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posted by Dopefish on Friday February 28 2014, @10:00AM   Printer-friendly
from the rev-up-and-burn-out dept.

germanbird writes: "Jalopnik has an interesting article up about Koenigsegg's Prototype Camless Engine. The engine uses pneumatic actuators rather than a cam to open and close the valves in the engine. The engineers behind this claim that it can provide "30 percent more power and torque, and up to 50 percent better economy" when applied to an existing engine designs. The article and some of the comments also mention that some work has been done with electromagnetic actuators to accomplish the same task. It may be a while before this tech is mature enough for passenger vehicles, but maybe if a racing series or two picked it up, it might give some of the manufacturers the opportunity to work the bugs out?

Not sure this is on topic for SoylentNews, but the article brought me back to my introduction to engineering course in college. One of my classmates was a car nut and I remember a discussion with an EE professor one day about the potential (or actually lack thereof due to performance issues) for using electric actuators to open and close valves."

 
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  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by tirefire on Friday February 28 2014, @10:54AM

    by tirefire (3414) on Friday February 28 2014, @10:54AM (#8410)
    As I understand it, Wankel (Rotary) engines have had trouble meeting emissions requirements, prompting Mazda to discontinue the RX-8 recently.

    Still a very cool design, and it's a shame that Mazda seems to be the only company interested in it. I've never had the pleasure of driving an RX-7/8, but I've heard that unlike reciprocating piston designs, their rotaries run smoother the faster you rev them (downside: a rough idle).
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  • (Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Friday February 28 2014, @04:26PM

    by Grishnakh (2831) on Friday February 28 2014, @04:26PM (#8574)

    Yep, and they also were notorious for having crappy fuel economy for the power they produced.