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Comment by inetknght | Hacker News Reader

The way I see it:

A motor produces locomotion. It makes other things move.

An engine produces power. Locomotion can be derived from power but isn't required to.

A train locomotive might be referred to as a "locomotive engine".

A car with an internal combustion engine moves from power generated by that engine. But a car with electric motors does not have an engine because power is not produced there. Power is produced elsewhere and then stored in the battery. Locomotion is produced by consuming the stored power.

Of course, that's just my interpretation of the two words without referring to a dictionary.

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A tractor was originally a "traction engine", to distinguish it from the steam engines you would haul around with horses to power equipment.

Go further back and there were machines called "siege engines".

also, fire engines

I used to think along these lines. But in actuality, not so much. By this definition they're the same thing. An electric motor converts electric energy into kinetic energy. A gasoline engine converts chemical energy to kinetic energy (and even more waste heat than the electric motor). (Neither of them produces power, this is of course impossible. Unless you're subtly using a very specific technical meaning of the word?) This input/output difference is a minor distinction.

Or in other words: the power that a gasoline engine uses wasn't produced in the engine, it was produced by geological and chemical means, and in a giant refinery somewhere else.

> An engine produces power. Locomotion can be derived from power but isn't required to.

By this definition, is a fuel cell an engine?

https://www.energy.gov/eere/fuelcells/fuel-cells#:~:text=A%2....

Or even just a barrel of fuel that's lit on fire to produce thermal energy

Perhaps! But I think by the time you're asking these kinds of questions you're then also dealing with one of the many reasons definitions can become nuanced as technology moves on.

And with an ICE, power is produced elsewhere and stored in the fuel tank.

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