Basically, if I understand this correctly, injecting gasoline and ethanol separately allows one to vary the octane rating of the fuel charge and apply additional charge cooling when necessary. This helps mitigate what would otherwise be necessary trade-offs such as reducing the compression ratio of a turbocharged engine to deal with the small percentage of time during which that engine is operated at full load. IMO, this is low-hanging fruit and worth pursuing. While many believe that there will be a BEV revolution in the coming years, I believe that the best use of our existing battery output will be to hybridize vehicles with downsized and turbocharged engines.... hopefully leading to a maximum reduction in fuel consumption and emissions in the shortest possible time.

I'd like to see them put in a 2.0liter I4 with an output in the 320hp range. Also, a rear mounted transmission would be cool as it would give the car better balance while allowing it to be shorter and lighter.

The U.S. Navy currently has a research project underway to put a modified Fischer Tropsch plant on-board an aircraft carrier. The idea is to pull CO2 out of seawater, reduce it to CO, and combine it with H that's been split from seawater via electrolysis and make jet fuel. The whole thing is to be powered by excess electricity from the ship's nuclear reactor. IMO, it would be easier to just create a standalone nuclear powered "fuel factory" ship that would travel with the battle group. Said reactor could be of a LFTR design. ... and yes, EP, the DOD is not subject to the purview of the NRC (imagine getting a design certification for a tactical nuke, ha!)

@Herm: they probably only cycle the battery between a window of 20% and 80% SOC to prolong its useful life. Thus, they should say that it is an "effective" 10.2kWh. 330Wh/mile isn't bad IMO. Props to lotus for an intelligent design. Their the first company I've seen put what I consider to be an appropriate genset in a PHEV. I'm also very interested to see what the curb weight of this vehicle will be.

@EGeek The current standard is an LS3 engine. Said engine is actually under-built in its street guise (severely so) plus parts are relatively inexpensive and plentiful. The eco-boost could take advantage of NG's high octane relatively inexpensively (just swap the injectors and tighten the timing) but I doubt that it's durable enough for sustained race use. Don't get me wrong, the V6 eco-boost is a SOLID engine and Ford put it through hell before releasing it to the public but the LS3 is in a different league. As for DI, it really comes down to cost. DI injectors are expensive when they're mass-manufactured. A set of custom injectors would be insanely expensive especially for the marginal improvement. Further, GDI engines have four benefits: -charge air cooling -increased volumetric efficiency -more precise fuel metering -better control of the fuel distribution When you switch over to NG, you lose the last two benefits as NG almost instantly disburses into a homogenous mixture. Regarding compression ratios, NG does allow for a higher CR (octane rating of 130ish IIRC). They'll probably increase CR accordingly but maybe not to the degree that it would be done for a street vehicle. When in doubt, run rich and pull timing. The lower power potential and thermal efficiency beats blowing your engine... especially in a race.

The combustion chamber will survive how?

Tons of paperwork. TONS. Though I'm glad that the U.S. is thorough when it comes to licensing and inspecting its nuclear facilities.

This will be a welcome addition, I'm sure. The Audi 2.0T practically gulps oil: it needs to be topped off a quart of oil every ~10,000 miles. Very common on this engine and I've heard similar reports from other downsized/turbocharged engines.

One has to wonder what the EROEI would be for such a project. I'm just guessing here but I'd imagine that the deposits have to be fractured and drilled horizontally to increase contact area. Capturing CO2 is rather energy intensive, even in an oxy-fuel plant. Piping both CO2 and methane is also rather energy intensive. At the end of the day, I'd imagine that natural gas prices would have to be in the $15-20/mcf to justify drilling for gas hydrates. Last time natural gas was $15/mcf, power prices were ~$85-110/MW/hr. If power prices were that high today, solar panels would be literally flying off of the shelves at their current prices.

Good points EP and Kit P. I'd like to add that engineers have been boxed into the same fundamental design regime for over 50 years. The NRC will only license LWR designs (specifically PWRs and BWRs). Ironically, the inventor of the PWR (and the co-patent holder with ORNL) basically dismissed the design a few years after its completion in favor of a thorium breeder reactor. Here's an example of what nuclear engineers can come up with when give them a bit of freedom: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PACER_(fusion) It's essentially an off-the-shelf nuclear fusion reactor.

