Quote:
Originally Posted by carasdad
Awesome!!! But it will be a 'No Go' just like the many other inventions before it..as the Oil Companies HAVE NOT allowed in the past...and WILL NOT in the future. The person is either bought out...or just comes up missing one day.  Just as the many cars made that got 40-50mpg.. *POOF!*..no longer made. |
Unfortunately it's simply not that easy. We do have the technology to make 50-60 mpg cars these days. Problem is nobody would buy them. Even back in the day when you could get a 45 mpg Geo Metro 3 cylinder no one wanted them because they were vastly underpowered and most people considered them unsafe to boot because they were made so lightweight they compromised crash worthiness and to keep them lightweight they were extremely spartan, no options basically.
Right now we do have 40+ mpg cars that aren't hybrids. The Ford Fiesta is one of them but you don't see many of the people who long for the MPG's of back in those days even wanting to drive a Fiesta. I think it's purely nostalgia because even now the good MPG cars are equaling or bettering what we had back then but with actual safety, options and not as anemic performance.
As for the 100 mpg carburetor. Simply a myth. Simple physics will tell you that you can't get a "vapor" carburetor to work. Try jetting your scooter lean and see what happens. And that's all those vapor carbs were doing.
There was Smokey Yunicks adiabatic engine but that was experimental only. It was designed to run extremely hot in order to extract efficiency and even then it proved to unreliable to bring to market. There was experimentation in trying to build all ceramic piston and cylinders to combat the high temperature failures of Smokey's adiabatic design but simply put the oil would coke up and seize the engine because of the heat.
It's not some vast oil company conspiracy. Oil is selling at an all time high and oil companies know it's a limited resource. In fact some of the biggest investors in alternative energy are the oil companies themselves. Only an idiot in an oil company would think they don't need to invest in a diversified energy portfolio.
Right now one of the biggest revolutions in fuel efficiency technology are direct injection high compression engines. These new engines are running higher compression on regular octane fuel than you can even dream of. Compression ratios that would detonate normal engines. IF you take a look the modern small engines now are making the similar fuel efficiencies of what diesel engines used to do just 20 years ago and doing so more reliably and without nearly as much tail pipe emissions to boot.