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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices
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To: SilentZ who wrote (346855)8/15/2007 5:32:54 PM
From: Tenchusatsu   of 1574714
 
Z, > Why can't we improve gas mileage by 20-30%?

The way car technology is right now, we're already doing everything imaginable to squeeze more efficiency out of the internal combustion engine. There's some pretty impressive compute power in microcontrollers being used to calculate fuel-to-air ratios. Aerodynamics have already progressed from the sharp angles of the 80's.

And now with hybrids, we've made some great strides in improving fuel efficiency for city driving, but highway efficiency hasn't improved that much because the combusion engine is already close to the efficiency of electric engines at that constant speed.

This isn't like semiconductors, where we'll keep shrinking the transistor until we reach the atomic level. More cars ought to be hybridized, IMO, but unlike the Prius, the benefit of hybridization will not be as pronounced. Plug-in hybrids would be nice if we could lighten the battery, which itself represents a significant amount of weight. I also like the concept of having a diesel engine do nothing but power an electric motor, like modern trains do it.

Beyond that, getting more efficiency out of the internal combustion engine would be like squeezing blood out of a stone.

Tenchusatsu
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