Lotus Teases With a Fuel-Agnostic Two-Stroke Engine 269
JohnnyBGod writes "Lotus claim to have invented a new, more efficient engine design. The two-stroke, flex-fuel engine can achieve, according to the surprisingly technical press release, 'approximately 10% better [fuel consumption] than current spray-guided direct injection, spark ignition engines.' The engine has a sliding puck arrangement to control its compression ratio, and has direct injection and a wet sump, to eliminate fuel leakage to the exhaust and the need to mix oil with the fuel, two common problems with two-stroke engines. Lotus engineering have released a video explaining the engine's operation."
Re:What took it all so long?? (Score:5, Funny)
Uh huh. Just add to the Copenhagen free promotions (Score:3, Funny)
This drives me nuts.
What about this is new? Does it exist due to breakthroughs and material science we didn't have available thirty years ago? Not that I can see.
Which means this is nothing that a team of imaginative engineers couldn't have come up with long ago, and likely would have, (and probably did) if they'd been allowed to. Fuel efficiency means the oil billionaires, (the people who have been running things since forever), make less money. The only reason this is happening now is because the corrupt deals being cut in Copenhagen [cop15.dk] with regard to carbon trading and various other ass-backward plans are a means of making more profit in different ways and promise greater control over every aspect of our lives.
Look, I'm all for efficiency and I'm sure the engineering team on this project are fine people. But this is bullshit. It's a press release which appears in the same breath as that Israeli company and their silicone battery. The people allowing this stuff to float to the top of global media-consciousness don't care about the actual state of human affairs or about the genuinely awesome things we could be actually doing with technology. This is about agendas and sculpting public awareness and making damned sure the slaves are tightly locked down.
So, yeah, thanks Lotus. Very courageous of you to cautiously advance this lukewarm idea past the oil barons. Because crop-based fuels are SUCH a good idea.
-FL
Re:What took it all so long?? (Score:4, Funny)
So where is this magical Ford engine at now? A one-off prototype car is no better than a single experimental engine.
Oh, please, isn't the location obvious? It's sitting in the "high-priority" warehouse, right next to the Ark of the Covenant and the Roswell "balloon debris"...
We'll get to it, in 30 years, 8 months, 4 depressions, 12 corruptions, and 20 trillion dollars in oil profits from now...
Until then, YMMV...