OT: how far we've come?, 35 years of non-progress Options

[lapuwali]

Hybrids are the buzzword now, and people marvel at how the latest Civic hybrid gets 50mpg.

Autoweek had a short article on the early Civics, which got 55mpg with a carb. 1.2L, 50hp, 1500lbs. Sure, they were slow, but they were described as still being fun to drive. The way most people drive modern Civics, I doubt they'd notice if they suddenly only had 50hp.

(yes, I know emissions are much better, it's quieter, it crashes better, yada, yada...)

[lapuwali]

The "costs more energy to produce than it puts out" argument is bogus, IMHO. Motor fuels don't have to be net positive. We're not trying to fight a war with entropy here, we're just trying to provide a cleaner way to power mobile devices like cars. We can't (reasonably) use solar or nuclear in a car directly, but we can use them indirectly to create useful fuels like ethanol or hydrogen.

Returning to the original point of the post, I suspect we'll start seeing turbos on cars again as a commonplace item. The big problem with using very small-displacement engines to power cars is a lack of torque. HP basically defines how fast you'll go, but torque roughly defines how quickly you'll get to that speed. Cruising at 60mph in a typical car requires about 10hp. Accelerating to 60mph in a reasonable time-frame, however, requires about 100ft/lbs of torque (varies on the weight of the car).

For normally-aspirated engines, torque roughly scales with displacement: 50-60ft/lbs per liter, varying mostly with breathing efficiency. So, a 2.0 makes about 100ft/lbs, but a 500cc engine only makes 25ft/lbs. Enough to get a bike moving, but not really enough to get even a small car up to speed quickly enough to suit most people. A turbocharger, however, can provide a huge increase in torque when it's needed. A 500cc engine can easily make 50hp, allowing for a cruising speed in the 80mph range. A turbo 500 will allow you to cruise with the efficiency of a 500, but can produce the 100ft/lbs of torque while you're accelerating.

The electric hybrids are trying to do something similar (esp. Honda's Insight, which only had a 1.0 triple), but using electric "boost" instead of turbo "boost". This is, IMHO, misguided. A turbo captures otherwise wasted energy to boost power. The electric hybrid loads the IC engine even more to produce the electric power to store into batteries that add yet more weight that hinders the very acceleration you're trying to provide. Honda seems to have some corporate hole in its head about turbos (when was the last turbo Honda offered in the US?), so we're not likely to see one from them.

The Europeans haven't jumped on the hybrid bandwagon, yet, at least not publically. The Americans are doing so in a limited way. Only Toyota and Honda have done so seriously, and Toyota only has one viable product out now, where Honda has several.