As a retired machine designer, I've seen a lot of machinery that used rollers in tracks - I've even used this in some designs in the past. But, these are extremely wear sensitive and when they start to wear it doesn't take long to have catastrophic failure. Nothing is simpler, less expensive and longer lasting than rotary or pivoting bearings. Plus there is still the CO2 emissions that cannot be eliminated when burning a hydrocarbon. H2 is extremely energy intensive to produce, transport and use. Also, using it to replace petrol fuels is very inefficient compared to using it in a fuel cell. Someday, H2 may by practical, but I've been following this for over 50 years and nothing has proven economically feasible yet.
@joeyager8479 Not just not "feasible", but horribly expensive. Even if you eliminate the carbon emissions, all ICE emit NOx which is not so easy to get rid of. We have engines that meet the current requirements, but they continue to emit. Our cities have visibly dirty air. Once everything is electric, we will have much cleaner air.
@@rickcollins2814 there just needs to be a transition to it. So it's natural for new ideas to emerge as bridge gap to electric systems and relying on centralized power that can be more closely monitored. I mean what will the CARB do after there's no cars anymore? They'd need a new place to look. But until then there's always going to be a mix of power plant designs as we transition to more electric propulsion.
@@rickcollins2814electricity and renewable energy just transfers the co2 to a different area of the globe. The most important thing is to scrub the toxins and let the co2 out to feed the plants and reduce cold weather deaths. We already have all that technology.
Hybrid electric vehicles have always seemed a good option to me. Most driving is done around where you live. Extended trips are not the norm. Having enough battery capacity to cover most around-town driving, with an efficient single-purpose fossil fuel generator to cover extended trips, is a good way to ensure range, decrease weight, and lower the cost of a pure electric vehicle.
In principle and 20 years ago, in practice the hybrid toyotas I got as replacement vehicle were the worst experience I ever got. And after driving an EV for a couple of months now that is an improvement.
@@flemlion13 Was that a hybrid power train? What I would consider a good hybrid has just an electric power train coupled with a seldom-used gasoline generator.
The Napier Deltic was oil injected like the new Rotax 850 Etec turbo R but mechanical VRO. Here the cummins oil injected OP ACE 2 stroke.mart.cummins.com/imagelibrary/data/assetfiles/0058689.pdf Now take 2 850 Rotax's and make a 1700 OP engine out of it, same with Polaris 850 or Arctic Cats new 858!
Hi. Internal friction from four extra pistons with rings will negate any advantage from losing the friction from the crankshaft and valve gear. Sliding friction is much greater than rolling friction. One step forward, two back----. Cheers, P.R.
@@stever2583 Hi Steve. Yes I did miss that, but I'd question the statement anyway. Piston and ring friction varies with rpm, b.m.e.p., and piston speed, and it increases exponentially, it's not a straight line increase. It would be interesting to see the graphs. Cheers, P.R.
So the sliding friction of the pistons (4 extra - HOW) (identical to normal ICE - which also have pistons) (the pistons count here as well) ... and then the rolling base (minus crankshaft, valve shaft etc) is two back? WTF using your crude example this engine would almost double efficiency if my math is anywhere close - due to a huge loss of friction by cranks and valves even with just the added mass...
You missed the Commer TS3 truck engine, with three barrels, six pistons. The sound they made when driven hard had to be experienced to be believed. The machining had to be absolutely accurate, and the complexity of cranks and double ended rods meant they became prohibitively expensive, but they made glorious low profile engine for powerboats. Thrilling acceleration and a cockpit the size of a ballroom.
I often wonder if, given modern engineering like high pressure common rail injection and modern Eaton blowers, a modern version of the Commer TS3 would be viable. It was a remarkably simple engine really, when you look at the total component count, and without cylinder heads and valves to worry about, servicing them would be remarkably easy. I think pollution would not be the problem it's made out to be, I think noise might be the biggest factor.
Fairbanks-Morse diesel engines of the 1930s and 1940s as used on many ships in the US Coast Guard and US Navy during WWII were of the inline, opposed piston design and were a two-cycle combustion series. The biggest issue that we had with those engines was coolant jacket leakage into the combustion chamber where the fuel injectors were mounted. The injectors had to pass through the coolant portion of the cylinder liner assembly and on into the combustion segment of the liner. This issue with coolant leaking into the cylinders was a chronic problem that we had. Otherwise the 12 cylinder units were basically good engines. Fairbanks-Morse diesels were available in many different cylinder counts according to requirements. These were not clean engines by any means.
The Cleveland / EMD engines were a much less problematic design, and in the world of railroading, the EMD's reigned supreme over the FM's (and every other builder, as well) for many decades.
I would love to redo a FM OP 38-8 @1/8 with carbon fiber v-force reed valves for each upper and lower crankshaft chamber and run ethanol. next a dry sump with castor 927 maxima 2T bean oil and some vro pumps plumbed in there. hell yeah
Any ICE is really a mechanical nightmare. That's why many applications will use battery/electric motors going forward. They are so much simpler and reliable.
The only things that matter today are: 1.) emissions 2.) durability at least 150k miles or 10 years 3.) Fuel Economy - at minimum 25% better than the best of piston engines 4.) Lower production cost per unit than established engines IF all 4 are not realized even in low volume production, then the design DOA
My father retired from Motorola in the early 2000's , and told me that power electronics seemed a very promising maturing technology. PE's are crucial to the implementation of hybrid ICE/electric automotive platforms, which benefit from using the electric part to eliminate heavy and inefficient drivetrain components. Electronic control, both power and non-power, allows a high degree of variability which enables an ever more adaptable range of usefulness for both parts of the ICE/electric combination. Batteries and access to sources of electricity are both significant constraints for pure EV's, and are where hybrids gain value in their practical implementation. From an engineering perspective, electrical, mechanical, and chemical (combustion stoichiometry), these are very interesting times, indeed. Great video!
I and my cousin brother thought to build like this one 4-5 years back but couldn't because of financial constraints this engine can also be used in series hybrid where two generators can be attached one on each crankshaft for range extender purposes.
Early in this video you parrot the designer's claim that this is a 1-stroke engine. Look again. Each pair of pistons do come together at TDC or compression-delayed/adjusted TDC before combustion, validating them as opposed piston arrangement. However, each piston ALSO must move 2 directions between firings. Intake and compression on 1 stroke, then combustion and exhaust on the next. Simply having one of the combustion chambers firing every time a piston pair reaches TDC or BDC does not make this a 1-stroke engine layout, otherwise a 4-cylinder 4-stroke could be called a 1-stroke engine since each 180 degrees of crankshaft rotation there is a combustion event. This is truly a 2-stroke layout and still really cool. I love the adjustable compression ratio they've incorporated into it.
I‘be always loved the simplicity of 2 strokes. This model looks very “cool” but what about the cost of fabrication and then maintenance. Just machining those parts looks technically challenging.
If you see modern Otto engines the sophistication of the way they need to be adjusted will blow your mind. Tolerances are in order of few micron, oil specifications are very strict, heat working conditions are very narrow, and etc.... This engine has no more exigences in building that another one, but have the advantages of reducing mobile parts and its inefficiences. It is not a substitute of all Otto or diesel engines, but a way to give more efficient work in certain situations like i.e. rechargin and E.V. making it a extended range vehicle, and giving users a security about never being out of battery.
Two strokes have numerous problems. The one huge problem this engine has is running on fossil fuels. It will pollute in both the conventional sense and in the sense of releasing carbon. Many people just don't understand that we need to cut carbon emissions virtually to zero. The overlap in the port timing will release large amounts of unburned hydrocarbons into the exhaust. It's simply not workable. It's like inventing a better buggy whip about the same time Ford starts selling the model T.
Wow. Someone took an old (like 1960s) GM swash plate air conditioning compressor, split it in half, moved one half so the piston tops face each other, and made an engine of it. It seems to me the major advantage of this arrangement vice just making a six cylinder engine from the GM swash plate compressors is the ability to vary the timing of the two swash plates. The supercharged Fairbanks-Morse opposed piston engines had six degrees lower crank lead, the one with turbochargers and supercharger had twelve degrees lower crank lead. The lower pistons would clear the exhaust ports earlier so the exhaust could spin the turbos.
Cummins developed opposed 4 cylinder, basically a flat 8, but with 2 cranks and 2 stroke. Maybe there is hope for engines with character. Cannot wait to hear one.
Thanks for telling us what people are trying. It would be nice if there was a way to beat round cylinders and a crankshaft, but by looking at them, I don't believe either of them are going anywhere. - The swash plate/cam track configuration is a non-starter for the reason you mentioned. - The opposed with the crankshaft will fail in fuel efficiency and if it passes emissions it will be due to external help. The once-popular design lost out due to fuel efficiency issues to where few are still in use today. GM's old Detroit Diesel Series 71 engines would be a more efficient design and could potentially be cleaner. - The Wankel hasn't been competitive. - Turbines need to work in a relatively narrow power band to be efficient, and even then they are a long ways from being comparatively efficient. The best attempts for cars have been the Chrysler turbine car and Ford an H-Series truck which used ceramics to enable higher heats. One would think it could make it on trains but they couldn't make it there either. They make it where fuel efficiency isn't the issue, steady high loads, and/or weight. The only ones that dots most of the Is are aircraft, starting with helicopters which work much harder than airplanes for the same weight. High-horsepower piston aircraft engines have such maintenance and reliability issues that it turbines make sense earlier for weight, reliability, maintenance, lifespan, altitude compensation, cabin pressurization and heating, etc. What could change is the availability of cheap energy to where efficiency is less of an issue. Electricity is very inefficient unless you can make it an transport it inexpensively. The U.K.s idea to use many Thorium-based plants would help. It could make hydrogen fuel less expensive as well. (I often tease a customer with a Volt, "I see you drove your coal burner today.")
I think gas turbine cars will be feasible if only the manufacturers and the customers are willing to accept that it will be hybrid power. Gas turbines are suitable only at certain rpms anyways. Might as well make it hybrid, use excess mechanical energy to charge the battery instead.
I see this engine as a new way to explore the electric car. It could be use to power an electric car with very limited batteries, and could turn out to be very economical, and offer extended range on very long trips. Generator driven diesel electric locomotives have been very successful for far too many decades to mention. This little engine is so light that it is what is needed for our future hybrid cars, as another alternative to the battery plagued only EV concept. Always keep open mind and try to avoid fads that might give us what we want, but in the end it may not be what we need.
The swash plate pump and motor have been around for decades in hydrastatic transaxles on lawnmower. They have to turn extremely fast to generate useful torque. Have ever seen how fast a riding lawnmower is.
Still think the LiquidPiston concept has better odds of making it to large scale production. Plus the thermodynamics of the LP rotary yield a considerably reduction in specific fuel consumption. Larger version of the LP engine can be achieved with either larger rotors or by stacking together multiple rotors. The OP concept looks like it can only scale up by making the pistons bigger to increase displacement with the given number of pistons. This will make the engine larger in diameter, which is the exact opposite of what you want if this is ever to be used in an aircraft.
The best option is hydrogen or even pure ethanol normal combustion engines. They are far better for the climate without sacrificing anything like power and sound.
@@EliteNugz hydrogen has issues of its own. Compressed hydrogen needs extraordinarily strong tanks able to withstand pressures of 350-700 atmospheres of pressure. Liquid hydrogen doesn’t need high pressure, but at -427 degrees F the temperature is so low that even small amount of heat leak causes the LH2 to boil off faster than the required fuel flow. As such it needs phenomenal levels of insulation to keep heat flux as close to zero as possible. Ethanol isn’t a bad alternative. The issue with ethanol is that it is completely miscible with water, even water vapor in the air. As a result pure ethanol will rapidly become a mixture of water and ethanol unless it is kept sealed from any contact with the atmosphere. The same goes for methanol. And the volumetric energy density of ethanol and especially methanol is much less than gasoline. As a result for a given tank size the range with ethanols or methanol is much shorter. It is possible to address all of these issues. However butanol might be a better solution. It has a volumetric energy density that is about 3/4 of gasoline. And unlike ethanol it doesn’t absorb water out of the air. Even better it has a much lower vapor pressure than gasoline and has a much higher flash temperature, which together means that it represents a much lower risk of a stray static electric spark causing the fuel tank to explode compared to gasoline and even diesel. Synthetic butanol does take more input energy to produce a given number of megajoules of fuel energy than ethanol or methanol. And existing gasoline engines just require a minor reprogramming of the engine computer to allow it to run on 100% butanol. Current gas engines can’t run on 100% ethanol. The max that existing gasoline’s can run on is 80%-85% ethanol.