Creative patent language.

First, I would encourage everyone to read some of the work Arthur Berman has done analyzing shale gas resources: http://www.theoildrum.com/node/8212 Summary: there isn't as much gas out there as everyone thinks Second, I would encourage everyone to note the USGS's 80% downgrade of the Marcellus Shale: http://www.usgs.gov/newsroom/article.asp?ID=2893 Third, there are more efficient ways to use NG with existing infrastructure. Take a look at Advanced Refining Concepts: http://www.advancedrefiningconcepts.com/ IIRC, they were featured here on GCC a few years back. Consider that a refinery sufficient to serve ~1,000,000 vehicles might cost ~$1billion, that's $1k/vehicle. Probably lower than the cost to add CNG equipment to a vehicle at the factory and certainly lower than the cost to retrofit existing vehicles. Let's not forget that building CNG "gas stations" isn't exactly cheap. Finally, I'd encourage people to simply "do the math" when it comes to natural gas supply and petroleum demand. If the U.S. were to divert ALL of it's natural gas production to fueling vehicles, it would barely be sufficient to replace our oil imports. U.S. nat gas consumption: 23TCF/year ~5.8mcf/barrel of oil 23TCF/year = 3.96Billion barrels of oil/year U.S. annual oil imports: ~3.36billion barrels of oil/year Keep in mind that the U.S. is slated to add ~3.5-4TCF of natural gas demand in the next year from electrical generation alone. If we were to add ~5TCF of vehicle demand on top of that (assuming we COULD produce ~30TCF which I doubt) we'd be out in ~30years. IMO, we're better off using NG blended with existing diesel fuel (ala ARC) and using it to replace coal fired generation in the short to medium term and focusing on BEVs and PHEVs.

@AD: -hydrogen tunnels through solid steel -hydrogen's flame is invisible (safety hazard) -hydrogen is HIGHLY combustible (safety hazard) -hydrogen is energy very intensive to produce Fossil to electricity: 36% Fossil to battery (charging): 90% Battery to wheels: 90% Total: 29% Fossil to electricity: 36% Electricity to hydrogen: 66% Hydrogen to wheels: 40% Total: 9.5% IIRC, the bleed rate for hydrogen from steel tanks is something like 6% per day. Electricity to hydrogen

@ejj LNG tanks would be more like bombs on the road. CNG I'm not too worried about. What we should all be most concerned about is making huge investments into infrastructure for a resource that isn't as abundant as shale gas co's such as Chesapeake portray. IMO, we have closer to 30 years of gas, not 100.

@Henrik: your comment re: a scalable engine/motor architecture is perfect. Absolutely perfect. FWIW, it seems VW/Porsche/Audi has done that to a limited extent with the 2.0T engine. Something that just occurred to me.... I wonder if hybridization could cut the emissions from a diesel engine. I'm thinking NOX emissions here. Perhaps if the diesel engine were only allowed to operate in a limited range, exhaust after-treatment (which costs nearly what hybridization costs) wouldn't be necessary.

Kudos to BMW However.... sorry GCC readers, I just have to do it.... Yo Dawg! I heard you like turbochargers so I put two turbos in front of a big turbo....

Thanks for that Dave Motors are probably capable of handling that sort of current but I doubt batteries/electrical system would be able to.

@Darius IIRC, the typical peak breaking "power" for a passenger vehicle is around 700kw

Cool! Every little bit helps and I'd imagine that this is low hanging fruit. Plus, reducing unsprung mass helps with ride quality.

@Mike Millikin: Any mention of EROEI implications? I'm going to read the paper tonight.

@SJC: very well said

@Lucas Basically, the OPOC, right? :)

I'd expect to see BMW start using A123 (or similar) batteries in place of AGM/Lead Acid batteries for mainstream production vehicles. It's a source of relatively cheap "light weighting" that is important to a performance-oriented brand such as BMW. Such mass acceptance would help A123 scale production, thus lowering cost and leading to higher acceptance in a virtuous cycle.

I'd be willing to bet that both the 3 and 5 have significantly higher performance metrics than the Prius.

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