Three years ago, Subaru, Mazda, Toyota, Kawasaki, and Yamaha announced a joint development scheme for combustion engines based on alternatives to conventional fossil fuels i.e. synthetic fuels, biofuels and liquid hydrogen. Last Monday, May 28, Toyota, Subaru and Mazda unveiled the first results of that cooperation, a set of new ICE engines to go into production from 2026.
From the press blurb:
With the next generation of engines, the three companies will seek to not only improve standalone engine performance but also optimize their integration with electric drive units, harnessing the advantages of each.
While being highly efficient and powerful, the new engines will also revolutionize vehicle packaging by being more compact than existing models. Smaller engines will allow for even lower hoods, improving design possibilities and aerodynamic performance while contributing to better fuel efficiency. The development will also emphasize compliance with increasingly strict emissions regulations.
At the same time, the new engines will be made carbon neutral by shifting away from fossil fuels and offering compatibility with various alternatives, including e-fuel (synthetic fuel), biofuels, and liquid hydrogen. In doing so, these engines will contribute to the broader adoption of CN fuels.
Full video report of the press conference, along with detailed pictures of the new engines, here.
Last year, Toyota sold 2,248,477 cars in the United States, an increase of 6.6% compared to the year before, keeping its position as the number one passenger vehicle seller for the 12th consecutive year.
Only about 15,000 of those cars were BEVs.
Related Stories
The company's CEO claims that affordable and reliable vehicles with combustion engines are a priority for US buyers:
Mazda is late to the electrification party. The MX-30 is far from being the roaring success the Japanese automaker had hoped it would be. It was axed from the United States at the end of the 2023 model year due to poor sales. The range-extending version with a rotary engine is only offered in certain markets, and the US is not on the list. In addition, the EZ-6 electric sedan isn't coming here either. However, the situation isn't all that bad.
Why? Because Americans primarily want gas cars. Speaking with Automotive News, Mazda CEO Masahiro Moro said ICE has a long future in America. Even at the end of the decade, traditional gas cars and mild-hybrid models will make up about two-thirds of annual sales. Plug-in hybrids and EVs will represent the remaining third. In other words, most vehicles will still have a gas engine five years from now.
Mazda's head honcho primarily referred to entry-level models, specifically the 3 and CX-30. Moro believes EV growth in the US has slowed down in the last 18 months or so, adding the trend will likely continue in the foreseeable future. That buys the company more time to develop a lithium-ion battery entirely in-house. The goal is to have it ready for 2030 in plug-in hybrids and purely electric cars. Expect a much higher energy density and "very short" charging times. Interestingly, the engineers already have a "very advanced research base for solid-state batteries."
In the meantime, work is underway on a two-rotor gas engine that will serve as a generator.
Related:
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 31 2024, @05:22PM (7 children)
That's great, but the trend has been for pedestrian-killing monster trucks. Innovations that allow them to lower the hood will go to waste. Hopefully we can reverse that trend though.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Friday May 31 2024, @07:02PM (5 children)
What I want to know is: while 12,000+ (yes twelve thousand) miles per gallon has been demonstrated in a four wheeled vehicle: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pac-car_II [wikipedia.org]
why are we still seeing 30mph and down in the majority of vehicles sold?
🌻🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by captain normal on Friday May 31 2024, @09:28PM (2 children)
Well, would you really want spend a month traveling at less than 30 mph to go 12000 miles (that's about 4 times across the U.S.). And that would be in a vehicle that weighs just under 64 pounds. Oh...and the vehicle looks very claustrophobic as you would be laying down in a very small space.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fPcAH1kupug [youtube.com]
The Musk/Trump interview appears to have been hacked, but not a DDOS hack...more like A Distributed Denial of Reality.
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 31 2024, @09:35PM
Yep, these contests would be more interesting if they required the customary seating position and minimum 80 mph speed for most of the trial. Even then you're competing with a motorcycle in terms of safety; but asking participants in the challenge to submit vehicles for crash tests would put entry out of reach for some contestants. Oh, and climate control. Vehicle must maintain cabin temperature of 60 to 80F for the entire trip.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by JoeMerchant on Friday May 31 2024, @10:29PM
So, increase speed to 60 mph, that probably knocks it down to 3000mpg. Upright seating would take the CdA up by a factor of probably 6: 500mpg... I bet climate control could be impressively efficient with good insulation, combined with upright seating your weight (rolling resistance) is up probably 4-5x... Maybe 100mpg is more realistic... Still over double what the Billion dollar auto companies have managed.
