Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Porsche's idea for a six-stroke internal combustion engine

motor1.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

181–190 of 367 posts

Re: Porsche's idea for a six-stroke internal combustion engine

#181

Post by freedomben »

Szpadel wrote: post #65
ttwwmm wrote: post #2

[flagged]

I think many of people here live in US and assume that it everywhere things look similar. in my European country electric infrastructure is not ready for electric cars and with current energy prices this makes no financial sense. I own plug in hybrid and I live in apartment meaning I have no possibility to charge at home. near me (about 10 min of walking there is public single phase allow charger with 2 plugs machine…

> I think many of people here live in US and assume that it everywhere things look similar.

Most of the US is in the same boat as you. Where I live, there is nowhere to charge and there are fairly great distances between things. You rarely ever see electric cars here, because they are only useful for people who have invested quite a bit in their house to build a charging station.

The people here on hn that have the attitude you mention, are people who live in large populated regions, especially congregated around the coasts.

I'm all for electrifying, and I think it is very necessary, but people do love to put the cart way in front of the horse.

Re: Porsche's idea for a six-stroke internal combustion engine

#182

Post by njarboe »

freedomben wrote: post #181
Szpadel wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think many of people here live in US and assume that it everywhere things look similar. in my European country electric infrastructure is not ready for electric cars and with current energy prices this makes no financial sense. I own plug in hybrid and I live in apartment meaning I have no possibility to charge at home. near me (about 10 min of walking there is public single phase allow charger with 2 plugs machine…

> I think many of people here live in US and assume that it everywhere things look similar. Most of the US is in the same boat as you. Where I live, there is nowhere to charge and there are fairly great distances between things. You rarely ever see electric cars here, because they are only useful for people who have invested quite a bit in their house to build a charging station. The people here on hn that have the a…

For now electric cars make sense for those who have a way to charge at their home. Otherwise not so great.

Re: Porsche's idea for a six-stroke internal combustion engine

#183

Post by hnlmorg »

thebruce87m wrote: post #173
hnlmorg wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

New houses are being built though. And at an alarming rate in some districts too

New houses also have solar, which can offset some of their new load.

Sure, but I don’t think it’s as common as you think.

For example, none of the new houses in any of the new estates around me were built with solar panels.

Re: Porsche's idea for a six-stroke internal combustion engine

#184

Post by thebruce87m »

fragmede wrote: post #159
thebruce87m wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> in my European country electric infrastructure is not ready for electric cars and with current energy prices this makes no financial sense. I’m always amazed by statements like this. People who have lived through the rollout of the internet to the masses can’t see how we’d modify existing structure to accommodate needs. We had phone lines initially, 20 years later now we have 5G, fibre, satellites. They just dug up…

You need to acknowledge that in Europe, the high price of electricity mean consumers aren't getting any discounts in money/distance ($/mile being inappropriate in the EU), if not being charged more to charge an electric vehicle over an ICE vehicle. Saving the environment is nobel, but affording it is another thing. If price hikes in the US continue, there are places in the US where that may soon be the case, too. The…

I can’t acknowledge anything without numbers to compare. In the UK some suppliers give cheaper rates at night (1/4 the rate). Is that not the case elsewhere? What is the cost per mile in Europe vs ICE?

Re: Porsche's idea for a six-stroke internal combustion engine

#185

Post by bell-cot »

Not to say that modern IC engines are any sort of "simple"...but there appear to be a lot more high-precision moving parts, under load, in their clever new crankshaft assembly. (Vs. traditional 4-cycle IC engines.)

Obviously, Porche's target market isn't likely to care about that.

But for possible down-market uses of this technology - are there any mechanical engineers in the house, to comment?

Re: Porsche's idea for a six-stroke internal combustion engine

#186

Post by hnlmorg »

quintushoratius wrote: post #176
hnlmorg wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Electric motors use low amounts of rare earth metals, or in some cases none. Batteries generally don't use them either. Maybe the term “rare” was poorly chosen. But mining those metals is the damaging part, not the abundance of the metals. So my point is still correct. > Automotive batteries have been demonstrated as >90% recyclable, far better than most materials we consider "recyclable" today such as plastic Cita…

>> Automotive batteries have been demonstrated as >90% recyclable, far better than most materials we consider "recyclable" today such as plastic > Citation needed It shouldn't be hard to believe. The components of a battery aren't consumed during operation. An old battery weighs the same as a new battery, and the chemical reactions taking place inside are reversible (because that's how a chemical battery works). I be…

> in my experience in the US, charging away from home is far more expensive

We have lots of free charging points in the UK. Or at least they do around me.

> Your statement about your cost comparison doesn't mention maintenance, which is a significant savings. No oil changes, no rusted exhaust pipes, no spark plugs, etc. Over the life of the car, that's tens of thousands of dollars unspent.

