By John Donnelly, Globe Staff | July 30, 2007
WASHINGTON — More than a quarter century after Congress wrote the rules setting automobile fuel economy standards, lawmakers are poised to make substantial increases in them, amid rising oil imports and prices.
The debate on mandating higher fuel standards for cars and trucks is unfolding in the House, which could take up the issue this week as part of a comprehensive energy bill.
The Senate has already passed legislation that would increase standards for cars and light trucks to an average of 35 miles per gallon by 2020, but the House is divided on two measures.
Representative Edward J. Markey, a Massachusetts Democrat, is sponsoring a bill that calls for a 35-miles-per-gallon standard by 2019. Another House bill, endorsed by more than 40 Democrats and 60 Republicans and backed by much of the auto industry, calls for a standard of at least 32 miles per gallon for cars and trucks by 2022.
A 32-miles-per-gallon standard would represent an increase of only 6.6 miles per gallon in fuel efficiency standards over the next 15 years, far short of what federal researchers have found can be practically achieved, according to documents dating to 1979 that were reviewed by the Globe.
The article that appeared July 10 on Spiegel Online about the Scuderi Air-Hybrid Engine is generating quite a bit of buzz on the Web in Germany. Here is a sampling of German blog discussions and blog posts (in German):
An article about the Scuderi Group recently appeared in the influential German publication Spiegel Online. A translated version of the article appears below. In the following podcast, Lutz Deyerling, vice president of European operations for the Scuderi Group, talks about the significance of the article:
The Efficiency Miracle
By Jürgen Pander, Spiegel Online (Germany, translated)
Less emissions, less consumption – and all this with manageable costs and established technology? The company Scuderi is developing the “Split Engine,” an alternative to the classical Four Stroke Engine. The only problem: so far the miracle engine exists only as a computer simulation.
The classical Four Stroke Combustion Engine has been driving the world since 1876. Since then engineers have strived to improve the engine; to make it more reliable, lighter, quieter, faster and more economical. The basic principle however - intake, compression, power and exhaust – has remained the same. This method powers the Smart car, the Rolls Royce, the Dacia Logan and Kimi Räikkönen’s racing car. The efficiency of a modern Otto Engine – named after the inventor Nikolaus August Otto – lies today at around 33 percent. Not very impressive for an engine that is being used by millions worldwide.
The Italian-American Carmello Scuderi from West Springfield, Massachusetts felt the same way. Thus, the specialist in compressor technology, who developed in the eighties the technical basics for the CFC-free refrigerator concentrated his efforts in the nineties on the Otto-Engine. His new approach: he split the four strokes from one cylinder into two times two, allocating each of those to two separate cylinders. With that the basis for the “Scuderi Split Cycle Engine” was found.
The first prototype should run in spring 2008
Six years ago the engineer founded the Scuderi Group, but died shortly after. Since then, his sons continue to direct the company. Today twelve specialists are employed with the company. By next spring, claims Lutz Deyerling, vice president of European operations for Scuderi, the first prototype should be finished. For now, the miracle engine and all forecasts exist only as computer simulations.
How does the engine work? Simplified: one cylinder is in charge of intake and compression, the other of power and the subsequent exhaust. Both cylinders are linked by a complex system of valves, through which the highly compressed air is channelled from the first to the second cylinder. The highlight of the system is the fact that both cylinders can be constructed in an optimal way for their tasks. In this way, the pressure in the combustion cylinder of the Scuderi Gasoline Engine should reach approximately 50 bar. In today’s Otto-Engine with direct injection (FSI), only approximately 3 bars are reached after compression.
Firing after Top Dead Center
The advantage of the extremely compressed air exists in the fact, that, as soon as it gets to the second cylinder, it will only be fired after Top Dead Center of the piston. Therefore the piston, as in all engines up till now, does not have to work against the combustion pressure for a short way. In conventional engines, the fuel-air mixture is always being fired shortly before reaching Top Dead Center. “Based on this fact alone we achieve an efficiency gain of 20 percent”, promises Deyerling. Furthermore, the combustion can take place under better conditions, which among other things should result in 80 percent less nitric oxide values.
The Scuderi Engine, promise the inventors, can be easily upgraded to an Air-Hybrid-Engine, by attaching a permanent air storage tank between the two cylinders. Just one result of this, is that with the help of braking energy, a vast pressure could be held in storage. “A car could be driven on this alone for a certain distance, totally emission free”, says Deyerling. It would be a hybrid system without a second engine. Altogether, Deyerling believes, the efficiency of the combustion engine can be increased by “more than 40 percent” with the use of the Scuderi-technology.
“All large manufacturers are interested”
Because this all sounds so wonderful, “almost all large manufactures are showing interest in the technology,” explains Deyerling. However he’s not mentioning names, so as not to endanger ongoing negotiations. For car experts the engine looks attractive, because it doesn’t function completely different to conventional technology. New factories wouldn’t be necessary, the engines would remain the same size. A four cylinder engine stays a four cylinder engine, only that in two of the cylinders, with every crankshaft revolution the mixture would be ignited.
Now we just need to see an actual car, which would be driven by Scuderi’s idea.
Oil prices have hit levels not seen in nearly a year, threatening drivers with another round of increases at the gas pump.
Crude oil prices have topped $70 per barrel for the last week, pushed higher by violence against oil workers in Nigeria and fears of tightening supplies worldwide. Contracts to buy crude for future delivery closed Friday at $72.81 on the New York Mercantile Exchange, the highest price since last August. They slid 0.8 percent Monday to close at $72.19.
Rising crude prices usually mean that motorists will soon pay more for gasoline. The effect isn’t immediate and can take weeks to be noticeable. But there are signs it is already happening.
The national average price for gasoline peaked at $3.23 for a gallon of regular in late May and then started tumbling. But the drop stalled around the start of July. In recent days the national average has started to rise, although by mere fractions of a penny. It now stands at $2.97, according to the AAA auto club.
by David Finlay, July 9, 2007, CARkeys (UK)
Plans to reduce European CO2 levels to an average of 130g/km by 2012 (see previous feature) are being regarded as impossible by car manufacturers - though to a certain extent it depends on their nationality.
The most optimistic are the French and the Italians, who tend to build smaller and therefore more economical cars. According to industry analyst JATO Dynamics, French manufacturers have achieved an average of 149g/km so far in 2007, while the Italians have got down to 147g/km.
Both have improved their CO2 performances over the last few years (in 2004 their figures were 153g/km and 150g/km respectively) and are likely to continue doing so. Renault, for example, is making a big deal of its eCO2 programme, of which the recently-announced bioethanol Renault Megane E85 is a part.
With the new Bravo, Fiat is embarking on a new strategy of providing small engines with varying levels of turbocharging so as to keep CO2 levels down as far as possible while still offering a choice of power outputs (see our feature on The Rise Of The Small Engine ).
Volkswagen is going down the same route as Fiat, and is also starting to sell exceptionally economical, low-CO2 versions of several of its cars under the name of Bluemotion. And another German manufacturer, BMW, is devoting great efforts to lowering CO2 levels through its EfficientDynamics programme.
However, German cars are on average larger, more powerful and less economical than French or Italian ones, and the result, as reported by JATO, is that Germany’s overall CO2 figure for the first half of 2007 is 171g/km. It would take more than a revision of details for this to be reduced to 130g/km in five years.
