Just when you thought ic engines were at the end of the line…

[Old Koreelah]

This amazing engine type is being discussed on another forum.

If they can reliably deliver this sort of power to weight ratio, aircraft design will enter a new era.

 

https://www.ampereinc.ca/single-stroke-engine

[nomadpete]

All I can say, is.... WOW!

 

It doesn't appear to be "pie in the sky". They have running examples.

[turboplanner]

Importantly Torque and RPM are missing along with power and torque curves and a fuel map, so we don't know (even though one version has props) where this engine is suited to constant load/constant rpm applications, intermittant applications or whether it has the torque curve and power development to suit variable power requiremennts like motor vehicles.

Remembr that the Sarich concept also looked very good to the extent that GM gave him a contract, but despite throwing a lot of money at it, it couldn't do that last example.

Of course it's also coming on the scene where it will need near-zero CO2 emission.

 

Also don't underestimate the direction the automotive industry is going by lowering CO2 emissions using much smaller amounts of fuel to get the same result; those vehicles have already started to appear on the roads. The goal posts are shifting.

 

[FlyBoy1960]

Where are the video's showing engines  running ?   if you go to the video channel it has zero videos looks like vapourware

[turboplanner]

19 minutes ago, FlyBoy1960 said:

Where are the video's showing engines  running ?   if you go to the video channel it has zero videos looks like vapourware

Good pick up, the link also only shows lines and renderings (notice that the highlights and shades are all perfect).

[Thruster88]

A lot engines especially 2 stokes are power limited by piston temperature even when the underside is being cooled somewhat by the incoming fuel air mixture or oil squirters in the case of a 4stroke. With the size of these one stokes and their high power output I think there will be trouble for the piston which is being heated from both sides. 

[Old Koreelah]

2 hours ago, Thruster88 said:

A lot engines especially 2 stokes are power limited by piston temperature even when the underside is being cooled somewhat by the incoming fuel air mixture or oil squirters in the case of a 4stroke. With the size of these one stokes and their high power output I think there will be trouble for the piston which is being heated from both sides. 

Ceramic pistons?

[Thruster88]

Maybe, however piston rings and lubrication would still be problematic. I am sure this configuration would have been thought about and tested before.

[facthunter]

Two strokes suffer from Piston cooling issues and the later schneurle porting helps cool them. This crank set up is pretty elastic looking also..Nev.

[nomadpete]

OK, I'll back off a bit. They claimed that initial "proof of concept" motors have been running. Doesn't that mean that the concept has been proven? They claim to have a number of larger motors "in production" which implies the motor prototypes were made and successfully tested?

 

I should wait until somebody buys one and reports that it actually works as claimed.

Edited August 27, 2021 by nomadpete

[turboplanner]

12 minutes ago, nomadpete said:

OK, I'll back off a bit. They claimed that initial "proof of concept" motors have been running. Doesn't that mean that the concept has been proven? They claim to have a number of larger motors "in production" which implies the motor prototypes were made and successfully tested?

 

I should wait until somebody buys one and reports that it actually works as claimed.

A saleable engine design has about 4 failures per 100 engines to total target hours.

The testing goes on for months and over a period of years with the failed components being replaced but the rest left to see how far they go.

It would be unusual for a new concept, where only renderings (as against manufactured product and test results) were displayed, and vital information missing) to be a ready to sell product at the same time.

[onetrack]

I won't be holding my breath for a fantastic new IC engine concept to come to commercial production at a reasonable price with excellent reliability. Heat dissipation is the main problem with all these "new" concepts - most of which are not new, they have been tried before and couldn't meet all the necessary criteria.

Remember that emissions levels legislation is getting tighter and tighter, and I have never seen a 2 stroke yet, that meets current emission regulations. Most 2 strokes are now dead in the water.

 

Meantimes, back in the real world of automotive production, Ford are readying to launch their 2022 electric F-150 pickup - and pre-purchase orders have reached double the company projected levels .....

 

https://www.drive.com.au/news/demand-for-fords-new-electric-pick-up-exceeds-expectations-report/

 

Edited August 27, 2021 by onetrack

[turboplanner]

9 hours ago, onetrack said:

Meantimes, back in the real world of automotive production, Ford are readying to launch their 2022 electric F-150 pickup - and pre-purchase orders have reached double the company projected levels .....

 

https://www.drive.com.au/news/demand-for-fords-new-electric-pick-up-exceeds-expectations-report/

 

Yep, that's Ford. Good on them, that will cover development costs and bring it all to a head much faster.

