What is this special graphite used for?

Things are still changing fast in this space. But I read some time back the Lidar and systems were challenged with reliability. Lidar generally still has moving parts. Not surprised they are targeting backup systems to address reliability.

30,000 hrs is impressive!! Couple with cold start capacity, better heating and cooling efficiency, smaller, lighter, cheaper they have lots to smile about. But this doesn’t show how they come in vs alternatives, especially initial cost. And packaging the fuel tank was always the problem not the cells. So system summary would be nice.

Combustion (nothing in this world is perfect) has saved more human lives than can be counted. Some say it was cooking of food (predigestion) that allowed our ancestors to support the energy needs of our big brains and become human. Chimpanzees still today spend half to 3/4 of the day eating less efficient, raw vegetation to fill caloric needs.

Finally an electric vehicle in significant quantities, numbers that could move world energy markets and GCC readers have no comments???

This sounds great, is it real? I got no clue from this article how this could actually be accomplished. It computes critical information faster thus 20% more efficiency???

“Compared to steel, CarbonPro .... offers 10 times greater impact resistance, is more ...., and is even more readily recyclable.” Recyclability and impact resistance are not composite materials forte, let alone when compared to arguably the all-time lead in these areas, steel. This sounds like green wash lies & wishful thinking. Can anyone elucidate these in-credible claims?

@ EP. Have you ever lived in western NA? Having grown up in the mountain west, I would say rail services a smaller fraction of communities than other places. Same goes for an low density region. The only wild card comes from moving out commodities, grain, oil, coal, lumber, etc. Anyway intermodal is great, but trucks (at all distances) will be even more dominant in the future. Driverless tractors, platooning, OP engines & aero fitments will greatly reduce costs for trucks while being green & modern enough to minimize greentard tampering. Electrifying railroads in the vast open sounds quite foolish to me. The investment would be staggering. Trains are already very efficient on a ton*miles (only surpassed by ship & barge) basis, I just don’t see it.

Nissan used to built some bulletproof engines, now??? The resin inserts on the intake ports is clever. I wonder how much CR they are able to gain on this engine with this and the thinner cyl walls?

I guess this is a major nothing burger.

Stop lying about emissions. EVs regardless of size and charging station are not a “zero emissions “ solution. Green wash at your own peril. Most people don’t accept EVs as viable now, just keep lying and they will be fully & permanently affirmed in their judgement.

Y It’s only logical electricity should be very expensive in German when they do stupid virtue signaling with their system. Shutting down nuclear was very dumb. But they still felt the guilt of first world status or whatever so they doubled down on stupid with unreliables (wind and solar). Rational Reliable, Economic Renewables (mainly hydro & occasionally geo-thermal, maybe someday wave) can be trusted to be cheap and smart. The rest just green wash. The political class, their media stooges & the academic, economic elites that jump in bed with them, are all corrupt, everywhere. You Certainly can’t be surprised about Angela Merkel & German elites? The folks that won’t acknowledge this are retarded or part of the incestuous problem. That’s why the US elected Trump, who is as far from that crowd as we could find.

This is incredible, I am so surprised to see more electric airplanes. Except for flight schools and possibly some very small niche roles, today's GA market does not seem like a fit for electrification. 2600rpm is higher than most propeller planes cruise at. RPM Is a trade off with dia to keep blade tips subsonic, while longer blades are generally more efficient. It is so disingenuous to say this is zero emissions. Disappointing there was no battery discussion. No mention of range, useful load, performance or cost. .

@ All you motor heads. I love the glowing manifolds also. I have just started to learn about the TJI engines, but they seem very similar in effect to old prechamber diesels. The 18 race DTM requirement is interesting and very worthwhile for tech transfer. These one lap engines do not have any foreseeable linkage to the real world. I think the Skyactive-X (although less proven) is as good or better on BTE as the Prius isn't it? Certainly will be more fun to drive and overall much less complex an the total drive train level. I fully agree that the rush to what to often appears to be EV religion is likely to leave some very good tech undeveloped. If the best combined cycle power plants are at ~60% before any grid and drive train losses then it seems there is less than a ~15% penalty from this to the best ICE in automotive. If this is not a completely unfair/inaccurate simplification why are there so many CO2 preachers hating on the future of ICE?

This confirms my conclusion from the 2000's that this Princeton prof was a hack or a religious zealot for particular green solutions like batteries. It was clear then that he was not realistic regarding the improved practices and yields both on farm and at the ethanol plants. Farmers typically work very hard to be good stewards of the land and still maintain business cash flow year to year. I love the nuclear power options, if only green religion would allow it. Very sad, nuclear has been SO safe and MSR generation has potential to be much more so! As world population expands over the next generations nuclear would be the logical choice to power xx to liquids and transition more farms back to food. IF economical & publically acceptable liquid fuels are not brought to commercial volumes Agribusiness will continue to make a lot of biofuel. Food prices will have multiple upward pressures which can be difficult even deadly for those in real poverty and destabilizing to whole counties.

@All of you. Really enjoy the discussions here for their passion and technical insights (not 100% but mostly interesting), thx. A couple of honest questions: - Why is electrolysis not done at elevated pressure to avoid subsequent compression expense in the gas phase? - How does this really move the needle on cost, what do they mean? Neither cost nor efficiency seem well quantified in the article. - Why are some many commenting on electrolysis & FC efficiency when discussing "free electricity" from RE oversupply? If RE is so cheap this discussion should focus on battery vs VC costs, right? - IF RE (renewable electricity) surplus were put accross the grid at scale, what would the infrastructure upgrades cost, from transmission to getting it hooked to all the EVs parked at home (~2.5 cars each), work, grocery store etc? I'm guessing Trillions, many grid segments including electrical service (last mile) would be easily overloaded. - Why won't anyone directly answer Sheldon Harrison's Q's? - When you say "reform on demand" does that refer to a neighborhood filling station or in the vehicle? I was not aware mobile reformer technology had developed to any

NG is a great value!! Dual fuel makes it very practical. Hope this comes at a price point where it really catches on.

