would also expect that most of the energy would go into the work generated rather than the exhaust. So is it just that this residential generator is even more efficient than the main engine of a heavy-lift helicopter? Is it because it’s a less powerful machine in the first place? I could continue to speculate about this but I don’t actually know.
So instead you extract most of the energy, and then use the last little bit as extra thrust in a plane/helicopter.
Comes with daily free health checkup (in form of an X-Ray).
Maybe neutrino imaging?
> Gas turbines scale extremely poorly. They rely on small clearance between the rotating blades and the housings for efficiency. The smaller the turbine, the greater the relative clearance and the more energy is lost. Gas turbines, at least with established technology, make very little sense below 300ish HP. As a real life comparison: A Robinson R44 piston helicopter and an R66 turbine Helicopter have almost identical design, dimensions, and weights. Power is around 250 / 300hp. The former burns between 50-60L of gas per hour at cruise, the latter around 90-110L of Jet fuel.
1 - https://old.reddit.com/r/cars/comments/s8vkv8/are_wankel_eng...
I believe a Tesla can charge its battery pack at approximately this rate.
There's no reason to have a generator that charges the pack in a hurry. It really only needs to cover the maximum sustained average draw - driving up an extended grade at high speed. That's a lot less than 300 hp - it's probably not more than 80 hp or so at most.
The UK's drone engines come in light and small with models that range from 5 BHP to 120 BHP with 40 BHP being suitable for broad swathe of "typical" driving.
And with metal 3d printers rapidly falling in price, I think it will get within the scope of university students to prototype soonish.
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/air-space-magazine/the-little...
This one, for example, weighs 450 grams, but can consume its own mass in fuel every three minutes!
https://www.kingtechturbinesaustralia.com.au/product-page/k4...
Having a rotary with a turbo should be able to work better at a lower scale for a pretty cheap production cost.
When scaling down, gas turbines become much more expensive than ICE. For example on small planes market, exist many dual-powered models (in range 200-300hp), and with gas turbine it typically priced twice of ICU-powered with very similar parameters. Range of 1000hp+ on planes are near totally gas turbines.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chrysler_Turbine_Car
The ideas and innovations back then seemed amazing
Possibly https://liquidpiston.com
Prior discussions: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
They can simulate lots of it but to get real answers, they have to build the engine and see how it holds up.
Also Mazda is a small-ish manufacturer at the Japanese scale. Since Wankels are part of their identity they could decide to build a car with it even though the downsides wouldn't make sense for a "rational" brand like Toyota. It can give them that creative freedom that help make desirable cars and keep Mazda relevant.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hdjj52FUsEo
>These are some of the earliest ads I wrote and directed. Many of these ads cost our client just a couple of hundred dollars. When you look at this early attempt ant animation, it's not surprising that it didn't cost much more as a decent lunch these day!
>It's hard to believe now how absolutely 'revolutionary' the rotary engine appeared to be in those days. Many of us expected that they would eventually take over from reciprocating engines completely.
>This ad was produced just before the moon landing.
>The Agency was Hayes Advertising, Sydney. My producer (and dear friend) was Max Cleary and the Account Director was Vic Violet.
Mazda RX-3 Commercial:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oHzeGEHWMjo
>Piston engine goes boing, boing, boing, boing.
>Mazda engine goes Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm.
Felix Wankel:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Felix_Wankel
>Wankel and the Nazi Party
>During the early 1920s Wankel was a member of various radical anti-Semitic organizations. In 1921 he joined the Heidelberg branch of the Deutschvölkischer Schutz- und Trutzbund and in 1922 he became a member of the NSDAP, the National Socialist German Workers Party (or "Nazi Party"), which was banned soon afterwards. Wankel founded and led youth groups associated with a cover-up organization of the NSDAP. With them he conducted paramilitary training, scouting games and night walks.[3] When his high esteem for technical innovations was not widely shared among the German Youth Movement, he was offered instead the opportunity to talk about the issue of technology and education to Adolf Hitler and other leading National Socialists in 1928.[4]
>In the meantime Wankel's mother, Gerty had helped founding the local chapter of the NSDAP in his hometown of Lahr. Here Wankel not only rejoined the party in 1926, but also met the local Gauleiter, i.e. regional head of the NSDAP party, Robert Heinrich Wagner. In 1931 Wagner entrusted Wankel with the leadership of the Hitler Youth in Baden. But they soon fell out with each other, because Wankel tried to put a stronger emphasis on military training, whereas Wagner wished for the Hitler Youth to be a primarily political organization. In a particularly bitter and ugly controversy Wankel publicly accused Wagner of corruption. Wagner retaliated by stripping Wankel of his office by early 1932 and managed to have him expelled from the party in October 1932.