🌻🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Username on Saturday June 01 2024, @12:13PM (1 child)
I googled pac-car II, it has three wheels, basically a recumbent tricycle with a shell, driven by a 18v drill motor. It was driving around an athletic running track. Being small enough to fit inside the lane. Average speed is 18MPH. No top speed given. A bicyclist could accelerate faster and reach a higher speed. This was designed to win an event, not to be practical.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Saturday June 01 2024, @05:31PM
All true, and yet: it did in fact carry a person at over 12,000 miles per gallon.
🌻🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 4, Interesting) by c0lo on Friday May 31 2024, @10:23PM
Until the fuel and car prices climb to the point of making them a luxury. It happened in Europe after WWII well into the '70-ies, the popular cars were small.
Remember VW Beetle, Morris Mini (Mr Bean was driving one), Austin Mini Cooper ("The Italian Job"), Fiat126/500.
https://www.youtube.com/@ProfSteveKeen https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 4, Informative) by vistic on Friday May 31 2024, @05:30PM (4 children)
It means internal combustion engine engine.
(Score: 3, Funny) by zocalo on Friday May 31 2024, @07:42PM (1 child)
UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!
(Score: 2) by Barenflimski on Friday May 31 2024, @08:57PM
I did, but someone modded it down again. We must have a picky librarian in here.
(Score: 2) by RamiK on Saturday June 01 2024, @12:25AM
Yet another RAS [wikipedia.org] syndrome victim.
compiling...
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Saturday June 01 2024, @02:50AM
I was going to suggest that in order to buy one, I needed to put my PIN number into an ATM machine.
"Think of how stupid the average person is. Then realize half of 'em are stupider than that." - George Carlin
(Score: 4, Insightful) by cmdrklarg on Friday May 31 2024, @06:02PM (1 child)
Probably because they don't make or stock very many of them? They have a grand total of ONE model that is a BEV: the bZ4X. Everything else is ICE or hybrid.
The world is full of kings and queens who blind your eyes and steal your dreams.
(Score: 2) by r1348 on Friday May 31 2024, @09:14PM
And, by all standards, the bZ4X is a terrible BEV.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by VLM on Friday May 31 2024, @06:46PM (7 children)
Aren't all of those carbon positive in that we have to pump and burn more fossil fuel than if we burned fossil fuel directly?
Hydrogen is especially carbon positive.
(Score: 3, Informative) by JoeMerchant on Friday May 31 2024, @06:49PM
All depends on how you make them.
Hydrogen electrolyzed from water using solar power only requires the carbon emissions involved in construction of the conversion facility...
🌻🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 5, Informative) by Skwearl on Friday May 31 2024, @08:09PM (3 children)
There are 3 industrial methods to get hydrogen.
White Hydrogen
29% of current production
This is hydrogen that is trapped in the earth, much like oil and gas, and is drilled for and extracted.
Turquoise Hydrogen
70% of current production
Methane pyrolysis is an industrial process for production of hydrogen from natural gas
Green Hydrogen
Less than 1% of current production
Electrolysis
(Score: 3, Funny) by Username on Saturday June 01 2024, @12:19PM (1 child)
> Turquoise Hydrogen
Sounds like the name of a desert hippie.
(Score: 2) by gawdonblue on Sunday June 02 2024, @12:49AM
It's called "blue hydrogen" around here.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Saturday June 01 2024, @02:38PM
The only practical method to power cars.
It's expensive to compress fossil H2 and there "mostly no" pipeline infrastructure and losses are high so very high capex natgas to H2 plants in only the most built up urban areas are the only practical way to fuel H2 powered cars of the future.
It's kind of like the situation with ethanol. Very theoretically under the most ideal spherical cow circumstances in certain geographically perfect locations it might be possible to make "green" ethanol, but the vast majority of EtOH burned is going to be a net loss at converting crude oil into fuel compared to burning it as gas/diesel.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by vux984 on Friday May 31 2024, @10:41PM (1 child)
"Aren't all of those carbon positive in that we have to pump and burn more fossil fuel than if we burned fossil fuel directly?"
Synthetic fuels and hydrogen can be generated greenly. I'll grant that is not really generally the case right now.
