The video and narration is good. Take a look at it. The added cost could be offset by downsizing to fewer cylinders and better MPG from efficiency and a lighter engine and vehicle.

Actually it looks more compact than conventional overhead cams.

"pick their own gears" is a great idea! So the buyer can choose an economy/quiet 6th gear and just downshift when needed. The torque looks good enough that it may do well with a big overdrive. What is the MPG? This car looks very practical, fast, and probably very good MPG.

Low profile tires end up having much more rotating inertia (bad), wasting fuel in stop and go driving. Maybe they also have more drag with a more squared shoulder. Look at top level race cars, none have very low profile tires.

The aero wheels might look better with different paint options, like all black, or all metallic.

I wonder if the break-in period, which can be long, still reduces the MPG.

Will this lower mercury content as well?

What about mercury from bunker fuel?

That would be such a waste to replace the well engineered wheels with guzzler wheels.

What is the cause of the worst pollution in Southern California, that is not also in the Los Angeles area?

I wonder how much the SOFC unit will cost. Unless I get my electricity usage down 80%, I am paying ~$0.32/kWh, $200-250 per month. It looks like it should cost no more than a few thousand $. But not good for GHG. I would rather go with PV which looks to be maybe getting very cheap thanks to recent developments. SOFC combined with electric motors is really a good replacement for ICE and liquid fuels, with much lower GHG and no range issue. Big trucks would be an ideal application. Maybe add thermoelectrics to get more efficiency. Seems like the SOFC durability is really just an engineering challenge.

Fuel consumption is highly dependent on vehicle choice. Fuel tax is enough in UK to give incentive to buy smart. Mandating overly sedate highway speeds is a drag on the economy.

Actually the 500 kJ limit is very useful if the charging/discharging rate can be high enough. It equates to 810 hp for 1 second.

This could be useful for a low cost battery for micro-hybrids.

It will work if they engineered it well, which they appear to have done. The L/D is very good, so top speed should be high. Put in some more power, an efficient TDI, ... Then it could win overall. Maybe we will be shocked like the first bike race with an amateur riding a recumbent that won, then got banned.

There is a big performance difference between the Toyota Matrix and Prius. 2 seconds slower on 0-60 and 1/4 mile is a lot slower also. For this reason the Prius is boring and not for every one. So if you put something cheaper, more efficient, and less powerful in the Matrix (like the FIAT twin air?), the price premium will be bigger and the MPG difference smaller.

This is good progress for Ford... but if they really wanted to maximize thermal efficiency, they would have made it a twin like the Fiat Twin-air. I think the reason they did not is pure marketing. The engineers probably said this and the marketing dept. said that is too large of a step in downsizing for the average consumer to accept. So the Fiat twin air will probably have better efficiency, lower cost, lighter weight, and similar power.

UA, you are being far too pessimistic, not realistic. Now to incorporate this tech into all current production. As it gains momentum, the old tech products will look very bad and more quickly be phased out.

12 years ago I lived in Long Beach and the soot that came through the windows was pretty bad.

VENDORS, maybe it's time for Diesel to sell for less than gasoline if you want to sell more. Most people just look at the price of Diesel being higher when buying a new car. They don't realize that you easily get at least 40-50% better MPG in real world (after break-in) long term driving. But then they would rather less more fuel overall by keeping people on gasoline. This is why taxes on gasoline should be more than Diesel for better environmental policy.

Maybe I'm wrong, but it seems like somewhat academic BS idealizing. At very low local equivalence ratio, specific power output will be low, resulting in high friction losses.

Glad to see a much more efficient and responsible option for status buyers.

I am surprised they have not retained a spring, mechanical or pneumatic. That way the electro actuator could act like generator-motor, and recover much of the energy in the return stroke. Maybe they are planning that, but just leaving it out for simplicity of demonstration.

A single cylinder version would make a great genset. Instead of the variable compression ratio, maybe the MUSIC system would work better.

The precip pattern points to the obvious long term solution, build an aquaduck system from north east to south west...