>Wankel, who sympathized with the social-revolutionary wing of the NSDAP with Gregor Strasser, then founded his own National Socialist splinter group in Lahr and continued his attacks on Wagner. Since the Nazis' seizure of power on 30 January 1933 had strengthened his position, Wagner had Wankel arrested and imprisoned in the Lahr jail in March 1933. Only by intervention of Hitler's economic adviser Wilhelm Keppler and Hitler himself, was Wankel set free in September 1933.[5] A fellow native of Baden and member of Reichstag from 1933 to 1945, Keppler had been a friend of Wankel and an ardent supporter of his technological endeavors since 1927. He now helped Wankel to get state contracts and his own Wankels Versuchs Werkstätten experimental workshop in Lindau.
>Wankel tried to rejoin the NSDAP in 1937, but was turned down.[6] With the help of Keppler, however, he was admitted to the SS in 1940 in the rank of Obersturmbannführer.[7] Two years later his membership was revoked for unknown reasons.[6]
Also for those who don't know, it's pronounced /ˈvaŋkl̩/ or /ˈvaŋkəl̩/ in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA). In German, "W" is pronounced as "V" in English, and the "e" in the syllable "kel" is reduced to a schwa ([ə]) sound, common in many German pronunciations of unstressed vowels.
A true electric successor to the RX-7 would capture so much attention.
That's not what the TV commercials from the 70s told me:
"Piston engine goes 'boing, boing, boing, boing'"
"But the Mazda goes 'hmmmmmmm'"
(Oh, of course there's a YouTube video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oHzeGEHWMjo)
I wish someone would deliver something small, light, aerodynamic, stripped down and without features of marginal utility. Sportiness sort of comes for free.
The only important features for an EV are (excluding safety issues) are change speed and range. I might add a heat pump for the cabin (and battery in cold climes). Skip the screen and just let me use my phone and give me physical controls.
If a car marker thought seriously for a moment and resisted the full techno wank that is inflicted upon us at the moment, they'd make a lot of money.
It's a car, it's not that complicated, get back to basics.
Not only has this not happened, Honda have even stopped selling the ICE version of the Fit in the USA. The closest thing to this concept - the Nissan Leaf - has also been discontinued in the N. American marketplace.
Truly pathetic.
First, like most of the Japanese manufacturers, Mazda bet against electric vehicles. They focused R&D on improving engine efficiency and getting their engines to run on hydrogen. If Mazda wants to make electric vehicles now, they have to play catch-up, or license key technologies from other manufacturers.
Second, batteries are heavy. For sedans and mid-size crossovers, this isn't much of a problem. EVs of that class are about the same weight as combustion vehicles. But for a lightweight sports car with decent range, batteries would be a big chunk of the total weight. Tesla's 85kWh battery weighs around 1,200lbs. If your desired weight is 2,500lbs, that only leaves 1,300lbs for the actual car. Yes you can save some weight by making the battery part of the structure, and you don't need an exhaust system, engine block, alternator, intake, etc, but it's still a tough set of constraints to work within.
Why do customers want sports cars to be light? Well all else equal, a lighter vehicle will have better performance. But even when all else isn't equal, vehicle weight can drastically affect driving enjoyment. I have a 4,048lb Model 3 Performance and a 2,182lb Mazda Miata. In terms of specs, the Model 3 is better in every way. It can accelerate, brake, and turn better than the Miata. It even has more range than the Miata. But the Model 3 feels like it's using brute force to beat inertia into submission. (Don't get me wrong, that can be fun.) The Miata is the opposite. Its light weight means that there's very little inertia to overcome, and something about that is extremely satisfying. It's almost like having a street legal go-kart. Until battery technology improves, an electric version just won't have the same appeal.
I’m not sure I want to drive around with a capacitor in the boot, but a huge battery isn’t ideal either.
https://www.motortrend.com/news/2026-mazda-mx-5-miata-electr...
While it is not a guarantee, the innovations in today's supercars do tend to become much more common with time.
what innovations did the Veyron introduce that the Challenger used?
1. https://www.caranddriver.com/reviews/a15141519/1990-mazda-mx...
2. https://www.caranddriver.com/reviews/a36329678/2019-tesla-mo...
3. https://www.caranddriver.com/reviews/a22678665/2019-mazda-mx...
The current ND2 (2019+) Miata regularly pulls ~0.95 stock in magazine tests, almost identical to your model 3 Performance number.
> https://www.motortrend.com/reviews/2019-mazda-mx-5-miata-clu...
You can exceed 0.95 and get ~1 on an ND Miata with slightly wider than OEM tires (still on stock rims) and a little more negative camber, which is widely done to the car by the enthusiast community. Similarly, you can get more out of your very own NA (1990) Miata with simple tire/alignment changes, even more with cheap new sway bars or springs etc.
> https://help.flyinmiata.com/align-your-suspension-chakras-By...
The ND2 is a ~1070kg car.
To use a more fitting Lotus example here, the ~900kg Lotus Elise (50% of the weight of the Model 3 Performance) pulls 1g when tested by Car and Driver:
> https://www.caranddriver.com/reviews/a15146116/2007-lotus-el...
