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On Wednesday, April 23, 2014 2:58:49 PM UTC+1, Dave Plowman (News) wrote:
In article ,
wrote:
On Wednesday, April 23, 2014 6:35:02 AM UTC+1, harry wrote:

http://pixelbark.com/13045/how-the-d...bustion-engine

There are lots of engine designs with advantages. But almost none of
them see the light of mass production. After weeding out the 99% that
have some sizeable downside, the level of investment and experience
needed before a car manufacturer would trust their business to a new
engine design is excessively large. Car engine design is not a good area
to invent in.

Quite. Remember the Orbital? Actually developed for some time. But where
is it now?

There's a long list of clever engine designs out there. If a company chose
to use one and some problem showed up down the line, it would be curtains.
And even before then, end buyers would be mostly very wary. Also current
engines have improved greatly due to a long process of minor improvements,
which won't be true for other engine types. Hence no-one will stake their
company on a novel and maybe better design. The only one that did see the
light of day in many decades was the wankel.


This one looks like it would be difficult to manufacture for only small
benefits.