In my experience the maintenance costs is usually more tyres, suspension, breaks, and other similar things that would equally need to be maintained on EVs.

Oil changes and spark plugs are cheap. Never had an issue with my exhaust pipe but I’m sure that’s a thing. Have had clutches burn out but that’s always been more specific to manual shifts rather than ICEs. Cam belts is definitely one big ICE consumable that EVs wouldn’t require though.

I’m sure EVs will have their own specific areas of maintenance as well, but I’ll admit I haven’t done much research in that specific area.

Re: Porsche's idea for a six-stroke internal combustion engine

#187

Post by Szpadel »

tirant wrote: post #161
thebruce87m wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> in my European country electric infrastructure is not ready for electric cars and with current energy prices this makes no financial sense. I’m always amazed by statements like this. People who have lived through the rollout of the internet to the masses can’t see how we’d modify existing structure to accommodate needs. We had phone lines initially, 20 years later now we have 5G, fibre, satellites. They just dug up…

Not even that: We have managed to extract some dense and flammable black oil hundreds of meters deep under the ocean soil, transport it thousands of km again to remote countries where it is processed and again transported and distributed daily to many storage locations where any layman can again transfer it to their own vehicles. That is a feat. Electricity infrastructure already exists everywhere where we have civil…

That would be fine for second car. I need form time to time visit family that is about 270km one way mosty on a highway

The 500km mark is calculated in ideal conditions, flat street at 60km/h or something like that in more realistic highway conditions it's about 300km

That's why plugins have so much sense even when they cost about the same that EV would. I can drive fully electric on everyday short distances (my car is rated for 33km of electric range, but I'm able to squeeze about 40 by careful eco driving) That usually covers my city driving and at the same time I have 700-1000km backup of ICE/hybrid range

In my observation hybrid approach have about 30% better fuel efficiency than pure petrol.

I agree that having 22kW charger nearby that is affordable could solve all of that. But for many people that is not the case and if so they are so expensive.

In my case petrol costs me about $0.12/km and electric from supercharger would be $0.14/km (assuming 19kW/100km). Why would I want to switch to more expensive car to pay more per driven distance?

Of course everything changes when you have solar installation and you have basically free electricity (of course I omit here installation cost that would make if free after about 10years or so) then driving basically everyday for free and paying for fast charging few times a year when doing very long distance trip makes is fine.

But again, not everyone can have solar installation.

I have high hopes for new sodium batteries, give them 2 more generations and we could afford ev cars with 1000km of range in cars less expensive than ice and that would be very compelling.

Re: Porsche's idea for a six-stroke internal combustion engine

#188

Post by abenga »

rsynnott wrote: post #178
abenga wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What constitutes “walking back”? Legally+Economically. After seeing how badly their cars were doing against Chinese EVs, it seems the EV-only mandates in the EU and US are on shaky ground; only heavy tariffs on imported cars seem to be giving local producers a chance. I do not think they will figure it out by the 2030-ish targets, and bet that European and American companies will be allowed to sell combustion engin…

The EU and California targets are 2035; not aware of any large market going for a full ban earlier than that?

Even 2035 is not happening. Politically, parties that are not enthusiastic about climate change mitigation are gaining ground in Europe. A lot of western car companies are scaling back their ev targets, and announcing more ICE car research (like this article we are discussing). Those bans will keep getting postponed/cancelled the closer they come.

Re: Porsche's idea for a six-stroke internal combustion engine

#189

Post by Szpadel »

arresin wrote: post #98
Szpadel wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think many of people here live in US and assume that it everywhere things look similar. in my European country electric infrastructure is not ready for electric cars and with current energy prices this makes no financial sense. I own plug in hybrid and I live in apartment meaning I have no possibility to charge at home. near me (about 10 min of walking there is public single phase allow charger with 2 plugs machine…

So spend on that infrastructure instead, or mandate it. Honestly, spending resources on anything ICEs (outside of special industries) in this day and age is just wrong.

I like to compare this to SSD vs HDD. Why even invest in HDD development when SSDs are so much better?

Right now almost all consumers use SSDs because they are affordable for space most people need.

And I remember how we were transitioning where I bought 128gb drive for cost of 4TB HDD to have super snappy system and I had to manage system much more to not burn writes too quickly (ram drives for logs and temp etc)

That where I believe we are right now with EVs. But they are more affordable and have better range every year.

But to go further with this comparison we still develop new generations of HDDs even after all that time, even when everyone believe that at some point in the future we will abandon that technology completely

Re: Porsche's idea for a six-stroke internal combustion engine

#190

Post by Szpadel »

teo_zero wrote: post #51

But isn't the chamber full of exhaust at the beginning of the second power stroke? What will burn?

that might be something similar to why diesels mix exhaust gas with fresh air, but that might be just to purify exhaust gases better - I'm no expert
Post reply on HN