But its no worse than than all those BEV owners out there currently charging with electricity generated from coal, natural gas, etc. And even those that are charged by solar have a pretty big fossil fuel dept in the manufacturing of the panels and batteries.
And as electricity from the utilities greens up, then using it to charge a battery or generate hydrogen or create synth-fuels are all carbon neutral.
(Score: 2) by theluggage on Saturday June 01 2024, @11:08AM
Maybe coal is still king in the US, but the UK and EU are currently claiming 20%+ (depending on which statistic you take) of power is coming from "renewables". The UK National Grid is claiming 43% [nationalgrid.com]. Before the Ukraine crisis snuffed a lot of smaller energy retailers, you could sign up for "green" electricity (OK, you didn't get special green electrons but the retailer claimed to buy its wholesale energy from renewable sources). Then there are other countries that have plenty of hydro or geothermal energy or - although it may make ecologists grid their teeth - a lot of nuclear capacity.
In short, at least we're somewhere with renewable electricity for BEVs whereas hydrogen still comes predominantly from fossil fuel. Not that BEVs are the answer to everything - there are lots of issues to be solved (like range, street chargers for the driveway-less, kitting out parking lots with chargers... and ultimately increasing the capacity of the electricity distribution grid) and ICEs/hybrids will probably always have a role. The bitter pill to swallow is that the only real solution is to use less fucking energy which involves unthinkable pinko commie heresies like using public transport, walking to the shop when you need a bottle of milk or contriving not to commute 100 miles every day.
The "whatabout all the carbon used building EVs and batteries" issue is a complex one and, unfortunately, there aren't many unbiassed sources of information. Any change in technology is going to result in the scrapping of a lot of old tech. It's very easy to be one-sided: TFA is talking about new engines - not converting old ones - and fuels that incur their own "carbon debt" for production and infrastructure, and which have to be physically transported around the world by road, sea and rail. Biofuels have the potential to disrupt agriculture and the ecology. It's also worth considering that hydrogen and synthetic fuels are likely to - at least iniitially - be produced and distributed by the same companies currently producing and distributing fossil fuel, whereas predominantly home-charged BEVs are somewhat disruptive of that, so follow the money...
(Score: 4, Funny) by JoeMerchant on Friday May 31 2024, @06:52PM (3 children)
At least around here if you drive a low Cd low hooded vehicle (like a Porsche 924), you are at significantly increased risk from collision with all the jacked up steroid symbol mobiles that crowd our local streets and highways.
On the other hand, I think it is better for the struck pedestrians to flop onto your hood and crash into your windshield instead of being plowed under...
🌻🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Whoever on Friday May 31 2024, @07:13PM
There is a bonus from driving an EV: because of the very low weight distribution, a collision with one of those jacked-up vehicles is likely to result in the jacked-up vehicle flipping.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 01 2024, @06:18AM (1 child)
The low wedge shaped hood will predispose the snazzy little car to slide under the truck. Neatly decapitating the snazzy little car driver on the big redneck's rear drive axle.
Score : Redneck 0 : didn't gain or lose anything
Snazzy Car -2 : lost the driver and car.
(Score: 2) by cereal_burpist on Tuesday June 04 2024, @03:37AM
And that's why ICC bars are required on semi trailers:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semi-trailer_truck#Underride_guard [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Whoever on Friday May 31 2024, @07:00PM (5 children)
Using hydrogen in an ICE combines all the worst factors of any transport energy source.
1. Where does the hydrogen come from? It comes from fossil fuels -- steam reformation (*)
2. How efficient is it? Well, there are all the inefficiencies in producing, transporting and dispensing the hydrogen, combined with the very poor efficiency of an ICE.
3. How heavy is it? As well as the weight of the ICE itself, there is the weight of the tanks -- which are heavy because of the massive pressure of the hydrogen.
4. How long will it last? Because of all the stresses from the gas at high pressure, combined with embrittlement of any metallic parts, the whole powertrain and tanks will be scrap after 15 years, or less.
5. How expensive is it to run? Because of the cost of hydrogen, it's going to be far more expensive than any other technology.
*: Yes, it's possible to produce green hydrogen, but, in practice, this is far more expensive and little used. Because it's a very inefficient use of energy, if you have a solar plant, it's better to use that electricity in batteries.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by JoeMerchant on Friday May 31 2024, @07:16PM (2 children)
Isn't hydrogen itself also a greenhouse gas? so... sort of:
and hydrogen is very prone to leakage, meaning if it were deployed on something like the consumer vehicle fleet there would be a LOT of hydrogen escaping into the atmosphere unburned due to all the various imperfections of consumer vehicle operation and maintenance.