[FlyBoy1960]

Ford also offers an F-150 Lightning Pro model, which strips out luxury features, adds unpainted black plastic bumpers, vinyl seats, and enjoys a starting price of $US39,974 ($55,000)

 

how could we get one in Australia for less than $150,000 ?    they should be $55,000 plus a little bit extra for shipping and may be GST, but say $66,000 ready to roll. Absolutely no chance that this could ever happen in Australia

[turboplanner]

21 minutes ago, FlyBoy1960 said:

Ford also offers an F-150 Lightning Pro model, which strips out luxury features, adds unpainted black plastic bumpers, vinyl seats, and enjoys a starting price of $US39,974 ($55,000)

 

how could we get one in Australia for less than $150,000 ?    they should be $55,000 plus a little bit extra for shipping and may be GST, but say $66,000 ready to roll. Absolutely no chance that this could ever happen in Australia

They used to be under $5,000.00 for many years.

 

Our biggest problem in Australia has become sourcing Right Hand Drive because the overseas manufacturers have begun turning away from RHD, and are unlikely to ever come back, particularly for tiny markets like ours.

 

I'm predicting that some time in the next 50 years, which is a short time in terms of platform design-to-production, Australia will switch to LHD and Pandora's box will open up for us.

 

 

Edited August 28, 2021 by turboplanner

[onetrack]

Quote

I'm predicting that some time in the next 50 years, which is a short time in terms of platform design-to-production, Australia will switch to LHD and Pandora's box will open up for us.

It's not ever going to happen, not while Japan and all the former British Empire countries such as India are RHD, and not while the Australian total car market is a piddly 1M car sales annually. Even if we went LHD, our total market for vehicles sales is not even a blip on the North America-Canada-South America total market numbers.

I can recall some local farmers who bought always big in farm machinery, taking a trip to Godzone Land to view a major John Deere factory, and to impress the Yanks with the money they could splurge annually on big farm equipment.

They came back just a little bit stunned, after JD executives advised them that the whole of Australias annual JD farm tractor consumption, was less than 3 days production levels from that one JD factory.

 

The cost of Australia going LHD in the future is not something our small nation can bear, and is simply not economically justifiable or viable. We now have too many major freeways that cannot be converted to LHD operation without incurring trillions in major redesign and reconstruction.

 

https://www.drive.com.au/caradvice/what-would-change-if-australia-made-the-move-to-lhd/

 

Edited August 28, 2021 by onetrack

[FlyBoy1960]

I'm sorry but I fail to understand how using left-hand Drive vehicles (of which I currently own 5) is going to make any difference to Australia's road system. Just because we go left-hand drive vehicles doesn''t mean we have to change the side of the road that we drive on ?

[Old Koreelah]

3 hours ago, turboplanner said:

They used to be under $5,000.00 for many years.

 

Our biggest problem in Australia has become sourcing Right Hand Drive because the overseas manufacturers have begun turning away from RHD, and are unlikely to ever come back, particularly for tiny markets like ours.

 

I'm predicting that some time in the next 50 years, which is a short time in terms of platform design-to-production, Australia will switch to LHD and Pandora's box will open up for us.

 

 

Maybe. Japan, the world’s biggest car builder (are they still?) drive from the rhs like us.  

[turboplanner]

22 minutes ago, Old Koreelah said:

Maybe. Japan, the world’s biggest car builder (are they still?) drive from the rhs like us.  

Domestic Japanese vehicles are RHD but they primarily build oversease now, main production for the Japanese is Thailand which can achieve top quality and lower cost of production and they build both LHD and RHD.

I once needed a quote for four tilt-slide trays for the Pakistan Army, emailed Japan about 830 am had the quote for LHD in Pakistan Army equipment level and colour by about 3:30 pm, to meet the Pakistan Tender deadline of around 4:30.

 

 

[turboplanner]

3 hours ago, onetrack said:

It's not ever going to happen, not while Japan and all the former British Empire countries such as India are RHD, and not while the Australian total car market is a piddly 1M car sales annually. Even if we went LHD, our total market for vehicles sales is not even a blip on the North America-Canada-South America total market numbers.

I can recall some local farmers who bought always big in farm machinery, taking a trip to Godzone Land to view a major John Deere factory, and to impress the Yanks with the money they could splurge annually on big farm equipment.

They came back just a little bit stunned, after JD executives advised them that the whole of Australias annual JD farm tractor consumption, was less than 3 days production levels from that one JD factory.

