The modern automobile engine has fixed compression ratios, that currently usually hover at about 10.0:1 or 10.5:1 for normally aspirated engines and much lower for turbocharged engines. Cars with direct injection can go higher, but we’re quite limited because compression ratios are fixed. A turbocharged engine running off boost makes less power than a normally aspirated engine of similiar cubic capacity because of the reduced compression ratio. While this has been minimized with very fast spooling turbos these days, it is still not ideal.

The answer is a variable compression ratio engine. Saab showcased a concept version of a variable compression ratio engine back in the year 2000, and it was called the SVC, or Saab Variable Compression. The project never did go anywhere. The SVC was a turbocharged 1.6 liter engine that used a pivoting cylinder head to change compression ratios from 8.0:1 all the way up to a high 14.0:1 according to engine operating status. The pivoting head adjusted the slope of the upper part in relation to the lower part of the engine, thus changing the combustion chamber volume at piston top dead center. Because of this, the top and bottom parts of the engine were separated and each required its own cooling system. Thanks to turbocharging and SVC, the 1.6 liter inline-5 engine produced 225hp and 300Nm of torque using 2.8 bars of boost.

In 2003, Nissan took a different approach to implementing a variable compression ratio system. Nissan showcased its Variable Compression Ratio Piston-Crank System, or VCR for short. It uses a multi-link piston and crank mechanism to vary the compression ratio. Like the Saab SVC, it is also based on a turbocharged engine concept. Compression ratio varies from 8.0:1 to 14.0:1, and the highest compression ratio is used during slow and steady city driving when the car runs mostly off-boost. During hard acceleration when the turbocharger kicks in, the compression ratio is reduced up to 8.0:1. During medium engine loads and low to medium levels of boost, a middle ground such as 11.0:1 is used.

The conventional conrod is replaced by a multilink system that consists of three links An upper link is connected to the piston pin, a lower link revolves freely while connected to a crank pin, and a control link connects the lower link to a control shaft. The control shaft has bearing that has a certain amount of eccentricity to it. When the control shaft rotates, the fulcrum of the control link bearing changes, and this causes the top dead center position of the piston to be either moved up or down vertically. This modifies the combustion chamber volume at piston top dead center, this altering the cylinder’s compression ratio. Basically, the system is designed in such a way that the angle of the control shaft causes the top dead center position to move, so to vary the compression ratio you adjust the angle of the control shaft.

Nissan is also developing a similiar VCR system concept for diesel engines. I’m not sure if a production engine using this technology is in the works or not. VCR has probably been made outdated by direct injection - the Volkswagen Golf GTI’s 2.0 liter TFSI engine is turbocharged yet has a high compression ratio of 10.5:1!

Related Links:
Nissan Variable Compression Ratio Engine
Saab Variable Compression

The 2005 DARPA Grand Challenge is a 130 mile desert course - while this might seem mild compared to the Baja 1000 or other similiar off-road courses, what makes the DARPA Grand Challenge special is that the racers have to complete the course entirely without human control. That’s right - robots.

There’s a whole load of videos over at The Great Robot Race’s website, but there is one participant that stands out from the rest. Out of 12 participants which consisted of all-wheel drive machines, there was only one two-wheeler - the Ghostrider from Blue Team, which is a computer controlled motorcycle.

Using an array of sensors, high speed high resolution 3D-capable cameras and a gyro to help maintain balance, the Ghostrider navigated the DARPA Grand Challenge course using GPS. Watch a video of the Ghostrider after the jump, and the rest of the participants over at The Great Robot Race.

Click here to read the rest of Ghostrider: the robotic motorcycle

Future Aston Martins could use Mercedes Benz technologies, as the luxury carmaker has had talks with the Daimler AG luxury automobile arm. It also wants to increase its production up to 8,000 cars in 2008 to 2009, up from 7,000 a year in 2007, which would creep very near its Gaydon plant maximum capacity of 9,000 units a year.

The British luxury carmaker is also in talks with LVMH’s Louis Vuitton and PPR’s Gucci on an overhaul of Aston Martin’s merchandise business. The company plans to increase merchandising revenue to US$300 million by 2009, from about US$100 million in 2006.