@@papparocket with minor modifications combustion engines can run on 100% ethanol and less mpg per gallon is a small price to pay for all its benefits. It males way more sense than electric cars which are horrible for the environment and have tons of negative effects.
@@EliteNugzby small price to pay you mean - I'm going to create global shortage of grain, because I'll be using millions of acres of land to grow corn for my fuel. But who cares, I'm not sober poor schmuck in third world, I can afford more expensive food. Right?
As a longtime fan of both Tony Seba ("Clean Disruption") and Amory Lovins ("Reinventing Fire"), I think you are underestimating the speed with which the green transition is happening. However, as a Chevy Volt owner, I can attest to the excellent utility of a "range-extended" EV. I tend to get a lot of guff from my fellow EV fans for advocating long-range PHEVs as a setpping stone for legacy OEMs who are struggling to make a pure BEV that they can sell for a profit. But with a 10~15 kwh battery pack, you can easily get 40~50 miles of pure-electric range, which is more than enough for most Americans' average daily commute. (I drive about 25~30 miles a day, and I haven't burned any gas in months.) This gives you the efficiency of an EV with the long-range convenience of gas. Combine that with one of these new lightweight engines you're talking about, and that would be an attractive package to a lot of people who are still a bit worried about range anxiety.
@@zbyszanna ICE sales are down, BEV sales are up by 2030 BEV will almost certainly be more than 60% of the market. If so, what need is there to spend tens of millions on R&D, more tens of millions tooling up to produce an engine that offers no substantial benefits over the engines being made now?
@@GeeKayKayGee60% probably not even in California by 2030 unless u r including the plug-in hybrids. The issue isn’t California, but the rest of the world. Again u have not qualified ur assertions! To win at climate change it is what is happening world wide, and most of the world has different ideas that contrast with your “ultracrepidarianism”!
If I drove truck as an owner-operator, I think I'd be willing to take a 45 minute break every 7-8 hours if it cut the cost of fuel & repairs significantly. This should qualify as one of the mandatory breaks anyway. 5:00 However I still like the look of this engine for marine & air applications or trucking outside the super-duper-charger network (or whatever it'll be called).
What?? There's no mandatory break where you live, I assume the US?? That's very surprising. Over in Europe where I live you have to take either 45 minutes or 2 breaks of 15 + 30 minutes every 4,5 hours of driving. You can drive 9 hours per day, 2 days per week you're allowed 10, so 56 hours is the maximum per week. Those are driving hours though (as in the vehicle is moving), not working hours. Working hours can be up to 60 (or more, depending on the situation).
@@CreRay I live in Canada where you need a cumulative of 2 hours every day with 30 minute minimums or something like that. My point was that charging won't actually slow the driver down because they have to take breaks anyway, whereas the video seems to suggest the charging time would slow truckers down. I had a friend who was a trucker, but don't drive commercially myself.
Most people are surprised that charging electric semis is not a limitation. The primary limitation is in the driver! The day starts with a charged battery and a fresh driver. The Tesla semi can travel 500 miles on a fresh charge. Within the first 8 hours, the driver is required to take a 30 minute break. During the 30 minute break, the truck can charge another 300 miles. Now the total is 800 miles in the driver's allowed 11 hour day. How often will the range be a limitation, rather than the driver's hours? The network won't be a problem, because with a 500 mile range, there won't be a situation where there's no charger available. Electric semis will start the way PepsiCo is using them, between their own facilities. As third party charging points spring up, trucking companies will factor in being able to charge en route. More and more companies will switch to lower fuel cost electric vehicles. Once large trucking companies are running electric, it will lower the rates they charge their customers, and anyone still driving diesel will have a hard time competing and making a profit.
The problem with this engine is that it lack of low en torque(I mean, like a lot). Also, the 120hp isn't made from a N/A engine. If you look in the Miata video, there was a supercharger
@@Vinz3ntR ; All 2 strokes need positive intake pressure to drive out exhaust gases. Small chainsaw sized ones use crankcase compression, hence oil in the fuel. Bigger engines use superchargers or positive pressure Rootes type blowers, Junkers, Jimmy, Commer,, Deltec etc. Lubricating oil can be constrained to a sump, not so tough to meet emissions limits. During WW2 a Junkers 2 stroke diesel powered aircraft had a ceiling of above 60,000 feet. One nice aspect of EV range extenders is that they can be run at optimum rpm/output with a completely controlled generator load. Also the generator can run the engine up to high revs for turbocharged 2 stroke easy starting. Little light low emission engines only used when needed.
Good point about the supercharger, but it still makes it quite viable as a range-extender/power-booster engine for hybrid-vehicles, although this company really needs to sack its PR agents with its silly hype, then be more realistic about the engine's potential, along with not calling it a single-stroke when it's really a 2-stroke engine!
It's a very intriguing design and I'd love to have one to play with, but let's get a few points clear: -It's a Two Stroke engine in spite of what the makers say - just one that doesn't drink oil. -It's compactness and simplicity are by far it's most important aspects. -A design like this will have next-to-no-torque, making it useless as an automotive engine.* *maybe, maybe this could be improved sufficiently with forced induction but that would add to the weight and complication. So certainly as noted this engine may have a place as a small generator to 'augment' batteries in an electric car. I'll make a bold claim - we won't see all electric heavy haulage vehicles for the foreseeable future. Battery technology is just not up to it and the limits of physics might mean we never have the batteries we want - Tesla's truck is frankly a crock of sh1t, like pretty much every old 'whiz-bang' idea Musk has rebranded as his own... ...it may be an 'electric' truck that is powered by a sufficiently efficient generator (like the Deltic locomotive) could be viable, but would it be more viable than current technology? A practicable point: At most electric cars make up about 10% of vehicles in developed countries. Yes, it would be good to see many more but supposed governmental plans to phase out petrol and diesel vehicles in short order are directly out of cloud-cuckoo land... ...current (sorry) electricity grids are designed to just about service the needs of the day, the tiny proportion of electric cars already putting a heavy strain on that infrastructure. As a back of the envelope estimation to supply all-electric use would need a minimum of 3-5x the generating capacity + all the infrastructure to go along with that. If a power station alone takes about 10 years to build at a cost of anywhere from 200 million to 10 billion depending on size and type where is the money coming from to build them all? Where is all the land? What about all the power lines, etc? All this at a time when there is pressure to get rid of 'big and nasty' power stations? If it's taken us about 100 years to build the infrastructure we've got and we will need something like 3-5x more will it take another 3-500 years? Of course not, but you get my point. The internal combustion engine is here to stay, and as we continue to ruin this planet while draining it of oil the only options are to seek every greater efficiency while reengineering society to be far less dependant on them - in my opinion that's not going to happen and we're screwed, but that's another story. Sorry, I got carried away...
The opposed piston engine has loads of torque. There are two pistons and therefore two rods being pushed out simultaneously…that amplifies torque. The Achates 2.7 liter engine produces 480 ft lbs of torque…that’s a bunch of torque for a 2.7 liter engine.
Oh this is wonderful. With my EV I was really missing having to go to gas stations every week, and don't forget about the oil changes every 5000 miles. How did I ever get along without a mechanic trying to upsell me an unnecessary brake and coolant flush for just $69.99! There is just nothing that can substitute for hundreds of moving parts with contact points of wear. I also was getting a little too comfortable not worrying that my catalytic converter wouldn't be on the car in the morning. And let's not forget about that badly out of tune car exhaust smell that's just like fresh geraniums.
If there is a fire in the battery compartment, you will not have a single chance. The car will burn for several days, and nothing will be able to put it out. In such a situation, there is one positive point. You wont need to be buried, there wont be anything left of you...
@@stevefisher2553 your car is FULL OF HIGHLY FLAMMABLE GAS! Seriously? Its unbelievable! But... I understand you've seen in the movies many times how a good guy shoots at a bad guys car, a good guy gets into a petrol tank, the bad guys car explodes, takes off into the air, the good guy keeps shooting, the car explodes harder in the air, this explosion triggers the process of uncontrolled atomic fission and the car is completely annulled...Oh yes, Hollywood☺ My recommendations to you, buy a cold beer and review the Mythbusters. This is also a very spectacular show Separately, I want to say about Diesel fuel. Modern diesel fuel is very eco-friendly and safe. This fuel burns very, very, very badly. In order for this fuel to ignite, a high temperature and high pressure are needed, which makes diesel fuel the safest of the existing ones If you like electric cars, this is your choice, but why talk nonsense?...beer..mmmmm...I going to buy a cold beer 😏
@@vulpesdraco1669 electric car fires are rare. Gasoline car fires happen constantly. What about sitting right on top of 10 gallons of gasoline says safety to you? Oil company propaganda would have you forget that gasoline is flammable.
I refreshed my memory from my time in GM Training, the radial air conditioner compressors work quite similarly to 1 end of this engine design, we all know that an a/c compressor can last the life of the vehicle with minimal maintenance/attention, I think with a little different design to the cam track set up, this could be a feasible option for the ICE as a generator engine
Using vehicles that run on electric motor and battery strains our economy and does finally result in a larger carbon footprint than an efficient fossil fuel vehicle. Batteries should be used in hybrids and made to last 15-20. years. We had a British design in Delhi, IN and it was superb (2010...)
If we look at the "use case" scenario for long-haul trucking, a truck operated by a single driver can only drive for x hours (10 I think). Whatever the number, a driver has to sleep *sometime* at least. That's a perfect match for a charge/drain battery cycle. So small range extenders can be used when there is no electricity to charge while resting. Also, super capacitors have quicker charge rates so that could be useful. They also have quicker discharge rates so that has to be managed in the system design. My point being that some combination of small range extenders (especially for at-rest charging), super capacitors, and slow discharge batteries of some type will probably be a good configuration for EV long haul trucking. BTW, it would be great if could you do a video on the latest EV power system designs using these 3 energy sources. Thanks!
The problem is, claimed distance is almost always several multiples of actual range when loaded. For example, a 500mi EV is realistically likely to only see 100-125mi once loaded - if that. There's a reason why EVs are forced on us with backend subsidies. And it's not because the market can sustain or justify them otherwise.
@@justanothercomment416 I totally believe you, but let's face it mpg ratings aren't much different. I'm supposed to get 26 into the city and I get like 14. But ok that's still 2x better than your example. But some decent power storage/range capacity *has* to be put into the ev market or else we'll all get bit in the butt sooner - not later. There's a video around with a guy whose hitch hiking to get a gallon of gas for his car stuck on the side of the road. He gets a ride, gets a ride back, and the other guy says - dude that a Tesla! What the heck are you thinking? The Tesla owner opens his trunk to reveal a small gas generator; he fills it up, starts it and runs a plug from it to his Tesla charge port. Is that the future waiting for us?🤣🤣🤣
@@Charlie-Oooooo There's a ton of propaganda surrounding this topic. Pushed by the same people financially benefiting and funneling funds to hostile nation's economies. The entire green push is a scam built upon more than a century of propaganda. A century of propaganda offering predictions which have a 100% rate of invalidity. What you just described accurately depicts the reality of the entire green movement. It's insanity built upon money laundering and propaganda. Nothing more. Nothing less. I encourage you to go find Tony Heller's content. Does a great job of pulling information out of the past century of documented environment propaganda and scares for the obvious scam reasons.
mahle was talking about a recycalable electric motor but it needs transmission like normal engine. theres idea of linear piston mocement energy covert to electrical without spinning parts
INN will probably take years if not decades to proceed beyond prototype stage. Longevity is a hugely critical issue, how will the motor respond to a backfire or low-octane pinging. How reliable is that swashplate concept, and how sensitive is it to the quality of lubrication. I'm also curious if it's not possible to stagger the combustion events for a smoother output, perhaps if they went from 4 piston pairs to 3 pairs they could reduce part count and improve smoothness (the MX5 video sounded very "raspy"). I have an inkling that efficiency (and emissions) could be improved quite a bit if they incorporated a catalyst and turbo: there will be unburned products of combustion in the exhaust that could be completed in a catalyst and the energy captured by a turbo. Interesting prototype.
