4 Innovations in Engine Design That Made It Perform Better

Through the years, a lot of improvements and modifications have been made on the basic car engine, either spearheaded by certain car manufacturers to gain an edge against rivals (aside from installing steel tubes and other metal parts) or undertaken by scientists simply to improve the rides we use today. Below are four such innovations:

Fuel Injection

There are days when you just want to drive out of your garage without waiting for the car to warm up. Thankfully, these days you can do exactly that! Before the 80’s, you still had to wait for your vehicle to warm up before taking it out on a drive; now though, all you have to do is gun the engine and put the pedal to medal. And this was made possible by fuel injection.

Fuel injection happens to be one of the most brilliant engine innovations to date. It replaced the old carburetor, which needed some warming up before you can drive the car. What did a carburetor do? It mixed up fuel and air before flowing into the engine’s combustion chamber. Today, a fuel injector does this job, and it has proven to be more effective and efficient than your old carburetor. It also allows you to start the engine easier.

Clean Diesel Engines

Diesel-powered engines has always had a bad rap as many still think of vehicles carrying this type of engine generally bad for the environment with its smoke belching tendencies and pungent smelling gas. But today’s diesel engines are a whole different story.

These engines no longer carry the negative legacy of their 70’s and 80’s predecessors. The diesel engines we have today are actually quite clean and fuel efficient. They use diesel fuel with low levels of sulfur. They’re also great for the ecology as they can also lessen particulate matter, which would minimize pollution in a way.

Hybrid Engines

Today, people have become more aware about the damages done to the environment than ever before. Thus, they’re looking for alternative ways to save the environment. This is where the hybrid engine comes in!

A hybrid engine is definitely environmentally friendly, which is one of its appeals to its consumers. It burns lesser engine than your conventional engine and it also produces lesser smog and carbon dioxide.

Forced Induction

For an engine to be able to generate power to induce movement, it needs three things namely the air, fuel, and ignition. With forced induction, you push more air into the engine, allowing it to boost the power.

Believe it or not, forced induction actually originally started with airplanes. The original problem with airplanes is that the higher they fly the more power their engines lose. With forced induction, they were able to propel more air into the engine’s cylinders than what atmospheric pressure can do, allowing more power to the aircraft and making it soar higher.

Now there are two kinds of compressors to forcibly induce air in engines. The supercharger gets its power from the crankshaft, which uses a pulley system to generate it. The turbocharger, on the other hand, gets its power from the exhaust stream. Note that the difference relies mainly on its power source.

Your car’s engine basically works via internal combustion, wherein air and gas are mixed and ignited to propel the pistons and power the vehicle. With these innovations, however, your ride’s performance (or any vehicle for that matter) would improve even more significantly!