 

The cost of Australia going LHD in the future is not something our small nation can bear, and is simply not economically justifiable or viable. We now have too many major freeways that cannot be converted to LHD operation without incurring trillions in major redesign and reconstruction.

 

https://www.drive.com.au/caradvice/what-would-change-if-australia-made-the-move-to-lhd/

 

The annual Australian purchase of Perkins 6/354 engines represented 3 hours production in one factory per year, so our orders are very small, but JIT production allows factories to produce a different specification for every vehicle on the line. However the different specification is THEIR different specification from their variants, not an Australian specification which we bought for Australia.

 

We've now had several decades of overseas product as base platform, such as the Opel Capitaine and the European Falcon both of which ended our preference for low window lines to reduce the sun's impact. People got used to them. As the Button plan bit and the tariffs disappeared, more and more overseas product was bought and Australian Engineering did less, but the cars have been accepted to a degree. Many people rejected the smaller cars and went to full 4x4 light commercials to tow their boats, horse floats, and caravans which often exceeded what a Statesman or LTD could tow anyway, but that segment rapidly expanded to become the top selling segment, so they rejected small bodied low power cars.

 

As OK mentioned, we can still get a full car range from the Japanese, but there are gaps in the market. Tradies, and people towing the recreational equipment want to two 3 to 4 tonnes and still maintain as close to 100 km/hr as they can. Some have bought imported Dodge Rams or F150s but these are really too light for the applications and there are hours of sub stories about vehicles which failed. These all have to be converted to RHD here in Australia for around $75,000.00 so only the rich can afford them. Trucks are a lower cost alternative but you have to go up to big five tonners to get an engine powerful enough to tow the weight at cruise speed. So there is a gap which could be filled by something like F350 built in the US for peanuts if we changed to LHD. That's just one example of where we are cornered with LHD. The second area is the full range of Mustangs and Camaros and Corvettes easily affordable in LHD, if we had LHD, and so it goes on, where we can't tak full advantage of what the Button plan killed our manufacturing for.

 

The Drive link is an outsiders look at everything.  60 RHD out of around 250 countries is a good indicator of how our supply of vehicles is limited and may be more so as more maufacturers go out of RHD production and that is the current pressure where. Navistar trucks which previously supplied bith LHD have recently ceased to make RHD for economic reasons (market too small).

 

I haven't studied the amount of engineering and cost to modify our road system, and you could be right in the shorter term, but I did say the next 50 years so that's 2070, and we could do it very quickly if the country needed a financial boost, where sure the road costs would be a big sum, but the incomes would take off and flow back a lot of that investment prducing more income tax etc. 

 

Today there are 60 countries left; if more go and more manufacturers reach the tipping point, we may have to face it anyway.

 

Back around 1990 I figured we could handle RHD by building SKD in Australia with plug and play packs, so the cars would be designed with mounting reiforcements and holes punched both sides, the components would all be the same and you'd just bolt the steering and pedals in the side you wanted, turn the harness upside down and you'd have RHD, but first there were the mirror angles to contend with then the headlights, then stiffening the RH platform to take the steering added more than the few cents allowed before lowering sales in the US market due to price, then the LH steering hole had to be filled in, then the RH under dash area built only strong enough to hold up a plenum chamber needed reinforcing for the upper steering bracket but ddn have the mounts for 2 plane steering wheel, then fast forward to 2021 and turning the harness upside down altered the reach of 26 different elecvtrical connectors which all had to reach their engine block destinations from the opposite side of the car, and they are the issues I can remember, so that idea is on the backburner. Maybe we could bluetooth the lot.

[facthunter]

We would be better to go with the majority. It has to happen eventually. The later you leave it the more the cost. Most planes are LHD. Nev

[Thruster88]

11 minutes ago, facthunter said:

We would be better to go with the majority. It has to happen eventually. The later you leave it the more the cost. Most planes are LHD. Nev

Only two? Countries have switched. RHD accounts for 1/3 of the worlds population. I think we can hold our position on this one Nev. 

[facthunter]

IF you allow LHD to go on our current roads. Some people drive up kerbs all the time. Some vehicles already are permitted (as you no doubt know). Nev

[turboplanner]

Getting back to AMPERe Inc., Canada

This is the website link https://www.ampereinc.ca/

Still only renderings, but more information, some of them  right in the power to weight category for ultralights.

[APenNameAndThatA]

They have a Youtube channel, 24 subscribers, and no videos.