Nice if it is light and powerful, however you cannot get excessive gain in efficiency as it is still based on the carnot process. Absolutely correct that a plug in hybrid should use the combustion engine (of any type) only to produce electricity. This allows the engine to work in its optimum working point in terms of efficiency. I would assume a battery capacity of 15 to 20kWh to be enough for a plug in hybrid. This should reduce the battery weight compared to 60-80 kWh about 180 to 260kg. If you refrain from moving a 2 ton vehicle at constant speed above 120 km/h this give enough weight reduction to install the combustion motor (and fuel tank).
IMHO... I believe PHEV is the way to go, pure Electric will never be the answer. Using electric for stop and go city commutes is very efficient and would reduce the smog in metropolitan areas. However, gas is the way to cruise at highway speeds. I owned a 2017 Chevy Volt PHEV, and now a 2022 Kia Sorento PHEV. Both are very efficient, with local commutes on pure EV and upwards of 40mpg when on highways. That being said, I added a gas engine to my 2015 Electric Smart fortwo to make it a PHEV.
When I first saw the Opposed Engine, I was so excited about its principle. Moreover, five years ago, I translated a video with a voiceover about the Achates OP Engine into Russian and shared it on my channel. The company had just introduced their prototype to share the idea and concept, but you can't even imagine how much hate the "couch's experts in this field" wrote in the comments below in the end...
This particular motor has the limitation of two “crankshaft” outputs. Most uses can't take advantage of that. Then there is the fact that it burns fossil fuels, which will become much harder to buy and eventually prohibited.
Recent subscriber, interesting topic, we need something that people can drive/use who cannot afford EV's. As we inch closer to 2030, the cost of EV's will only continue to increase, here in Australia... there are nowhere near enough charging stations. My main concern is that people will simply be priced out of new car purchases on one hand, and on the other hand find themselves 'punished' by the state for continuing to drive their aging 'polluting' vehicles which they cannot afford to replace.
The 3 cyl OP design is probably one of the best. The development of a hydrogen fuel system paves the way for another breakthrough efficiency technology to be integrated into the engine: Paul Pantone's fuel reforming plasma reactor. Simple in design, the device simulates a lightning strom inside of its body by passing hot dry gasses over cold, moist air in a turbulent and magnetically active arrangement. The end result is a continuous plasma spiral lightning discharge in a vacuum, through which the atomized droplets of fuel pass, to be molecularly reformed into a synthetic hydrogen gas. This enables almost any liguid to be processed into synthetic hydrogen, including all types of fuels and even water. The resulting combination of an effiicent hydrogen injected engine, and a flexible fuel reformer for turning any fuel into synthetic hydrogen, will allow current technology to achieve super efficiency and near zero emissions without the need for massive mining of rare minerals to support the transition to green energy.
The Achate seems a winner. If it could be reduced to something of 20hp it would be a fantastic outboard engine. Also with 16 hp a hybrid could make a car last much longer. Electric motors on each wheel. Drop the bendix starter and place with proper gearing an alternator- motor that could smoothly start the Achate engine when needed. That would be my dream vehicle.
@@tonytony978 Lol.. Oil industry paying you much? 100 years ago you would be touting the benefits of keeping horses and sneering at Henry Ford and his jalopy.
A healthy evolution of vehicle propulsion. EV automotive tech is driving significant advances in ICE design. Both of the featured engines are great potential range extenders in future hybrid electric drive systems! I really like the Achates design.
@@OldSchoolZ-wy2yx Delusional? I wonder how healthy you might be sitting in a closed garage with your ICE engine running vs an EV. Burning highly processed fuel in an ICE is never going to be as efficient as an electric motor. The facts are that ICE vehicles create levels of pollution that kill or permanently harm millions of people annually. Also people conveniently forget that exploring, digging, extracting, transporting and processing petrol and diesel is incredibly resource intensive and an extremely dirty process that burns way more cobalt and other precious resources just to get it to the motorist. We already have EV's using Lithium Phosphate batteries without using nickel or cobalt, and Sodium/air batteries could be next, so having vehicles that can use renewable energy and can be recycled at the end of their life is always going to win.
Cam track? On paper it looks neat. The load bearing surface interface between the piston roller and cam plate will be difficult to make reliable. High pressure oil lubricated shell bearings, as used for crankshaft journals remain the most robust and inexpensive bearings to support the rotation of reciprocating engine parts. A single roller on a single surface wont cut it. The engine would need to drag the piston down to ensure it would start.
Not to mention how this engine doesn't have a crankshaft, so it cant take advantage of the lever effect that makes piston engines have more torque. This thing will need to rev super high to make any sort of meaningful power, making it even more unreliable. This has been shown on the miata they drove with this engine, which even when supercharged struggled to move the car at low RPM. It does have advantages that might improve its reiability somewhat, such as the fact that its naturally balanced
Enjoyed your comments! Why not refuel Semi trucks on the GO like our fuel tankers refuel planes? Trucks could continue running at 50-60+ MPH while a lead battery truck is charging, """MOBIL REFUEL STATION"
No liquid or fuel burning design will replace the ease or cost of plugging in an EV in your driveway or at work, or while shopping. The days of pumping goo out of the ground and setting it on fire are drawing to an end.
I rate this the same about solid state batteries in development. Hype. Tony Seba told the world in 2014 what was coming. Big Carbon had its chance but they locked up IP and solar will be surpassing coal next year. The batteries produced at scale are working now. The cost curves are dominating now. No hybrid strategy will scale fast enough to bring its costs down when EV's require less parts to make especially with gigacasting the fronts and butts. The TCO is compelling now.
All good, it's just needs to used a non - carbon fuel and it will be a winner. Less emissions is not zero emissions, it will still require oil drilling and refinement to make the fuel. The goal is to transition away from carbon fuels, not just use them less! 👍Like i say nice design, it just needs to use a clean fuel!
The roller in tracks design makes a very compact engine, but I believe the Achates engine is probably the best design. Using the transfer gear as a power output, it can even have a built in gear reduction making it a great option for small aircrafts and boats.
Disruptions happen much faster and suggested in this video. Tesla is disrupting the vehicle combustion engine industry, and mini companies including Tesla are disrupting grid technologies. Simple economics are forcing these transitions, in spite of gas and oil interests efforts to maintain ~30% profits.
"We need greater battery energy densities"... "But that will be a decade or more away" Except that CATL already has a hybrid solid(ish) state battery, what they call the Condensed Matter battery going into production this year. Energy density? Up to 500W/kg which, if you do the calculations, is pretty much the exact same energy density of hydrocarbons running at a typical ICE efficiency of high 20%, low 30, and it's cheaper to manufacture than traditional Li batteries, according to CATL. Admittedly, the INN engine may be capable of higher efficiencies, but that is a big maybe. And we also know that Chinese researchers have achieved 703 Wh/kg under lab. conditions. So, with "just" a simple step, battery density goes from a maximum 280/290 Wh/kg in the current best (Tesla) batteries, to 500, to 700, and you think that it'll take 10years or more? Knowing how much skin is in the game to get ultra-high energy densities, I suspect that we'll be looking at 1kW/kg energy densities in under 10 years, I actually think that we'll be seeing them (possibly only in lab form) before the turn of the decade. And even with "only" 500Wh/kg, the combined weight of battery pack and motor is already pretty much identical to that of an ICE, When you consider that the first Li batteries only went on sale in 1991, and only had a density of about 100Wh/kg, but Tesla's batteries are getting nearly 3 times that from basically the same tech, I don't think it is too much of a reach to see similar gains in these new techs. Similarly, although electric motors can run at over 80% efficiency, it can be relatively difficult to get them to run at that efficiency across the whole operating range, but motor efficiency is another area of research that is showing enormous promise. Lighter batteries, more efficient and lighter motors. WTF do we need to resort to burning stuff? Oh, and BTW, the CATL Condensed Matter battery is cobalt free, as will all EV batteries be by 2025, if not sooner.. Also, several other battery manufacturers have similar batteries in the wings, apparently.
Norway transferred over to mostly hybrid‘s at the end of the 1990s, but now 85% are full EVs which identifies the most favorable direction for transportation. Certainly not hybrids, which was the best we could do in the last century. I EVs are by far the simplest and the only option That allows us to eliminate blowing toxic fumes in each others faces.
If it can convert sunlight or uranium to kinetic/electric energy with at least 80% efficiency, then we can say it could potentially destroy electric vehicles. In the meantime, electric vehicles can be charged by the sun or uranium, and be more simple, powerful, and awesome than overly-complicated, lazy, and unreliable internal combustion engines.
My 2 cents. If you take down the “density” of the vehicle itself, you don’t need to bring up the density of batteries themselves. We repeatedly forget that we are living in the space age and that these technologies and efficiencies are practically alien technologies compared to what we were working with in the 1900’s. It’s kind of funny how Einstein’s E=MC^2 goes out the window and we just USE more and more! The vehicles of the 1900’s weigh significantly less than todays vehicles and it just goes to show that we don’t WANT more, we want to be MORE greedy… food for thought.
Very good information on the opposed internal combustion engine. We have been dependent on the IC engine since Otto invented it in 1840's along with the steam engines that are all mechanical devices. Petroleum is the most efficient highest density fuel on the planet and it is continuously produced or comes from the core of the earth; atomic reaction to heat that condenses and condenses...... to gas that condenses and condenses.....to liquid and as it rises from the pressure it does collect minerals from the earth, and as it condenses and condenses ......to solids and you have carbon, coal and diamond. The future and it is in its beginning stages is the fuel cell that produces electricity from Hydrogen. When hydrogen is compressed it is a more energy dense fuel but with many other challenges and costs. This fuel cell technology will develop into a similar converter that actually does the same as the fuel cell with hydrogen but will directly convert or strip the "carbon" of its excess electrons. This is a carbon planet and is what we all run on as a low temperature carbon oxygen engine; our bodies. This IC engine has been great but very inefficient as the gas Otto engine is 25% efficient the Diesel engine at 31% it is wasting the balance of the carbon/petroleum potential into the atmosphere via the radiator, exhaust and heat radiation. So the next generation converter will take petroleum/carbon and strip the electrons of it via this fuel/matter converter and give us a 98% efficiency and zero pollution as it doesn't combust the petroleum as in the IC engine or reaction engine. Rudolph Diesel came very close to exposing this device in 1900 after he developed the compression combustion engine but he disappeared off a ship he was on way to delivery his findings to others. No need to say but this technology was not wanted to be exposed by ? I do feel the "range extender" with a small efficient power plant is a great compromise or extension to the electric battery. So much more to say. Oh well. Well done on bringing the "Opposed Piston" engine technology to the forefront. I am impressed with the "Liquid Piston" advanced Wankel engine with 3 combustion cycles per revolution. Thank for your info and well done on your research and UA-cam presentation. Wm
The reveal of this engine is interesting, however the flaw with battery power that nobody is talking about is safety. For example third rail electrical trains use high voltage DC power similar to cars. To work on a railway there's a lot of health and safety involved. We're giving a similar technology to the public in battery powered vehicles, however the public crash and regularly misuse and damage vehicles. High voltage DC is dangerous, the public are unaware of the potential dangers and rules that must be adhered to.
The problem is, internal combustion technology has been severely hampered by the oil industry and the expense of advanced materials. I'm a trained jet engine mechanic. I know just a wee tad about engines. This is an axiom. Combustion temperature is directly proportional to efficiency. Why are gas turbines so much more efficient than piston engines? Because piston engines operate around 8-9:1 compression, and a gas turbine engine is around 25:1. This is a basic hydrodynamic principle - as pressure increases, temperature increases. So higher pressures = higher temperatures = more complete combustion = more efficiency. Got it? Modern piston engines need to be brought into the 21st century. We have materials technologies now capable of creating engines with around 15:1 compression ratio in a piston driven engine. At this compression ratio, it's much simpler to design a more powerful engine that uses less fuel. For instance, with a material redesign, the 175hp base Ford Fusion engine (which gets 21 and 31 mpg city/hwy) could easily produce 245 hp and get 26 and 38 mpg with a simple materials redesign and compression increase. More power and more mpg with better emissions. This is the benefit being held back from piston driven engines. And this is only the beginning. Anybody ready to start a new American car company based on cutting edge internal combustion technology will rule the future if they play their cards right.
Putting gear teeth on the swash plate and rollers would eliminate problems with the rollers skidding on the swash plate which would improve efficiency.