Source

Click to enlarge

The latest revision to the Waja as scooped earlier this week is the new Proton Waja Campro 1.6 Premium (CPS) as it is officially called, and these are the official details.

Let’s have a look at the equipment level first before we get to the juicy CPS stuff. The Waja Campro 1.6 Premium (CPS) comes with either a 5-speed manual gearbox or a 4-speed auto. It has electrically foldable remote wing mirrors, front seats with three-way adjustable headrests (up, down and tilt), leather seats all around, a gated automatic shifter for the automatic transmission model, new center panel switches, a keyless trunk remote system, ABS brakes, dual SRS airbags, fog lamps, twin tailpipes and projector Xenon headlamps with automatic headlamp levelling.

Perhaps the most interesting update to this Premium CPS Waja is like its namesake, the Campro CPS engine. This engine has been eagerly awaited by many, as the current Campro has often been referred to the “Campro without Campro” - there was no cam profile switching involved. With the new S4PH Campro CPS, there is.

Click to enlarge

This is how the new Proton Campro CPS works. The CPS system integrated both cam profile switching (CPS) and a variable intake manifold (VIM). VIM switches between a long intake manifold at low RPMs and a short intake manifold at higher RPMs. According to Proton, a longer intake manifold is used at low RPMs to achieve slower air flow; this promotes better mixing with fuel. The short intake manifold allows more air in faster. This is beneficial at high RPMs. This seems to be slightly different compared to the usual VIM system where intake manifold width is also varied to control air velocity, and velocity tries to be maximised, but the idea behind the CPS VIM seems to be not wanting the air to go in as fast as possible at low revs to promote air-fuel mixture? Whatever it is, it seems to work, as the VIM does not stand alone but works with all the other engine systems together over different RPMs.

The CPS system uses a switching tappet and a trilobe camshaft to switch between two different cam profiles. One cam profile provides low valve lift, while the other cam profile has a high valve lift. The low valve lift cam profile is used at engine speeds of under 3,800rpm to maintain idling smoothness and ensure lower emissions, while the high lift cam profile is used when the engine is spinning more than 3,800rpm to improve peak horsepower and torque.

Using this two performance-improving systems, Campro CPS engine basically runs in three modes at any one time:

The result is 125 horsepower (93kW) at 6,500rpm and 150Nm of torque at 4,500rpm compared to the non-CPS Campro’s 110 horsepower (82kW) at 6,000rpm and 148Nm of torque at 4,000rpm. Engine displacement is 1,597cc, bore and stroke is 76mm x 88mm and the compression ratio is 10.0:1. To handle the higher power and torque output, the Campro CPS engine has an additional oil cooler.

Click to enlarge

I drove the car earlier this week but did not really go very far, only got up to 2nd gear on the manual tranmission and did not even rev up to the redline - whatever short impression I had was quite good indeed. I am quite eager to test drive the new CPS-equipped Proton Waja and cannot wait to bring you my findings.

The new Proton Waja Campro 1.6 Premium (CPS) is priced at RM61,888 for the manual transmission version, while the one with the automatic transmission is priced at RM64,888. It comes in six colours: bronze garnet, blue agate, iridescent white, twilight blue, metal gray and burgundy. Standard warranty is 2 years, but it also comes with an Extended Warranty Program, extending total warranty to 5 years.

Let’s hope that after this we will be able to see a new Waja - the Saga was the first Proton and the Waja was the first non-Mitsubishi-based Proton. We don’t want to see a similiar product lifecycle with the Saga do we?

Related Posts:
Proton Waja CPS 1.6 now in showrooms! (more photos here)

It seems that most of us like David Arumugam so I suppose Proton made the right call with the production of this Chinese New Year greeting video. It also emphasizes on our multi-cultural rojak society. Enjoy the video!

VIDEO: Proton David Arumugam CNY Greetings

Click to enlarge

I was thinking the other day about how the Proton Perdana V6 and the Proton Arena are pretty much the only Proton cars from the old generation still on sale now, with the old Saga having being replaced recently by a second generation model that has been rather well accepted by the public.

Before the Volkswagen-Proton talks collapsed, many have been speculating that the next generation Proton Perdana replacement nodel could be a badge engineered Volkswagen Passat. There were many good artist’s impressions of a Proton-badged Volkswagen, mostly based on the long wheel base Skoda Superb.

