Motor Authority

Interesting research into making IC engines less inefficient; it's surprising how much energy FREDs are now swallowing!

 

An interesting article, cheers Nick Sounds like small gains for alot of effort though...a bit like NA tuning on the S.

I do like the idea of heat retention however...cold starts really do kill economy. I wonder if the quoted 12 hour figure was overnight when temperatures can dip dramatically, or during the daytime?

 

Bavarian winter or coastal summer? Who knows?

I had an idea about putting one's bread dough in there, to be ready in the AM!

Like you say, a lot of weight & complexity for nothing at the moment. Hybrids are bad enough for regenerative braking. But there's still all that waste exhaust heat, which IIRC only Scania is turbocompounding back to the flywheel.

Didn't realise heaters were an issue on Diesels though; The 'Lude's gets toasty when you VTEC it!

 

What you want is an adaptation on those endo/exo-thermic hand warmers.

They are liquid until you click the metal thing, then they go solid and put out masses of heat.

They return to liquid when they have been heated up.

Of course, this makes it an ideal coolant - solid it heats the engine quicker and when it gets hot, the liquid aspect can be used to dispurse heat by conventional cooling means.

Unfortunately, I can't offer any more insight into this because I have just thought about it now

I'm sure it's wonderfully flawed.

 

 

Yeah, like most of the shit I invent, it's ahead of our technology. Or just useless...

 

Waste heat to heat the car? Hardly revolutionary, I've been flying planes from the 1950s that do exactly that

 

I had a mini that heated the interior with the exhaust.

smelt bad, didn't pass it's mot and got scrapped

 

i thought bmws were heated by the anger of the driver being stuck 1mm behind an inferior car on the motorway.

or something.

 

Think that's Audis these days, but good one!