Like many people, this presenter does not actually understand why we are converting to electricity in various forms of transportation. He mentions the hybrid approach to increasing the range of batteries, but if you are going to do that, why have the battery? The point of going electric is to ultimately eliminate carbon emissions. Running this engine releases carbon just like any other ICE. It solves no problems we can't already solve.
Imagine throwing a rod on that thing. Flies straight out the block through the car because all that’s in the way is another piston and case. A lot of design are great when something is working the way it’s supposed to, working on that looks 100x more complicated than a straight block or even a v type.
The ONLY reason this engine seems to be better than EVs, is because oil is so heavily subsidized. Gasoline, in the US, now costs around $25-$30 USD per gallon. In the US, consumers only pay about $3-$5...the rest is subsidized by the US government. If consumers paid the true cost, at up to $30/gallon, NONE of these ICE engines would be in use now.
Right and that cost estimate probably doesn't even factor the value of damage caused by carbon pollution as well as air quality related health problems. Although I would say that may be an overestimation of the market price. Although not by that much, say 15-20US$/per US gal. Which, as usual, the cost of climate pollution tends to be born the most by peolle with low income, low privilege and relatively few means. Diesel is significantly cheaper in many countries where the kind of Regulatory Capture found in the US, isn't in place. This is because it requires a 20th of the energy input to refine from crude petroleum. Unfortunately, since fuel prices have a huge impact on the economy, jobs, and profit margins in most companies, US politicians have a perverse incentive not to throttle back on this particular "golden tap."
it's not too late for development of new engines, because resources don't allow for 100% electrification of road transport so whoever has efficient alternatives will do well. A good contender which uses much more proven tech is a constant speed micro-turbine engine with an electric drivetrain, because then the traction characteristics of the motor overcomes the turbine disadvantage of low starting torque. Incidentally, the Napier Deltic engine was a fine design which was abandoned by cash-strapped British Rail who were left with multiple non-standard engine designs as a result of their own rubbish procurement policy for locomotives. The same unit was used in its original intended role in the Royal Navy's Hunt class mine warfare ships, where they remained until re-engining was completed in 2018.
Swash-plate engines have been around since at least the 1920; they can be extremely reliable if not necessarily high performance. Often used in industrial situations where a constant RPM is desired - they might well be ideal for a hybrid.
This type of engine is already common in waterblaster pumps. Waterblasters suffer failure if the water is disconnected, I wonder if this engine will cope with abuse as in missing gears, etc....
Two facts everyone needs to know. 1) IC engine efficiency is only 40% at best 2) IC engines are massively complex compared to elecrtic motors. Emissions are only going to get tighter, so however good this might be, future emissions restrictions will soon outlaw it. It's a novelty, it won't ever make mass production. Batteries are rapidly getting better, not a decade away. Hydrogen IC engines are hopeless. The overall efficiency end to end is one third of a BEV.
It could be run on wood gas from a pellet pyrolysis setup. Wood pellets can be made from scrap wood and wood waste. So, you'd have a hopper rather than a tank. It would also be possible to carry the equipment with you to convert wood waste into pellets. That would add weight though. I must try this out some time.
I too like a design I feel that it should be able to charge the battery that is made with if it comes out with that design I believe it should be better on its own can't wait for them to crack the frictionless metal miracle
This engine is not a 1 stroke like they say. It is a two stroke. The biggest issue with 2 strokes is oil control, which is clearly a problem for the Junkers engine in the video. The second issue with 2 strokes is fuel consumption. I would like to see an independent company do emissions testing like Southwest Research (I have no affiliation; just an example) and Brake Specific Fuel Consumption. Piston rod side thrust would also be a concern as it would provide significant efficiency issues. I would like to see this engine succeed, but I have serious doubts it could.
The idea the BEVs will replace 100% of ICE is absurd and unrealistic. Hybrid technology however is plausible. Regardless, there will always be ICE engines, no mater what anyone assumes. Further ICE vehicles in the future, will represent the lions share of vehicle production.
The only way we will have 100% electric vehicles on the road is if people make their own electricity with wind or solar or they figure out what Tesla did and be able to draw the electricity that is everywhere around us. And if people know their rights and power, they will continue to use gasoline or diesel as Congress has no authority to ban those. The only authority we gave them was to regulate commerce. In other words, to make regular between the states. Not to control it. The people say what they want, not the government. But as long as people stay passive, their rights will be abused more until they fight or give in.
As the owner of a Tesla I love the simplicity and no maintenance except for tire rotation and windshield wipers blades. Adding an internal combustion engine of any kind is old school thinking.
What kind of old technology do you think charges the batteries in your car? ICE can be super efficient and are getting cleaner all the time. It's very blinkered to think electric is the way forwards, I'm yet to see an electric vehicle with enough range to be a game changer, the caravan and motor home industry is set for destruction if the ranges can't be improved drastically. The thought of going on holiday in a battery powered motor home is laughable.
@@mikeatcora we have solar on our home which provides all the KWH’s for our home and Tesla (except on road trips). We do not pay one dime for “fuel” within 200 miles (round trip) of home. Not worried about the RV industry that will or will not work out over time. We have taken long road trips the longest was 1800 miles will no issues. Road trips are actually easier in the Tesla. With ICE vehicles I tend to push hard with only absolutely necessary stops and as a result always end the day exhausted. With the Tesla we stop to charge and take a break every 2 to 2 1/2 hours. 20-30 minutes bathroom, get something to drink and stretch our legs. Car is ready we go again. End of the day I feel like I’m ready to go dancing. This car works really well for us. Your mileage may vary.
Koenigseggs new electric motor weighs 35 kg, is about 10" in diameter and can put out 335hp. Thats the game changer, not some modified lawnmower engine. I know we all want the brum-brum noises but the end is close, I'm afraid. Saying that I'll still have my old Norton Dominator to caress my ears.
And making cars like trains I have been thinking about that for the last 30 years I road a golf cart for the first time and my mind was on it about making a car and Gen set !! Glad to see it coming to life !!
5:17 -- "100% electric vehicles on the road" means 100% of vehicles in parking and storage space will be EV -- which is impossible to the quickly increasing number of places banning over battery unstoppable thermal-runaway (i.e., unquenchable fires) liability concerns -- e.g., any garage (especially an underground one) acquiring first-hand experience with an EV fire will move to ban them. The cost of insuring EVs is going through the roof, and the premium to rent one offsets fuel savings. The only people really benefitting off EVs are heavy-metal mines and governments salivating at tying civilian mobility to their power grids.
Tesla had an electric car running with zero-point energy. When they finally allow this technology, it would be the way to go. No big batteries, no big generators.
Great video.. The first to see an INN actually running and throttling up (with or without intake boost). By the way, don't lithium ion battery chemistries come mostly from the refinement of sea water?
I am not an engineer. But it seems there is so much metal to metal contact, unlike the main bearings, and the rod bearings of a conventional piston engine. The crank and the rod bearings ride on a relatively touchless hydrodynamic wedge of oil.. it may be Thermo efficient, but there seems to be a lot of areas of friction that would require a very high film stregnth oil to protect.. even with the additions of zinc and phosphorus in today’s oils, the lifters contacting the cam is still not fully protected by the film of oil.. Put these pistons following those slots, and Wood appears to be similar to a motorcycle sequential transmission shift drum. I really don’t think that design would have a long service life.
I like these concepts. I get the feeling though that unless a manufacturer takes a design on for full scale production then these concepts will struggle against conventional petrol and Diesel engines which are still getting more efficient. So many people want to get rid of them but there are many other ways we can reds ur out emissions rather than by targeting innocent car and truck drivers. Half of it is marketing and media, thru desire to create a problem that they will earn money for ‘fixing’
I noticed there is no mention of the efficiency of these new engine designs. To be economically competitive with my BMW I3, the overall thermal efficiency will need to be above 85%, and there's nothing on the horizon which suggests a combustion engine can achieve anything close to such a high standard.
I am glad that some imagination is going into ICE. ICE + Synthetic Fuel is the best because we already have the infrastructure and hundreds of millions of ICEs currently in operation. It isn't the ICE that is bad for the environment - it is the fossil fuels. Many groups are working on carbon-neutral synthetic fuels (e.g. F1 is planning on being carbon-neutral within 10 years). Some processes could even have a net effect of removing carbon from the atmosphere.
I spent the whole of my army career fixing the Leyland L60 6 cylinder 19 liter opposed piston engines. They were classed as totally unreliable. Then again, they were fitted inside 63 ton Tanks. Although being a design from the 60s they probably had more potential.
No we won't have 100% EV's on the road. We're going nowhere without massive upgrades in power generation and clean nuke plants take decades to design, approve and construct. No other power source can make this happen - none is even close especially considering the value of staged pellet use.
This is a variation on the old DynaCam engine, as similar but 4-stroke design which achieved FAA certification but got clobbered by 9/11 and then investor scams. Looking at the old DynaCam engine, which had a single piston per cylinder (and two "cylinder heads," one at each end), suggests an upgrade path for this engine with three cams instead of two on the same shaft - two "end pistons" just as the current design shows, and a center "double-piston" which rocks back and forth between the end pistons for double the HP for only a slight increase in length and little or no additional complexity.
Nothing destroys an electric motor. They just have a wider power band with more consistent torque across that powerband. This engine has moving cylinders, that alone says it's not better than an electric motor. Basic physics! The very reason gas engines can't compete with electric motors is mostly due to the reciprocal forces. Electric motors, like jet engines, have linear rotation force. This allows for power across a larger RPM range. Again... simple physics. And here's Jason (renowned auto journalist) that explains why gas engines will never beat electrics: ua-cam.com/video/vcn7tvESreI/v-deo.html
As a retired machine designer, I've seen a lot of machinery that used rollers in tracks - I've even used this in some designs in the past. But, these are extremely wear sensitive and when they start to wear it doesn't take long to have catastrophic failure. Nothing is simpler, less expensive and longer lasting than rotary or pivoting bearings.
Plus there is still the CO2 emissions that cannot be eliminated when burning a hydrocarbon. H2 is extremely energy intensive to produce, transport and use. Also, using it to replace petrol fuels is very inefficient compared to using it in a fuel cell. Someday, H2 may by practical, but I've been following this for over 50 years and nothing has proven economically feasible yet.
@joeyager8479 Not just not "feasible", but horribly expensive. Even if you eliminate the carbon emissions, all ICE emit NOx which is not so easy to get rid of. We have engines that meet the current requirements, but they continue to emit. Our cities have visibly dirty air.
Once everything is electric, we will have much cleaner air.
once everything is affordable electric, we will have much cleaner air @@rickcollins2814
@@rickcollins2814 there just needs to be a transition to it. So it's natural for new ideas to emerge as bridge gap to electric systems and relying on centralized power that can be more closely monitored. I mean what will the CARB do after there's no cars anymore? They'd need a new place to look. But until then there's always going to be a mix of power plant designs as we transition to more electric propulsion.
2 stroke forever brappp!
@@rickcollins2814electricity and renewable energy just transfers the co2 to a different area of the globe. The most important thing is to scrub the toxins and let the co2 out to feed the plants and reduce cold weather deaths. We already have all that technology.
Hybrid electric vehicles have always seemed a good option to me. Most driving is done around where you live. Extended trips are not the norm. Having enough battery capacity to cover most around-town driving, with an efficient single-purpose fossil fuel generator to cover extended trips, is a good way to ensure range, decrease weight, and lower the cost of a pure electric vehicle.
In principle and 20 years ago, in practice the hybrid toyotas I got as replacement vehicle were the worst experience I ever got. And after driving an EV for a couple of months now that is an improvement.
And if the battery pack were to decay and fail you can still rely on the ice
@@flemlion13 Was that a hybrid power train? What I would consider a good hybrid has just an electric power train coupled with a seldom-used gasoline generator.
@@patrickmchargue7122For something like that engine weight will be critical.
Had a look at liquid pistons work on their rotary engine?
@@Luredreier Yep. There seem to be some great options for low-weight, high-efficiency, motor generator pairs for range extension.
The Napier Deltic engine makes a beautiful sound. Luckily some of the locomotives that use these engines survive.
Castor 927 maxima 2 stroke oil in a napier deltic hell yeah!
I have pondered if it would be possible to scale down a single bank of three from the Deltic down to make a generator out of it.
Yes a mini deltic fomed out of 3 60 deg v6 3.2l 3160cc mercury optimax 300XS engines. oil injected too.