🌻🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 3, Insightful) by ese002 on Saturday June 01 2024, @01:59AM (1 child)
We shouldn't have to speculate. Hydrogen Fuel cell have the same hydrogen storage problem and, while rather unpopular compared to ICE and BEV, they have been in consumer's hands for some years now.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Saturday June 01 2024, @05:29PM
Deployed, but rare, not even 1% of consumer vehicle miles driven in the US are powered by hydrogen fuel cells.
🌻🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 3, Interesting) by HiThere on Friday May 31 2024, @08:25PM (1 child)
And the summary said "liquid hydrogen". That's either REALLY cold, or under huge pressure.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 2) by Whoever on Friday May 31 2024, @09:49PM
The original press release from Toyota said that, but it's probably a mistake.
Let me rephrase that: I hope it's a mistake.
(Score: 5, Informative) by pTamok on Friday May 31 2024, @07:33PM (4 children)
The Brazilians have been running cars on azeotropic ethanol (E100) with no gasoline content since the late 1970s.
Common ethanol fuel mixtures: E100 [wikipedia.org]
History of ethanol fuel in Brazil:The Pro-Alcohol era [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 01 2024, @04:34AM (3 children)
Yeah, how much rain forest are they burning down to produce that stuff?
(Score: 1) by pTamok on Saturday June 01 2024, @09:06AM (2 children)
Good question.
In Brazil, a Sugarcane Rush Poses a New Threat to the Amazon Rainforest [sierraclub.org]
Amazon sugar cane: A threat to the forest [science.org]
Sugar: a killer crop? [nhm.ac.uk]
Perhaps vat/tank-based bacterial or fungal ethanol can take over?
(Score: 3, Funny) by pTamok on Saturday June 01 2024, @09:08AM (1 child)
I forgot to point out that there is a long history of tank-based fungal ethanol production, so the human race has a reasonable amount of experience in the technology.
I'll raise a glass to support further research and help to sample the end-product.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 01 2024, @07:02PM
It'd be a shame to burn the stuff, but "Flaming Hooker"™ gasoline would help make the sale
(Score: 2) by Snospar on Friday May 31 2024, @08:48PM (7 children)
Toyota has never been one to leap ahead. They make announcements, e.g. they have a new battery tech that's going to revolutionise EV, and then nothing. Don't get me wrong, I had a Toyota for years that was reliable and... boring. After ten years we had scraped some cash together and decided it was time for an upgrade, when we went back to the Toyota dealership they showed us a car that was almost identical to the current one. When I asked the salesperson if they could run me through the differences they said "Well, this one has a big colour infotainment screen on the dashboard". I waited for more... and it didn't come. That was it, 10 years of R&D and Toyota had upgraded the monochrome LCD Satnav to something more modern. Wow. We went elsewhere and ended up with a Mazda that was like driving a vehicle from the future. I loved my Toyota until I drove the Mazda.
Huge thanks to all the Soylent volunteers without whom this community (and this post) would not be possible.
(Score: 2) by r1348 on Friday May 31 2024, @09:20PM
Toyota is a very conservative company with a very conservative leadership in a very conservative country.
If you look at their presentation video (and manage to stay awake), you'll notice the dominant color is grey: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zrJ0FQs5cII [youtube.com]
Also, it doesn't really present any groundbreaking innovation: it's a joint venture to produce a series of hybrid engines with marginally better efficiency.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by cmdrklarg on Friday May 31 2024, @10:04PM (2 children)
Reliable and boring is exactly why I've been driving RAV4's for the past 15 years. Though if they don't get with the program and supply me with a small to midsize BEV pickup I'll go elsewhere (main issue with that is no one else has one either). Hopefully when the lease is up next year I'll have one to choose.
The world is full of kings and queens who blind your eyes and steal your dreams.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by RS3 on Saturday June 01 2024, @02:01AM (1 child)
> "small to midsize BEV pickup"
DIY? Or does anyone do and sell conversions?
If not, legalities aside, maybe I should do that...