@ EP. Market driven Technological innovation will continue to find & extract oil. Predictions of Peak oil have been almost as bad as climate change and ice volumes. The enormous Canadian oil sands will also increase production when pipelines are built. Venezuela will get back to work eventually. Mexico and many other known fields will also have their shale revolutions. https://www.nextbigfuture.com/2019/03/world-of-oil-will-be-dominated-by-a-second-us-shale-wave-for-5-years.html As for EVs taking over soon, the only ones preaching this are AOC & other climate doomsayers and climate religion fanatics. As referenced in the article, serious predictions see increasing oil demand for a long time. Regarding oil shocks, efficiency, emissions regulations & government cures, you need to consider/learn history. Externalities are hard to deal with prudently. Black swans that you want to fight are by definition unknowable, get over yourself a little. The link below is a start. https://youtu.be/DvNzi7tmkx0

@EP, Or we could put our crusader hats back in the museum and let the market work. Any one thinking nature must be saved from mankind clearly knows little of mother nature, she is and always will be a killer. No amount of taxes and regulations is going to change this or the climate. If and when BEVs & PHEVs fit/enhance people’s lives (many vehicles are about more than getting to a 9-5 job) better than ICE they should and will thrive.

I have been on this blog for 20 years, Battery has always been 3-5 years away. Meanwhile the much hated ICE keeps saving humanity (literally every day) exceeding ever environmental hurdle thrown at it, getting more efficient each year and staying affordable without subsidies. I love batteries and have worked on many electric drive systems and vehicles. But we have to keep an open mind. All good ideas welcome. Because ICE utility is practically unprecedented in history & Batteries have a heavy lift. Engines such as this can have fuel efficiency as good as a power plant. I have also worked a little with solar, wind power and grid mix. I’m just saying baseload requirements are real and not going anywhere. Thx.

Peter_XX & Brian P, They have a several utubes on various design details, worth checking out. One was real time oil consumption monitoring they put in their development cell called Da Vinci Lubricant Oil Consumption (DALOC) sulfur-trace analyzer measurement system, which uses a sulfur tracing technique. It looked quite state of the art and very helpful. All the engine test cells I have been in, never seen anything like it. Before this I thought an AVL weight cart ( I have never run an oil consumption test) was what everyone did. None-the-less in 2012 they claim a weighted speed/load map FSOC of 0.018% vs 0.25-0.60% for historic 2-stroke diesels like the DDC. They have 2019 SAE paper out, but I have not read it yet. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4NgcEwVycXE Another aspect they discussed in an SAE paper below was liner cooling and warpage control. Titled, "Cylinder Cooling for Improved Durability on an Opposed-Piston Engine" http://www.achatespower.com/opposed-piston-engine-technical-papers.php They had some nice CFD coolant models, reasonable heat loading assumptions as the piston traveled, etc. Paper was from ~5yrs back and design solution shown was an impingement cooling arrangement on a short band of the liner at TDC, then tailored but more conventional on out towards the ports. I believe the exhaust port partitions (can't think of proper name) were drilled axially for coolant. Anyway, very aggressive cooling, reminded me of work in turbine hot sections. Anyway they claimed a TDC to outer end of liner delta that was miniscule, vs the starting case (which may or may-not have been a valid or totally fair baseline). I don't recall the circumferential delta, but the liner temp was LOW. I am familiar with designing around diesel 4-stroke liner temps and these were chill. I don't know much about the tribology of rings and liners, but agree with comments, its no joke. I just wanted to mention their work toward a cool, straight liner & say it may be a significant enabler of low lubrication compression rings & PRL durability.

@EP, OK it's not made of unicorn farts. Do you know of a more economical way, a lower carbon way? Many have been trying to put Nat Gas in our fleet for years. This is a way to do that, with minimal impact to distribution and consumer and even less carbon. Economically maintains space, efficiency and power availability of most engines, again much better than NG. And ethanol in general is very large scale. I have been very pleased over 20+ years of watching how carbon and economics of US ethanol have gained impressive ground.

Very impressive refinements by Cummins. Does anyone know the BTE or price delta to previous models? This would be/is a trailer pulling beast.

@EP, Its only fair that EV's pay their share of road maintenance. If ICE is truly, dying as so many dialogs here desire, this will need to quickly accelerate nation wide.

Sounds great but surprised at some claims. Many have previously known and shown (including advanced work by Ricardo, v6 detailed on this site) that ethanol (HoV) fuels cool intake. This along with octane let SI engines use higher boost and or compression giving significant efficiency and down sizing gains. These are unique and in many ways premium fuels. It is always a challenge to use resources to their fullest but clearly dumping regular gas and alcohol together to get the widely criticized E85 or the often troublesome E10 seems an ugly compromise. - Ricardo showed E85 (~2/3 the chemical energy) gave similar energy net as regular (via higher efficiency) by using a couple simple engine mods. It preformed like a diesel but without the emissions cost and complexity. Works best at high load as discussed in this article. - There was also a GCC bit on filtering fuel for octane in the vehicle. We have always dreamed of the variable compression engine. Well maybe we can accomplish the same by giving the right fuel at the right time. High compression and low quality fuel work fine at lite loads (cruise). When we pull out to pass mix in some of the hi octane fuel that was set aside from regular fuel for the few times it's needed in lite duty daily drive. - Or leave the high and low octane fuel separated during distribution. Dispense to separate tanks on board (no harder than DEF in CI engines). Mix as needed in the optimized engine. Bank about 15% better mileage.