My point was simply that even if you know vehicle A is twice as heavy as vehicle B, you don’t know for sure which one is faster in the turns.
It literally means none of this to change a miata as I described - we are talking a single degree of camber here not a race car. An alignment is normal maintenance - no change in price - and tires stay the same price if you go up a single size, so if you do this when getting new tires anyway it costs essentially nothing.
It’s a minor camber change (done at a standard alignment as normal, no extra special bits - just ask tech nicely). The tires will last just as long for your driving style and gas mileage unaffected. Comfort unchanged - no spring, damper or tire pressure changes.
The point this all makes is simple factors beyond weight have a huge bearing on constant lateral load car will sustain, to the point it’s almost pointless to compare weight and max corner load. You will never see car enthusiasts comparing weights of their cars and arguing in favour of more weight, almost ever. This entire comparison is pretty odd. No one who knows what they are talking about is going to question the classic Colin Chapman quote because physics didn’t change since his death - the concept of same car but lighter was faster in the 60s and 70s, and is still faster round a circuit today. It’s why race cars set faster lap times as the fuel tank depletes, which proves the point beyond doubt.
If you haven’t had a good alignment done to your NA recently get it done and don’t be scared of small adjustments, they won’t ruin anything - it does quite the opposite! - and the numbers that work great for all miatas are insanely well documented online. Steering feel will thank you for it. It’s the first thing I will have done to any generation of miata - they all benefit a lot, and usually arrive from factory not very accurately setup at all - you will see this when you have first alignment done and brand new car has initial numbers all over the place.
I’ve owned and maintained multiple examples of all four generations of the car over the last 20 years - a precision alignment with a touch more camber/toe is one of the easiest, best and cheapest (100-150 dollars typically in major US city) things you can do to the car - the miata is all about that steering feel which is easily corrupted.
Not entirely sure that would be the case even with a Red Sun label on it.
Engineering organizations fall in love with superficial attributes of solutions that worked especially well for them in the past. When RIM/BlackBerry realized the iPhone was a serious threat, they built a touchscreen phone where the entire display produces a physical clicking effect because they were so convinced that what people really want from a smartphone is the click of a keyboard.
Mazda is BlackBerry, and the rotary engine is their clicky keyboard.
No, they're not. Go test drive a Miata. They make the most fun cars to come out of Japan. And also have one of the better design languages.
Unfortunately, Wankels have extremely huge mechanical problems - complex geometry (classic ICU are very close to just cylinders), need of better materials, depend on much better oil.
And also big problem is production scale, as I talked with people, they considered Wankels as toy, you will just utilize when it run out guarantee term.
For example, for standard ICU, considered big repair, sleeves, so they will continue working, sure, less heavy duty than new.
What does low end torque have to do with electrical generation?
You do want efficient horsepower to drive a generator. More low end torque means the HP comes at lower RPM, which should mean less fuel consumption.
Sibling says the achilles heel of the Wankel rotary is low end torque, but you don't take the direct output from the engine, it goes through gear reduction for final drive output. The real achilles heel is the awful emissions. It's more or less a 2 cycle engine from that POV.
When driven at variable speeds it's hard to wrangle.
The reason it's well suited for electrical generation is its mechanical simplicity, compactness, low weight, low NVH, and not least important, "rotary" brand value. I suppose that when run at constant RPM and constant or smoothly changing load, the emissions is easier to deal with.
It's been awhile since I gave a damn about wankels (or ICEs in general), but ISTR there being a relatively low limit to achievable static compression ratio due to the fundamental geometry of the swept volume. Modern ICE engines are largely exploiting the combination of direct injection and the high compression ratios it enables to improve their thermal efficiency. Between the relatively low compression ratio and sub-optimal combustion chamber shape and the fact that it migrates around the housing with the power stroke, the wankel is pretty much doomed in a world that cares about efficiency.
disclaimer: I've worked hard to discard all my gearhead knowledge, but went fairly deep down the rx-7 rabbithole in my 20s-30s. Take the above with a big grain of "I may be senile and overconfident in stale once-deep knowledge" salt.
There are better designs than Wankel for "series hybrid" application.
https://newatlas.com/automotive/innengine-one-stroke-engine-...
One (potential?) advantage not mentioned in the article is lighter weight relative to a similar traditional engine.
It does prefer a narrow RPM band, which is fine.
Reliability is the biggest concern TBH, but maybe that's not a huge bummer if its more of a backup/assistant engine.
Having said that, I'd have been much more excited about this 10-15 years ago.
As others have pointed out, the article doesn’t do a great job of explaining how the rotary helps.
But even if it was, that was the most powerful stock configuration made and it topped out at ~184 lb/ft. :)
Torque was never the strength of this motor.
https://www.google.com/imgres?q=1993%20stock%20rx-7%20dyno&i...
They are fun engines, but low end torque just isn't their thing.