@@jlo13800 I like how you think
The Napier Deltic was oil injected like the new Rotax 850 Etec turbo R but mechanical VRO. Here the cummins oil injected OP ACE 2 stroke.mart.cummins.com/imagelibrary/data/assetfiles/0058689.pdf Now take 2 850 Rotax's and make a 1700 OP engine out of it, same with Polaris 850 or Arctic Cats new 858!
Hi. Internal friction from four extra pistons with rings will negate any advantage from losing the friction from the crankshaft and valve gear. Sliding friction is much greater than rolling friction. One step forward, two back----. Cheers, P.R.
Apparently you missed the memo there's less friction.
@@stever2583 Hi Steve. Yes I did miss that, but I'd question the statement anyway. Piston and ring friction varies with rpm, b.m.e.p., and piston speed, and it increases exponentially, it's not a straight line increase. It would be interesting to see the graphs. Cheers, P.R.
Very poor torque curve
Hey pro! you design one that’s better before talking smack.
So the sliding friction of the pistons (4 extra - HOW) (identical to normal ICE - which also have pistons) (the pistons count here as well) ... and then the rolling base (minus crankshaft, valve shaft etc) is two back? WTF using your crude example this engine would almost double efficiency if my math is anywhere close - due to a huge loss of friction by cranks and valves even with just the added mass...
You missed the Commer TS3 truck engine, with three barrels, six pistons. The sound they made when driven hard had to be experienced to be believed. The machining had to be absolutely accurate, and the complexity of cranks and double ended rods meant they became prohibitively expensive, but they made glorious low profile engine for powerboats. Thrilling acceleration and a cockpit the size of a ballroom.
I know what you mean. My uncle is still running is old Commer to this day
As a kid, one of the trucking companies had one of these Commer trucks.i was always blown away by the sound of this truck accelerating.
@@danielgooderham9644 Cool! What part of the world?
@@malcolmwolfgram7414 The UK invented it, years ago.
I often wonder if, given modern engineering like high pressure common rail injection and modern Eaton blowers, a modern version of the Commer TS3 would be viable. It was a remarkably simple engine really, when you look at the total component count, and without cylinder heads and valves to worry about, servicing them would be remarkably easy. I think pollution would not be the problem it's made out to be, I think noise might be the biggest factor.
Fairbanks-Morse diesel engines of the 1930s and 1940s as used on many ships in the US Coast Guard and US Navy during WWII were of the inline, opposed piston design and were a two-cycle combustion series. The biggest issue that we had with those engines was coolant jacket leakage into the combustion chamber where the fuel injectors were mounted. The injectors had to pass through the coolant portion of the cylinder liner assembly and on into the combustion segment of the liner. This issue with coolant leaking into the cylinders was a chronic problem that we had. Otherwise the 12 cylinder units were basically good engines. Fairbanks-Morse diesels were available in many different cylinder counts according to requirements. These were not clean engines by any means.
I worked on a Canadian Great Lake Freighter with 4-12 cylinder Fairbanks-Morse 600 RPM very Loud and Thirsty engines.
The Cleveland / EMD engines were a much less problematic design, and in the world of railroading, the EMD's reigned supreme over the FM's (and every other builder, as well) for many decades.
I would love to redo a FM OP 38-8 @1/8 with carbon fiber v-force reed valves for each upper and lower crankshaft chamber and run ethanol. next a dry sump with castor 927 maxima 2T bean oil and some vro pumps plumbed in there. hell yeah
Any ICE is really a mechanical nightmare. That's why many applications will use battery/electric motors going forward. They are so much simpler and reliable.
Thank you. Your summary along with the graphics shown helped even a nonmechanic like me understand. Thanks again.
Thanks for watching!
@@Tech_Planet can u make hydrogen no emissiosn at all as long as you dont heat it too mush while still achieving practicalcombustion
The only things that matter today are:
1.) emissions
2.) durability at least 150k miles or 10 years
3.) Fuel Economy - at minimum 25% better than the best of piston engines
4.) Lower production cost per unit than established engines
IF all 4 are not realized even in low volume production, then the design DOA
Are you telling me my steam car design isn't going to take off
@@ComradeSulomonyes it won't
@@aryantyagi12a Doubters gonna doubt
My father retired from Motorola in the early 2000's , and told me that power electronics seemed a very promising maturing technology. PE's are crucial to the implementation of hybrid ICE/electric automotive platforms, which benefit from using the electric part to eliminate heavy and inefficient drivetrain components. Electronic control, both power and non-power, allows a high degree of variability which enables an ever more adaptable range of usefulness for both parts of the ICE/electric combination.
Batteries and access to sources of electricity are both significant constraints for pure EV's, and are where hybrids gain value in their practical implementation. From an engineering perspective, electrical, mechanical, and chemical (combustion stoichiometry), these are very interesting times, indeed. Great video!
I and my cousin brother thought to build like this one 4-5 years back but couldn't because of financial constraints this engine can also be used in series hybrid where two generators can be attached one on each crankshaft for range extender purposes.
The dual shaft arrangement is actually a shortcoming in most applications.
Early in this video you parrot the designer's claim that this is a 1-stroke engine. Look again. Each pair of pistons do come together at TDC or compression-delayed/adjusted TDC before combustion, validating them as opposed piston arrangement. However, each piston ALSO must move 2 directions between firings. Intake and compression on 1 stroke, then combustion and exhaust on the next. Simply having one of the combustion chambers firing every time a piston pair reaches TDC or BDC does not make this a 1-stroke engine layout, otherwise a 4-cylinder 4-stroke could be called a 1-stroke engine since each 180 degrees of crankshaft rotation there is a combustion event. This is truly a 2-stroke layout and still really cool. I love the adjustable compression ratio they've incorporated into it.
I‘be always loved the simplicity of 2 strokes. This model looks very “cool” but what about the cost of fabrication and then maintenance. Just machining those parts looks technically challenging.
It will be no problem for a multi axis cnc machine
Exaustão como um 2 T 😂👎 seria melhor motor 2t !
If you see modern Otto engines the sophistication of the way they need to be adjusted will blow your mind. Tolerances are in order of few micron, oil specifications are very strict, heat working conditions are very narrow, and etc.... This engine has no more exigences in building that another one, but have the advantages of reducing mobile parts and its inefficiences. It is not a substitute of all Otto or diesel engines, but a way to give more efficient work in certain situations like i.e. rechargin and E.V. making it a extended range vehicle, and giving users a security about never being out of battery.
Two strokes have numerous problems. The one huge problem this engine has is running on fossil fuels. It will pollute in both the conventional sense and in the sense of releasing carbon. Many people just don't understand that we need to cut carbon emissions virtually to zero.
The overlap in the port timing will release large amounts of unburned hydrocarbons into the exhaust. It's simply not workable. It's like inventing a better buggy whip about the same time Ford starts selling the model T.
Oh fiddlesticks just enjoy the brappp and the castor 927 maxima!
Differently designed & complex moving parts makes this machine more vulnerable to mechanical failures. It will never be a challenge to EV at all.
Wow. Someone took an old (like 1960s) GM swash plate air conditioning compressor, split it in half, moved one half so the piston tops face each other, and made an engine of it. It seems to me the major advantage of this arrangement vice just making a six cylinder engine from the GM swash plate compressors is the ability to vary the timing of the two swash plates. The supercharged Fairbanks-Morse opposed piston engines had six degrees lower crank lead, the one with turbochargers and supercharger had twelve degrees lower crank lead. The lower pistons would clear the exhaust ports earlier so the exhaust could spin the turbos.
This engine type was developed in 1917. So this particular engine is nothing new at all
Never heard of this type of engine until now. Fascinating. Terrific animations.
Cummins developed opposed 4 cylinder, basically a flat 8, but with 2 cranks and 2 stroke. Maybe there is hope for engines with character. Cannot wait to hear one.
Thanks for telling us what people are trying. It would be nice if there was a way to beat round cylinders and a crankshaft, but by looking at them, I don't believe either of them are going anywhere.
- The swash plate/cam track configuration is a non-starter for the reason you mentioned.
- The opposed with the crankshaft will fail in fuel efficiency and if it passes emissions it will be due to external help. The once-popular design lost out due to fuel efficiency issues to where few are still in use today. GM's old Detroit Diesel Series 71 engines would be a more efficient design and could potentially be cleaner.
- The Wankel hasn't been competitive.
- Turbines need to work in a relatively narrow power band to be efficient, and even then they are a long ways from being comparatively efficient. The best attempts for cars have been the Chrysler turbine car and Ford an H-Series truck which used ceramics to enable higher heats. One would think it could make it on trains but they couldn't make it there either. They make it where fuel efficiency isn't the issue, steady high loads, and/or weight. The only ones that dots most of the Is are aircraft, starting with helicopters which work much harder than airplanes for the same weight. High-horsepower piston aircraft engines have such maintenance and reliability issues that it turbines make sense earlier for weight, reliability, maintenance, lifespan, altitude compensation, cabin pressurization and heating, etc.
What could change is the availability of cheap energy to where efficiency is less of an issue. Electricity is very inefficient unless you can make it an transport it inexpensively. The U.K.s idea to use many Thorium-based plants would help. It could make hydrogen fuel less expensive as well. (I often tease a customer with a Volt, "I see you drove your coal burner today.")
I think gas turbine cars will be feasible if only the manufacturers and the customers are willing to accept that it will be hybrid power. Gas turbines are suitable only at certain rpms anyways. Might as well make it hybrid, use excess mechanical energy to charge the battery instead.
I see this engine as a new way to explore the electric car. It could be use to power an electric car with very limited batteries, and could turn out to be very economical, and offer extended range on very long trips. Generator driven diesel electric locomotives have been very successful for far too many decades to mention. This little engine is so light that it is what is needed for our future hybrid cars, as another alternative to the battery plagued only EV concept. Always keep open mind and try to avoid fads that might give us what we want, but in the end it may not be what we need.
It can never be more economical than an EV. EV's work just fine already.
The swash plate pump and motor have been around for decades in hydrastatic transaxles on lawnmower. They have to turn extremely fast to generate useful torque. Have ever seen how fast a riding lawnmower is.
Still think the LiquidPiston concept has better odds of making it to large scale production. Plus the thermodynamics of the LP rotary yield a considerably reduction in specific fuel consumption. Larger version of the LP engine can be achieved with either larger rotors or by stacking together multiple rotors. The OP concept looks like it can only scale up by making the pistons bigger to increase displacement with the given number of pistons. This will make the engine larger in diameter, which is the exact opposite of what you want if this is ever to be used in an aircraft.
The best option is hydrogen or even pure ethanol normal combustion engines. They are far better for the climate without sacrificing anything like power and sound.
@@EliteNugz hydrogen has issues of its own. Compressed hydrogen needs extraordinarily strong tanks able to withstand pressures of 350-700 atmospheres of pressure. Liquid hydrogen doesn’t need high pressure, but at -427 degrees F the temperature is so low that even small amount of heat leak causes the LH2 to boil off faster than the required fuel flow. As such it needs phenomenal levels of insulation to keep heat flux as close to zero as possible. Ethanol isn’t a bad alternative. The issue with ethanol is that it is completely miscible with water, even water vapor in the air. As a result pure ethanol will rapidly become a mixture of water and ethanol unless it is kept sealed from any contact with the atmosphere. The same goes for methanol. And the volumetric energy density of ethanol and especially methanol is much less than gasoline. As a result for a given tank size the range with ethanols or methanol is much shorter. It is possible to address all of these issues. However butanol might be a better solution. It has a volumetric energy density that is about 3/4 of gasoline. And unlike ethanol it doesn’t absorb water out of the air. Even better it has a much lower vapor pressure than gasoline and has a much higher flash temperature, which together means that it represents a much lower risk of a stray static electric spark causing the fuel tank to explode compared to gasoline and even diesel. Synthetic butanol does take more input energy to produce a given number of megajoules of fuel energy than ethanol or methanol. And existing gasoline engines just require a minor reprogramming of the engine computer to allow it to run on 100% butanol. Current gas engines can’t run on 100% ethanol. The max that existing gasoline’s can run on is 80%-85% ethanol.
@@papparocket with minor modifications combustion engines can run on 100% ethanol and less mpg per gallon is a small price to pay for all its benefits. It males way more sense than electric cars which are horrible for the environment and have tons of negative effects.