(Score: 4, Informative) by Skwearl on Saturday June 01 2024, @03:04AM
If your considering this, check out all the E-axles coming out of China. They are bolt in replacements with either hub motors or a drive motor.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Skwearl on Friday May 31 2024, @11:49PM
I was looking for a new car 5 years ago and bought a Mazda. Then I traded it in 2 year later during covid after I put 100,000km on it....and got a new Mazda for what I traded it in for....crazy times.
I just finished a 5750km road trip through northern BC and Alaska with it. BEVS are great if your driving around in a city....I could not have done this trip with one thou. I love the creature comforts of the
Mazda, the fuel economy, and the tech in it, that being said, its not near as fun to drive(sporty) as the nissan spec v that it replaced. The 4wd was sure handy coming out of telegraph creek thou.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Username on Saturday June 01 2024, @12:38PM (1 child)
> That was it, 10 years of R&D and Toyota had upgraded the monochrome LCD Satnav to something more modern.
That sounds amazing. They didn't make drastic changes, only improved existing things.
I really hate getting into a vehicle and not knowing how to switch gears. Is it a knob? is it a shifter? is it a lever? Does this lever switch gears or turn on the windshield wipers? Going from one GM car to another it's always different.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 01 2024, @11:37PM
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Deep Blue on Friday May 31 2024, @10:36PM (3 children)
The way to go forward is to get E-fuel production running at full rate. EVs are not the only and full solution, that's just the way it is.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by pTamok on Friday May 31 2024, @11:48PM (2 children)
The military, aviation, search and rescue, and the civil emergency services are all going to need something with better energy density than the current electrochemical cell technology. If it is a 'green' cost-effective synfuel, then great, but I can see the military wanting to keep a hydrocarbon (or possibly plant-oil or alcohol) infrastructure in place. The great thing about diesel engines is that they'll run on almost anything that is flammable - Rudolf Diesel experimented with a coal-dust engine, and one of his co-experimenters (Rudolf Pawlikowsky) went on to develop commercial coal-dust engines, named 'Rupa' engines [douglas-self.com].
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Unixnut on Saturday June 01 2024, @10:33AM
I cannot understand why the human race would want to move backwards to worse technology/energy density. We have always progressed towards more power and energy density. Sometime around the atomic age however things started reversing (at least in the western world) first by not progressing with nuclear power and now we want to abandon liquid fuels for battery tech, which is a large step backwards.
Its odd to me as I remember in the 90s the future was to be fuel cells with little fuel canisters, to finally rid ourselves of batteries and all their limitations in portable electronics. I saw a demo laptop in Japan which used little canisters of ethanol (i think) that looked like those small CO2 cartridges but could run the laptop for almost 12 hours. When it ran out you just popped a new canister in and another 12 hours was available instantly. As most laptops on batteries struggled to get 2 hours back them it really was impressive. The only exhaust out of it was water vapour, which was pushed out by the same fan used for CPU cooling.
The idea of a ethanol/methanol future where everything from your car to your electronics would use the same energy dense power source, with the benefit of instant refills and simple infrastructure makes much more sense than what is actually being shoved down our throats with battery tech.
Ethanol in particular makes sense, because as Brazil has shown you can adapt existing ICE to work on ethanol. This means that once the ethanol infra is built you can convert the existing vehicles to a closed carbon cycle while allowing new fuel-cell or ICE vehicles to come online. A much cheaper, easier and less wasteful transition.
I agree with you, and here is the thing. If you are going to have such an infrastructure in place because they need it, why would you have two parallel incompatible infrastructures in the form of electric charging infra and synfuel infra?
In times of war you can expect the synfuel infra to be targeted, so it makes sense to have as much storage, manufacture and processing infrastructure in place. That only works if demand exists beyond the niche of emergency services.
If the entire country needs synfuel it makes more sense to build out a large infrastructure and have it utilised, then to either build a small infra that is easily disabled in wartime, or a large one that spends most of its life at 10% capacity "just in case".
(Score: 2) by AnonTechie on Saturday June 01 2024, @08:53PM
https://www.scmp.com/news/china/science/article/3261368/chinese-scientists-create-water-battery-can-hold-much-more-energy-lithium-cells-study [scmp.com]
Albert Einstein - "Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former."
(Score: 2) by gawdonblue on Sunday June 02 2024, @12:55AM
The EU is banning sales of new cars with petrol or diesel engines. However, lobbyists recently got the wording changed to allow sales of cars that can run on "green" synthetic fuels.
Guess what these cars can also use as fuels? That's right, petrol or diesel.
Fuel me once...