GM unveils diesel-like gasoline engines

well well,

i don't want to start anything but this souded really familiar, so I went back to my archives:

"Volkswagen also thinks Henry had a point, and recently offered to spill the beans to 4Car on some of the innovations they have in the pipeline, from greener engines to enhanced driver enjoyment to child-friendly passenger compartments. Top of the agenda is climate change. No surprise there, but some of the ideas for combating it are far from obvious.

One is CCS, or Combined Combustion System. Almost identical to a diesel engine, the difference lies in the way fuel and air are mixed 'homogeneously' inside the engine to remove all traces of soot and dramatically reduce the toxic nitrogen oxides that constitute one of the main pollutants in car exhaust fumes. However, for CCS to provide maximum benefit, it needs a new kind of synthetic designer fuel currently under development by VW and others. SynFuel is made from natural gas, while SunFuel is made from plant matter known as biomass, or by processing straw.


Clean as a petrol engine, frugal as a diesel
SunFuel is cleaner than petrol and diesel and is CO2 neutral because the plants it is made from absorbed the greenhouse gas when they were growing. But these new biofuels are in their infancy and VW experts expect it will be 2015 before they go on sale in any quantity.

Another new engine design called GCI, for gasoline compression ignition, combines the fuel economy of a diesel engine with the low emissions of a petrol engine. It works by switching between the spark-plug ignition of a petrol engine for starting and hard acceleration, and the sparkless compression ignition of a diesel when cruising gently. GCI can burn both petrol and SunFuel, and the next stage is to combine the technology with VW's TSI engine, which has both supercharger and turbocharger. The prototype we tried drove smoothly, with only the slightest rattle giving away the engine's switch from petrol to diesel mode, a small computer screen in the dash illustrating which of the two you are in."

that was in June this year on germancarblog.

no comment...LOL

Sorry mate but the real winner is Mercedes with their DiesOtto. They were the first. And look everybody is copying them.

Except Lexus because Lexus invests time and money into technologies that actually work and have a future.

when was it introduced, is it in application yet? never heard of it!

where have you been....Mitsubishi has been producing diesotto-like engines for a few years now. I swear, if the Diesotto pulls a BMW 335 engine stunt, and wins an "Engine of the Year" award for something not even remotely spectacular, I'm switching to riding a bike.

A 2.2L and only 180hp? My 1.8L has 140hp with decent fuel mielage. So this only has an extra 40hp. I hope this is better on gas than my 2007 civic.