@@EliteNugzby small price to pay you mean - I'm going to create global shortage of grain, because I'll be using millions of acres of land to grow corn for my fuel.
But who cares, I'm not sober poor schmuck in third world, I can afford more expensive food. Right?
I have been thinking of something similar for over 40 years. Now that the internet is hear I can actually see it
Fascinating that No One is Talking About How This Engine Can Be Used With Alternative Fuel, Like Hydrogen Or Propane . . . Forget About Batteries!
As a longtime fan of both Tony Seba ("Clean Disruption") and Amory Lovins ("Reinventing Fire"), I think you are underestimating the speed with which the green transition is happening. However, as a Chevy Volt owner, I can attest to the excellent utility of a "range-extended" EV. I tend to get a lot of guff from my fellow EV fans for advocating long-range PHEVs as a setpping stone for legacy OEMs who are struggling to make a pure BEV that they can sell for a profit. But with a 10~15 kwh battery pack, you can easily get 40~50 miles of pure-electric range, which is more than enough for most Americans' average daily commute. (I drive about 25~30 miles a day, and I haven't burned any gas in months.)
This gives you the efficiency of an EV with the long-range convenience of gas. Combine that with one of these new lightweight engines you're talking about, and that would be an attractive package to a lot of people who are still a bit worried about range anxiety.
Amazing engineering but the ICE era is nearing an end for I'll say 80% of ground transportation needs.
Nope
Yeah, but in the mean time the world will still need better combustion engines.
@@zbyszanna ICE sales are down, BEV sales are up by 2030 BEV will almost certainly be more than 60% of the market. If so, what need is there to spend tens of millions on R&D, more tens of millions tooling up to produce an engine that offers no substantial benefits over the engines being made now?
@@GeeKayKayGee60% probably not even in California by 2030 unless u r including the plug-in hybrids. The issue isn’t California, but the rest of the world. Again u have not qualified ur assertions! To win at climate change it is what is happening world wide, and most of the world has different ideas that contrast with your “ultracrepidarianism”!
Never, Hydrogen conversion is coming for ice.
Engine maybe useful in military applications as part of a power pack for a future hybrid Bradley replacement.
If I drove truck as an owner-operator, I think I'd be willing to take a 45 minute break every 7-8 hours if it cut the cost of fuel & repairs significantly. This should qualify as one of the mandatory breaks anyway. 5:00 However I still like the look of this engine for marine & air applications or trucking outside the super-duper-charger network (or whatever it'll be called).
What?? There's no mandatory break where you live, I assume the US?? That's very surprising. Over in Europe where I live you have to take either 45 minutes or 2 breaks of 15 + 30 minutes every 4,5 hours of driving. You can drive 9 hours per day, 2 days per week you're allowed 10, so 56 hours is the maximum per week. Those are driving hours though (as in the vehicle is moving), not working hours. Working hours can be up to 60 (or more, depending on the situation).
@@CreRay I live in Canada where you need a cumulative of 2 hours every day with 30 minute minimums or something like that. My point was that charging won't actually slow the driver down because they have to take breaks anyway, whereas the video seems to suggest the charging time would slow truckers down. I had a friend who was a trucker, but don't drive commercially myself.
Most people are surprised that charging electric semis is not a limitation. The primary limitation is in the driver! The day starts with a charged battery and a fresh driver. The Tesla semi can travel 500 miles on a fresh charge. Within the first 8 hours, the driver is required to take a 30 minute break. During the 30 minute break, the truck can charge another 300 miles. Now the total is 800 miles in the driver's allowed 11 hour day. How often will the range be a limitation, rather than the driver's hours?
The network won't be a problem, because with a 500 mile range, there won't be a situation where there's no charger available. Electric semis will start the way PepsiCo is using them, between their own facilities. As third party charging points spring up, trucking companies will factor in being able to charge en route. More and more companies will switch to lower fuel cost electric vehicles. Once large trucking companies are running electric, it will lower the rates they charge their customers, and anyone still driving diesel will have a hard time competing and making a profit.
The problem with this engine is that it lack of low en torque(I mean, like a lot). Also, the 120hp isn't made from a N/A engine. If you look in the Miata video, there was a supercharger
So what? Still extremely light weight with the supercharger.
@@CameronsCars What I said is that the lack of low end torque is the problem, never talked about weight
It's more problematic this company never mentions the supercharger anywhere, implying that they're having issues with this engine.
@@Vinz3ntR ; All 2 strokes need positive intake pressure to drive out exhaust gases. Small chainsaw sized ones use crankcase compression, hence oil in the fuel. Bigger engines use superchargers or positive pressure Rootes type blowers, Junkers, Jimmy, Commer,, Deltec etc. Lubricating oil can be constrained to a sump, not so tough to meet emissions limits.
During WW2 a Junkers 2 stroke diesel powered aircraft had a ceiling of above 60,000 feet. One nice aspect of EV range extenders is that they can be run at optimum rpm/output with a completely controlled generator load. Also the generator can run the engine up to high revs for turbocharged 2 stroke easy starting. Little light low emission engines only used when needed.
Good point about the supercharger, but it still makes it quite viable as a range-extender/power-booster engine for hybrid-vehicles, although this company really needs to sack its PR agents with its silly hype, then be more realistic about the engine's potential, along with not calling it a single-stroke when it's really a 2-stroke engine!
It's a very intriguing design and I'd love to have one to play with, but let's get a few points clear:
-It's a Two Stroke engine in spite of what the makers say - just one that doesn't drink oil.
-It's compactness and simplicity are by far it's most important aspects.
-A design like this will have next-to-no-torque, making it useless as an automotive engine.*
*maybe, maybe this could be improved sufficiently with forced induction but that would add to the weight and complication.
So certainly as noted this engine may have a place as a small generator to 'augment' batteries in an electric car.
I'll make a bold claim - we won't see all electric heavy haulage vehicles for the foreseeable future. Battery technology is just not up to it and the limits of physics might mean we never have the batteries we want - Tesla's truck is frankly a crock of sh1t, like pretty much every old 'whiz-bang' idea Musk has rebranded as his own...
...it may be an 'electric' truck that is powered by a sufficiently efficient generator (like the Deltic locomotive) could be viable, but would it be more viable than current technology?
A practicable point: At most electric cars make up about 10% of vehicles in developed countries. Yes, it would be good to see many more but supposed governmental plans to phase out petrol and diesel vehicles in short order are directly out of cloud-cuckoo land...
...current (sorry) electricity grids are designed to just about service the needs of the day, the tiny proportion of electric cars already putting a heavy strain on that infrastructure. As a back of the envelope estimation to supply all-electric use would need a minimum of 3-5x the generating capacity + all the infrastructure to go along with that. If a power station alone takes about 10 years to build at a cost of anywhere from 200 million to 10 billion depending on size and type where is the money coming from to build them all? Where is all the land? What about all the power lines, etc? All this at a time when there is pressure to get rid of 'big and nasty' power stations?
If it's taken us about 100 years to build the infrastructure we've got and we will need something like 3-5x more will it take another 3-500 years? Of course not, but you get my point. The internal combustion engine is here to stay, and as we continue to ruin this planet while draining it of oil the only options are to seek every greater efficiency while reengineering society to be far less dependant on them - in my opinion that's not going to happen and we're screwed, but that's another story.
Sorry, I got carried away...
The opposed piston engine has loads of torque. There are two pistons and therefore two rods being pushed out simultaneously…that amplifies torque. The Achates 2.7 liter engine produces 480 ft lbs of torque…that’s a bunch of torque for a 2.7 liter engine.
@@genuinetuffguy1854 There is no leverage on the crank. I would like to see the 2.7 on a dyno think that may be with a large supercharger on it
Oh this is wonderful. With my EV I was really missing having to go to gas stations every week, and don't forget about the oil changes every 5000 miles. How did I ever get along without a mechanic trying to upsell me an unnecessary brake and coolant flush for just $69.99! There is just nothing that can substitute for hundreds of moving parts with contact points of wear. I also was getting a little too comfortable not worrying that my catalytic converter wouldn't be on the car in the morning. And let's not forget about that badly out of tune car exhaust smell that's just like fresh geraniums.
EXACTLY!
If there is a fire in the battery compartment, you will not have a single chance. The car will burn for several days, and nothing will be able to put it out. In such a situation, there is one positive point. You wont need to be buried, there wont be anything left of you...
@vulpesdraco1669 your car is FULL OF HIGHLY FLAMMABLE GAS!
@@stevefisher2553 your car is FULL OF HIGHLY FLAMMABLE GAS! Seriously? Its unbelievable! But...
I understand you've seen in the movies many times how a good guy shoots at a bad guys car, a good guy gets into a petrol tank, the bad guys car explodes, takes off into the air, the good guy keeps shooting, the car explodes harder in the air, this explosion triggers the process of uncontrolled atomic fission and the car is completely annulled...Oh yes, Hollywood☺
My recommendations to you, buy a cold beer and review the Mythbusters. This is also a very spectacular show
Separately, I want to say about Diesel fuel. Modern diesel fuel is very eco-friendly and safe. This fuel burns very, very, very badly. In order for this fuel to ignite, a high temperature and high pressure are needed, which makes diesel fuel the safest of the existing ones
If you like electric cars, this is your choice, but why talk nonsense?...beer..mmmmm...I going to buy a cold beer 😏
@@vulpesdraco1669 electric car fires are rare. Gasoline car fires happen constantly. What about sitting right on top of 10 gallons of gasoline says safety to you? Oil company propaganda would have you forget that gasoline is flammable.
I refreshed my memory from my time in GM Training, the radial air conditioner compressors work quite similarly to 1 end of this engine design, we all know that an a/c compressor can last the life of the vehicle with minimal maintenance/attention, I think with a little different design to the cam track set up, this could be a feasible option for the ICE as a generator engine
Using vehicles that run on electric motor and battery strains our economy and does finally result in a larger carbon footprint than an efficient fossil fuel vehicle.
Batteries should be used in hybrids and made to last 15-20. years. We had a British design in Delhi, IN and it was superb (2010...)
If we look at the "use case" scenario for long-haul trucking, a truck operated by a single driver can only drive for x hours (10 I think). Whatever the number, a driver has to sleep *sometime* at least. That's a perfect match for a charge/drain battery cycle. So small range extenders can be used when there is no electricity to charge while resting. Also, super capacitors have quicker charge rates so that could be useful. They also have quicker discharge rates so that has to be managed in the system design. My point being that some combination of small range extenders (especially for at-rest charging), super capacitors, and slow discharge batteries of some type will probably be a good configuration for EV long haul trucking. BTW, it would be great if could you do a video on the latest EV power system designs using these 3 energy sources. Thanks!
The problem is, claimed distance is almost always several multiples of actual range when loaded. For example, a 500mi EV is realistically likely to only see 100-125mi once loaded - if that. There's a reason why EVs are forced on us with backend subsidies. And it's not because the market can sustain or justify them otherwise.
@@justanothercomment416 I totally believe you, but let's face it mpg ratings aren't much different. I'm supposed to get 26 into the city and I get like 14. But ok that's still 2x better than your example. But some decent power storage/range capacity *has* to be put into the ev market or else we'll all get bit in the butt sooner - not later.
There's a video around with a guy whose hitch hiking to get a gallon of gas for his car stuck on the side of the road. He gets a ride, gets a ride back, and the other guy says - dude that a Tesla! What the heck are you thinking? The Tesla owner opens his trunk to reveal a small gas generator; he fills it up, starts it and runs a plug from it to his Tesla charge port. Is that the future waiting for us?🤣🤣🤣
@@Charlie-Oooooo There's a ton of propaganda surrounding this topic. Pushed by the same people financially benefiting and funneling funds to hostile nation's economies. The entire green push is a scam built upon more than a century of propaganda. A century of propaganda offering predictions which have a 100% rate of invalidity.
What you just described accurately depicts the reality of the entire green movement. It's insanity built upon money laundering and propaganda. Nothing more. Nothing less.
I encourage you to go find Tony Heller's content. Does a great job of pulling information out of the past century of documented environment propaganda and scares for the obvious scam reasons.
mahle was talking about a recycalable electric motor but it needs transmission like normal engine. theres idea of linear piston mocement energy covert to electrical without spinning parts
INN will probably take years if not decades to proceed beyond prototype stage. Longevity is a hugely critical issue, how will the motor respond to a backfire or low-octane pinging.
How reliable is that swashplate concept, and how sensitive is it to the quality of lubrication.
I'm also curious if it's not possible to stagger the combustion events for a smoother output, perhaps if they went from 4 piston pairs to 3 pairs they could reduce part count and improve smoothness (the MX5 video sounded very "raspy").
I have an inkling that efficiency (and emissions) could be improved quite a bit if they incorporated a catalyst and turbo: there will be unburned products of combustion in the exhaust that could be completed in a catalyst and the energy captured by a turbo.
Interesting prototype.
Nice if it is light and powerful, however you cannot get excessive gain in efficiency as it is still based on the carnot process.
Absolutely correct that a plug in hybrid should use the combustion engine (of any type) only to produce electricity. This allows the engine to work in its optimum working point in terms of efficiency.
I would assume a battery capacity of 15 to 20kWh to be enough for a plug in hybrid. This should reduce the battery weight compared to 60-80 kWh about 180 to 260kg. If you refrain from moving a 2 ton vehicle at constant speed above 120 km/h this give enough weight reduction to install the combustion motor (and fuel tank).
IMHO...
I believe PHEV is the way to go, pure Electric will never be the answer.
Using electric for stop and go city commutes is very efficient and would reduce the smog in metropolitan areas.
However, gas is the way to cruise at highway speeds. I owned a 2017 Chevy Volt PHEV, and now a 2022 Kia Sorento PHEV. Both are very efficient, with local commutes on pure EV and upwards of 40mpg when on highways. That being said, I added a gas engine to my 2015 Electric Smart fortwo to make it a PHEV.
well done, you're the first person Ive listened to realise those two "wobbly things" are cams
When I first saw the Opposed Engine, I was so excited about its principle. Moreover, five years ago, I translated a video with a voiceover about the Achates OP Engine into Russian and shared it on my channel. The company had just introduced their prototype to share the idea and concept, but you can't even imagine how much hate the "couch's experts in this field" wrote in the comments below in the end...
This particular motor has the limitation of two “crankshaft” outputs. Most uses can't take advantage of that. Then there is the fact that it burns fossil fuels, which will become much harder to buy and eventually prohibited.
Recent subscriber, interesting topic, we need something that people can drive/use who cannot afford EV's. As we inch closer to 2030, the cost of EV's will only continue to increase, here in Australia... there are nowhere near enough charging stations. My main concern is that people will simply be priced out of new car purchases on one hand, and on the other hand find themselves 'punished' by the state for continuing to drive their aging 'polluting' vehicles which they cannot afford to replace.
The 3 cyl OP design is probably one of the best. The development of a hydrogen fuel system paves the way for another breakthrough efficiency technology to be integrated into the engine: Paul Pantone's fuel reforming plasma reactor. Simple in design, the device simulates a lightning strom inside of its body by passing hot dry gasses over cold, moist air in a turbulent and magnetically active arrangement. The end result is a continuous plasma spiral lightning discharge in a vacuum, through which the atomized droplets of fuel pass, to be molecularly reformed into a synthetic hydrogen gas. This enables almost any liguid to be processed into synthetic hydrogen, including all types of fuels and even water. The resulting combination of an effiicent hydrogen injected engine, and a flexible fuel reformer for turning any fuel into synthetic hydrogen, will allow current technology to achieve super efficiency and near zero emissions without the need for massive mining of rare minerals to support the transition to green energy.
The Achate seems a winner. If it could be reduced to something of 20hp it would be a fantastic outboard engine. Also with 16 hp a hybrid could make a car last much longer. Electric motors on each wheel. Drop the bendix starter and place with proper gearing an alternator- motor that could smoothly start the Achate engine when needed. That would be my dream vehicle.
The Napier Deltic ran at 1650hp in trains, that's not where it 'topped out. The turbo compound Deltic ran to 5600hp in a destructive test.
Pure EVs would destroy itself simply because the bad cost/effective, and inconveniences of it...
No need to further talk about it. In every point of view ev is simply garbage
@@tonytony978 Lol.. Oil industry paying you much? 100 years ago you would be touting the benefits of keeping horses and sneering at Henry Ford and his jalopy.
A healthy evolution of vehicle propulsion. EV automotive tech is driving significant advances in ICE design. Both of the featured engines are great potential range extenders in future hybrid electric drive systems! I really like the Achates design.
They are not "healthy" - noisy polluting pieces of unnecessary unproven noise makers.
@@nathansmith7153 You're delusional if you believe that battery powered EV's are closer to healthy than efficient ICE's
@@OldSchoolZ-wy2yx Delusional? I wonder how healthy you might be sitting in a closed garage with your ICE engine running vs an EV. Burning highly processed fuel in an ICE is never going to be as efficient as an electric motor. The facts are that ICE vehicles create levels of pollution that kill or permanently harm millions of people annually. Also people conveniently forget that exploring, digging, extracting, transporting and processing petrol and diesel is incredibly resource intensive and an extremely dirty process that burns way more cobalt and other precious resources just to get it to the motorist. We already have EV's using Lithium Phosphate batteries without using nickel or cobalt, and Sodium/air batteries could be next, so having vehicles that can use renewable energy and can be recycled at the end of their life is always going to win.
Is exploding rare fossils still a thing when we know they are atrociously inefficient?
Cam track? On paper it looks neat. The load bearing surface interface between the piston roller and cam plate will be difficult to make reliable. High pressure oil lubricated shell bearings, as used for crankshaft journals remain the most robust and inexpensive bearings to support the rotation of reciprocating engine parts. A single roller on a single surface wont cut it. The engine would need to drag the piston down to ensure it would start.
Not to mention how this engine doesn't have a crankshaft, so it cant take advantage of the lever effect that makes piston engines have more torque. This thing will need to rev super high to make any sort of meaningful power, making it even more unreliable. This has been shown on the miata they drove with this engine, which even when supercharged struggled to move the car at low RPM. It does have advantages that might improve its reiability somewhat, such as the fact that its naturally balanced
The camp voiceover is hilarious, please keep this 😘
Enjoyed your comments! Why not refuel Semi trucks on the GO like our fuel tankers refuel planes? Trucks could continue running at 50-60+ MPH while a lead battery truck is charging, """MOBIL REFUEL STATION"
No liquid or fuel burning design will replace the ease or cost of plugging in an EV in your driveway or at work, or while shopping.
The days of pumping goo out of the ground and setting it on fire are drawing to an end.
I rate this the same about solid state batteries in development. Hype. Tony Seba told the world in 2014 what was coming. Big Carbon had its chance but they locked up IP and solar will be surpassing coal next year. The batteries produced at scale are working now. The cost curves are dominating now. No hybrid strategy will scale fast enough to bring its costs down when EV's require less parts to make especially with gigacasting the fronts and butts. The TCO is compelling now.
All good, it's just needs to used a non - carbon fuel and it will be a winner. Less emissions is not zero emissions, it will still require oil drilling and refinement to make the fuel. The goal is to transition away from carbon fuels, not just use them less! 👍Like i say nice design, it just needs to use a clean fuel!
Indeed, this engine that doesn't exist and never will has completely destroyed EVs. It's game over.
The roller in tracks design makes a very compact engine, but I believe the Achates engine is probably the best design. Using the transfer gear as a power output, it can even have a built in gear reduction making it a great option for small aircrafts and boats.
Disruptions happen much faster and suggested in this video.
Tesla is disrupting the vehicle combustion engine industry, and mini companies including Tesla are disrupting grid technologies.
Simple economics are forcing these transitions, in spite of gas and oil interests efforts to maintain ~30% profits.
"We need greater battery energy densities"... "But that will be a decade or more away"
Except that CATL already has a hybrid solid(ish) state battery, what they call the Condensed Matter battery going into production this year. Energy density? Up to 500W/kg which, if you do the calculations, is pretty much the exact same energy density of hydrocarbons running at a typical ICE efficiency of high 20%, low 30, and it's cheaper to manufacture than traditional Li batteries, according to CATL. Admittedly, the INN engine may be capable of higher efficiencies, but that is a big maybe.
And we also know that Chinese researchers have achieved 703 Wh/kg under lab. conditions.
So, with "just" a simple step, battery density goes from a maximum 280/290 Wh/kg in the current best (Tesla) batteries, to 500, to 700, and you think that it'll take 10years or more?
Knowing how much skin is in the game to get ultra-high energy densities, I suspect that we'll be looking at 1kW/kg energy densities in under 10 years, I actually think that we'll be seeing them (possibly only in lab form) before the turn of the decade.
And even with "only" 500Wh/kg, the combined weight of battery pack and motor is already pretty much identical to that of an ICE,
When you consider that the first Li batteries only went on sale in 1991, and only had a density of about 100Wh/kg, but Tesla's batteries are getting nearly 3 times that from basically the same tech, I don't think it is too much of a reach to see similar gains in these new techs.
Similarly, although electric motors can run at over 80% efficiency, it can be relatively difficult to get them to run at that efficiency across the whole operating range, but motor efficiency is another area of research that is showing enormous promise.
Lighter batteries, more efficient and lighter motors. WTF do we need to resort to burning stuff?
Oh, and BTW, the CATL Condensed Matter battery is cobalt free, as will all EV batteries be by 2025, if not sooner..
Also, several other battery manufacturers have similar batteries in the wings, apparently.
Norway transferred over to mostly hybrid‘s at the end of the 1990s, but now 85% are full EVs which identifies the most favorable direction for transportation. Certainly not hybrids, which was the best we could do in the last century. I EVs are by far the simplest and the only option That allows us to eliminate blowing toxic fumes in each others faces.
If it can convert sunlight or uranium to kinetic/electric energy with at least 80% efficiency, then we can say it could potentially destroy electric vehicles. In the meantime, electric vehicles can be charged by the sun or uranium, and be more simple, powerful, and awesome than overly-complicated, lazy, and unreliable internal combustion engines.
My 2 cents. If you take down the “density” of the vehicle itself, you don’t need to bring up the density of batteries themselves. We repeatedly forget that we are living in the space age and that these technologies and efficiencies are practically alien technologies compared to what we were working with in the 1900’s. It’s kind of funny how Einstein’s E=MC^2 goes out the window and we just USE more and more! The vehicles of the 1900’s weigh significantly less than todays vehicles and it just goes to show that we don’t WANT more, we want to be MORE greedy… food for thought.
As a tech with some engineering I would love to learn specs, but I did enjoy your video
Very good information on the opposed internal combustion engine. We have been dependent on the IC engine since Otto invented it in 1840's along with the steam engines that are all mechanical devices.
Petroleum is the most efficient highest density fuel on the planet and it is continuously produced or comes from the core of the earth; atomic reaction to heat that condenses and condenses...... to gas that condenses and condenses.....to liquid and as it rises from the pressure it does collect minerals from the earth, and as it condenses and condenses ......to solids and you have carbon, coal and diamond.
The future and it is in its beginning stages is the fuel cell that produces electricity from Hydrogen. When hydrogen is compressed it is a more energy dense fuel but with many other challenges and costs. This fuel cell technology will develop into a similar converter that actually does the same as the fuel cell with hydrogen but will directly convert or strip the "carbon" of its excess electrons. This is a carbon planet and is what we all run on as a low temperature carbon oxygen engine; our bodies.
This IC engine has been great but very inefficient as the gas Otto engine is 25% efficient the Diesel engine at 31% it is wasting the balance of the carbon/petroleum potential into the atmosphere via the radiator, exhaust and heat radiation.
So the next generation converter will take petroleum/carbon and strip the electrons of it via this fuel/matter converter and give us a 98% efficiency and zero pollution as it doesn't combust the petroleum as in the IC engine or reaction engine.
Rudolph Diesel came very close to exposing this device in 1900 after he developed the compression combustion engine but he disappeared off a ship he was on way to delivery his findings to others. No need to say but this technology was not wanted to be exposed by ?
I do feel the "range extender" with a small efficient power plant is a great compromise or extension to the electric battery.
So much more to say. Oh well.
Well done on bringing the "Opposed Piston" engine technology to the forefront. I am impressed with the "Liquid Piston" advanced Wankel engine with 3 combustion cycles per revolution.
Thank for your info and well done on your research and UA-cam presentation.
Wm
The reveal of this engine is interesting, however the flaw with battery power that nobody is talking about is safety. For example third rail electrical trains use high voltage DC power similar to cars. To work on a railway there's a lot of health and safety involved. We're giving a similar technology to the public in battery powered vehicles, however the public crash and regularly misuse and damage vehicles. High voltage DC is dangerous, the public are unaware of the potential dangers and rules that must be adhered to.
The problem is, internal combustion technology has been severely hampered by the oil industry and the expense of advanced materials.
I'm a trained jet engine mechanic. I know just a wee tad about engines.
This is an axiom. Combustion temperature is directly proportional to efficiency. Why are gas turbines so much more efficient than piston engines? Because piston engines operate around 8-9:1 compression, and a gas turbine engine is around 25:1.
This is a basic hydrodynamic principle - as pressure increases, temperature increases. So higher pressures = higher temperatures = more complete combustion = more efficiency. Got it?
Modern piston engines need to be brought into the 21st century. We have materials technologies now capable of creating engines with around 15:1 compression ratio in a piston driven engine. At this compression ratio, it's much simpler to design a more powerful engine that uses less fuel.
For instance, with a material redesign, the 175hp base Ford Fusion engine (which gets 21 and 31 mpg city/hwy) could easily produce 245 hp and get 26 and 38 mpg with a simple materials redesign and compression increase. More power and more mpg with better emissions. This is the benefit being held back from piston driven engines. And this is only the beginning.
Anybody ready to start a new American car company based on cutting edge internal combustion technology will rule the future if they play their cards right.
Putting gear teeth on the swash plate and rollers would eliminate problems with the rollers skidding on the swash plate which would improve efficiency.
Like many people, this presenter does not actually understand why we are converting to electricity in various forms of transportation. He mentions the hybrid approach to increasing the range of batteries, but if you are going to do that, why have the battery? The point of going electric is to ultimately eliminate carbon emissions. Running this engine releases carbon just like any other ICE. It solves no problems we can't already solve.
Imagine throwing a rod on that thing. Flies straight out the block through the car because all that’s in the way is another piston and case.
A lot of design are great when something is working the way it’s supposed to, working on that looks 100x more complicated than a straight block or even a v type.
Looks like it would work really well in a Gyro copter.
I think they put it on an ultralight, not sure though
I've always been interested in Gyro-copter technology, but it seems multi-rotor aviation technology is supplanting it.
The ONLY reason this engine seems to be better than EVs, is because oil is so heavily subsidized. Gasoline, in the US, now costs around $25-$30 USD per gallon. In the US, consumers only pay about $3-$5...the rest is subsidized by the US government. If consumers paid the true cost, at up to $30/gallon, NONE of these ICE engines would be in use now.
Right and that cost estimate probably doesn't even factor the value of damage caused by carbon pollution as well as air quality related health problems. Although I would say that may be an overestimation of the market price. Although not by that much, say 15-20US$/per US gal.
Which, as usual, the cost of climate pollution tends to be born the most by peolle with low income, low privilege and relatively few means. Diesel is significantly cheaper in many countries where the kind of Regulatory Capture found in the US, isn't in place. This is because it requires a 20th of the energy input to refine from crude petroleum.
Unfortunately, since fuel prices have a huge impact on the economy, jobs, and profit margins in most companies, US politicians have a perverse incentive not to throttle back on this particular "golden tap."
it's not too late for development of new engines, because resources don't allow for 100% electrification of road transport so whoever has efficient alternatives will do well. A good contender which uses much more proven tech is a constant speed micro-turbine engine with an electric drivetrain, because then the traction characteristics of the motor overcomes the turbine disadvantage of low starting torque.
Incidentally, the Napier Deltic engine was a fine design which was abandoned by cash-strapped British Rail who were left with multiple non-standard engine designs as a result of their own rubbish procurement policy for locomotives. The same unit was used in its original intended role in the Royal Navy's Hunt class mine warfare ships, where they remained until re-engining was completed in 2018.
Swash-plate engines have been around since at least the 1920; they can be extremely reliable if not necessarily high performance. Often used in industrial situations where a constant RPM is desired - they might well be ideal for a hybrid.
You forgot the knocker engines used in England for years in large trucks. It was a 6 piston 3 cylinder supercharged diesel
I love the idea of an OP range extender.
Not self starting and no re-generation. It will not beat EVs.
This type of engine is already common in waterblaster pumps. Waterblasters suffer failure if the water is disconnected, I wonder if this engine will cope with abuse as in missing gears, etc....
Two facts everyone needs to know. 1) IC engine efficiency is only 40% at best 2) IC engines are massively complex compared to elecrtic motors.
Emissions are only going to get tighter, so however good this might be, future emissions restrictions will soon outlaw it. It's a novelty, it won't ever make mass production.
Batteries are rapidly getting better, not a decade away.
Hydrogen IC engines are hopeless. The overall efficiency end to end is one third of a BEV.
It could be run on wood gas from a pellet pyrolysis setup. Wood pellets can be made from scrap wood and wood waste. So, you'd have a hopper rather than a tank. It would also be possible to carry the equipment with you to convert wood waste into pellets. That would add weight though. I must try this out some time.
I too like a design I feel that it should be able to charge the battery that is made with if it comes out with that design I believe it should be better on its own can't wait for them to crack the frictionless metal miracle
This engine is not a 1 stroke like they say. It is a two stroke. The biggest issue with 2 strokes is oil control, which is clearly a problem for the Junkers engine in the video. The second issue with 2 strokes is fuel consumption. I would like to see an independent company do emissions testing like Southwest Research (I have no affiliation; just an example) and Brake Specific Fuel Consumption. Piston rod side thrust would also be a concern as it would provide significant efficiency issues. I would like to see this engine succeed, but I have serious doubts it could.
The idea the BEVs will replace 100% of ICE is absurd and unrealistic. Hybrid technology however is plausible.
Regardless, there will always be ICE engines, no mater what anyone assumes. Further ICE vehicles in the future, will represent the lions share of vehicle production.
The only way we will have 100% electric vehicles on the road is if people make their own electricity with wind or solar or they figure out what Tesla did and be able to draw the electricity that is everywhere around us. And if people know their rights and power, they will continue to use gasoline or diesel as Congress has no authority to ban those. The only authority we gave them was to regulate commerce. In other words, to make regular between the states. Not to control it. The people say what they want, not the government. But as long as people stay passive, their rights will be abused more until they fight or give in.
As the owner of a Tesla I love the simplicity and no maintenance except for tire rotation and windshield wipers blades. Adding an internal combustion engine of any kind is old school thinking.
What kind of old technology do you think charges the batteries in your car? ICE can be super efficient and are getting cleaner all the time. It's very blinkered to think electric is the way forwards, I'm yet to see an electric vehicle with enough range to be a game changer, the caravan and motor home industry is set for destruction if the ranges can't be improved drastically. The thought of going on holiday in a battery powered motor home is laughable.
@@mikeatcora we have solar on our home which provides all the KWH’s for our home and Tesla (except on road trips). We do not pay one dime for “fuel” within 200 miles (round trip) of home. Not worried about the RV industry that will or will not work out over time. We have taken long road trips the longest was 1800 miles will no issues. Road trips are actually easier in the Tesla. With ICE vehicles I tend to push hard with only absolutely necessary stops and as a result always end the day exhausted. With the Tesla we stop to charge and take a break every 2 to 2 1/2 hours. 20-30 minutes bathroom, get something to drink and stretch our legs. Car is ready we go again. End of the day I feel like I’m ready to go dancing. This car works really well for us. Your mileage may vary.
Nobody is recycling gas and oil however batteries are completely recycleable eventually ending using newly mined elements.
Koenigseggs new electric motor weighs 35 kg, is about 10" in diameter and can put out 335hp. Thats the game changer, not some modified lawnmower engine. I know we all want the brum-brum noises but the end is close, I'm afraid. Saying that I'll still have my old Norton Dominator to caress my ears.
And making cars like trains I have been thinking about that for the last 30 years I road a golf cart for the first time and my mind was on it about making a car and Gen set !! Glad to see it coming to life !!
5:17 -- "100% electric vehicles on the road" means 100% of vehicles in parking and storage space will be EV -- which is impossible to the quickly increasing number of places banning over battery unstoppable thermal-runaway (i.e., unquenchable fires) liability concerns -- e.g., any garage (especially an underground one) acquiring first-hand experience with an EV fire will move to ban them. The cost of insuring EVs is going through the roof, and the premium to rent one offsets fuel savings. The only people really benefitting off EVs are heavy-metal mines and governments salivating at tying civilian mobility to their power grids.
Much, much more than a decade away from sufficient electrical infrastructure!
Tesla had an electric car running with zero-point energy. When they finally allow this technology, it would be the way to go. No big batteries, no big generators.
Great video.. The first to see an INN actually running and throttling up (with or without intake boost). By the way, don't lithium ion battery chemistries come mostly from the refinement of sea water?
There is video of it powering a Mazda with the aid of a turbo charger.
I am not an engineer. But it seems there is so much metal to metal contact, unlike the main bearings, and the rod bearings of a conventional piston engine. The crank and the rod bearings ride on a relatively touchless hydrodynamic wedge of oil.. it may be Thermo efficient, but there seems to be a lot of areas of friction that would require a very high film stregnth oil to protect.. even with the additions of zinc and phosphorus in today’s oils, the lifters contacting the cam is still not fully protected by the film of oil..
Put these pistons following those slots, and Wood appears to be similar to a motorcycle sequential transmission shift drum. I really don’t think that design would have a long service life.
The Blower thats mandatory for this 2 stroke opposed piston for scavenging air. No mention of it at all!
I have a Chevy volt and love it I would love a one ton electric with a range extender.
We still need to get away from Fossil fuel motors . Any motor that needs oil to lubricate it will not be facing the new world .
The common knocker was a predecessor to this OP mini, and well respected, i think it has merit.
I studied the knocker engine and it deserves another look for medium duty applications
I like these concepts. I get the feeling though that unless a manufacturer takes a design on for full scale production then these concepts will struggle against conventional petrol and Diesel engines which are still getting more efficient. So many people want to get rid of them but there are many other ways we can reds ur out emissions rather than by targeting innocent car and truck drivers. Half of it is marketing and media, thru desire to create a problem that they will earn money for ‘fixing’
I noticed there is no mention of the efficiency of these new engine designs. To be economically competitive with my BMW I3, the overall thermal efficiency will need to be above 85%, and there's nothing on the horizon which suggests a combustion engine can achieve anything close to such a high standard.
I am glad that some imagination is going into ICE. ICE + Synthetic Fuel is the best because we already have the infrastructure and hundreds of millions of ICEs currently in operation. It isn't the ICE that is bad for the environment - it is the fossil fuels. Many groups are working on carbon-neutral synthetic fuels (e.g. F1 is planning on being carbon-neutral within 10 years). Some processes could even have a net effect of removing carbon from the atmosphere.
I spent the whole of my army career fixing the Leyland L60 6 cylinder 19 liter opposed piston engines. They were classed as totally unreliable. Then again, they were fitted inside 63 ton Tanks. Although being a design from the 60s they probably had more potential.
No we won't have 100% EV's on the road. We're going nowhere without massive upgrades in power generation and clean nuke plants take decades to design, approve and construct. No other power source can make this happen - none is even close especially considering the value of staged pellet use.
Its basically a two stroke engine with the same problems. It exhales unburned gas and for this reasons dont pass emission requirements
This is a variation on the old DynaCam engine, as similar but 4-stroke design which achieved FAA certification but got clobbered by 9/11 and then investor scams. Looking at the old DynaCam engine, which had a single piston per cylinder (and two "cylinder heads," one at each end), suggests an upgrade path for this engine with three cams instead of two on the same shaft - two "end pistons" just as the current design shows, and a center "double-piston" which rocks back and forth between the end pistons for double the HP for only a slight increase in length and little or no additional complexity.
Nothing destroys an electric motor. They just have a wider power band with more consistent torque across that powerband. This engine has moving cylinders, that alone says it's not better than an electric motor.
Basic physics!
The very reason gas engines can't compete with electric motors is mostly due to the reciprocal forces. Electric motors, like jet engines, have linear rotation force. This allows for power across a larger RPM range. Again... simple physics.
And here's Jason (renowned auto journalist) that explains why gas engines will never beat electrics:
ua-cam.com/video/vcn7tvESreI/v-deo.html
I wanted a flying car because I was told we'd have flying cars.
I don't want an electric or autonomous, I want flying!!