Now that that deal is off, we will have to look at the current Mitsubishi Galant/Mitsubishi 380 to see what the new Proton Perdana could end up like, as developing a Perdana on Proton’s own is definitely not very financially viable. Proton previously entered into a technical partnership agreement with Mitsubishi, but we have not really seen any obvious results from that yet, as it looks like it is still at exploratory stages.

So yes, getting to the point of this post, I asked Theophilus Chin if he could whip up a second generation Proton Perdana replacement for us to admire and imagine. It’s basically a Mitsubishi Galant/Mitsubishi 380 with styling derived from the 2nd generation Proton Saga. Do you like it? A Proton Perdana based on the Mitsubishi Galant could come with a 2.4 liter inline-4 engine, probably the 4G69 which makes 160hp at 5,500rpm and has a maximum torque of 212Nm at 4,000rpm

If you’re interested in taking a trip back to the past, read the posts below back from 2005, and 2006 when Proton was still in talks with foreign partners: mainly PSA Peugeot Citroen, Volkswagen and a bit of Mitsubishi.

Related Posts:
Perdana Replacement Model to be a Volkswagen Passat? - 27th June 2005
Perdana Replacement Model photoshop based on Skoda Superb - 17th July 2005
Mitsubishi 380 powered by a 3.8 liter V6 - 4th February 2006
Mitsubishi 380 to be exported to Malaysia - 9th March 2006
Perdana Replacement Model due in April 2007 - 27th June 2006
Perdana Replacement Model to get inline-4 engine - 17th July 2006
Perdana Replacement Model study still underway - 1st August 2006

Tata is inching very closely to acquiring Jaguar and Land Rover from Ford Motor Company, and everyone is already assuming the two companies are in Tata’s hands, in a deal that analysts have pegged at being worth between US$1.5 to US2.0 billion.

One company that is very happy about all of this is Fiat, who has a close relationship with Tata. Tata uses Fiat turbodiesel engines in their cars, and the two companies have a partnership worth Rs 4000 crore (3.3 billion ringgit) in India.

Fiat says this will most likely allow the Italian company to get access to Jaguar’s technologies. It is particularly interested in Jaguar’s rear wheel drive platform as well as Land Rover’s four-wheel drive technology. Yup, you guessed right - the first model from the Fiat group to benefit from this is most likely the new flagship Alfa Romeo 169, which Fiat plans to develop as a rear wheel drive car.

Related Posts:
Ford may forgo retained stake in Jaguar and Land Rover

Sir Mark Moody-Stuart was formerly chairman of oil company Shell. I am not sure where he is working at now, or whether he is retired, but he has been getting press coverage lately because of a public call to ban cars that cannot do at least 35 mpg - which is about 12.4km per liter of petrol or 8.07 liters per 100km if we assume he means Imperial gallons, which is what UK uses.

The Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders claims a ban is unnecessary because drivers of cars that do less than that mileage paid more road tax and petrol duty. But Moody-Stuart says that is not an excuse as it is not right for the law to let the wealthy avoid doing what is needed by society just by forking out more cash.

He gave an example: “When we eliminated coal fires in London, we didn’t say to people that you can pay a bit more and toast your crumpets in front of an open fire - we said nobody, but nobody, could have an open fire. When we introduced catalytic converters the car-makers said it would put the price of cars through the roof - but it didn’t. Now we all have to have catalytic converters - that’s only right.”

I digging around the net and found that he was driving a Toyota Prius (shown above) in 2003. Not sure if he has changed cars now. The hybrid Prius was tested by the US-EPA and was able to achieve 54 miles per Imperial gallons, or about 19km per liter.

Renault is the latest car manufacturer to join the dual clutch transmission club, however no launch date, no specs and pretty much nothing else was revealed. All that was revealed to motoring publications by Renault’s head of product planning Patrick Pelata is that “they are on their way and we will not come too late.”

Although Renault’s usage of dual clutch transmissions will mainly be to cut fleet CO2 emissions, we could see some of Renault’s best hot hatches equipped with the ultra fast shifting twin clutch gearboxes, like the Renault Clio Renaultsport 197 and the Renault Megane Renaultsport 225 (shown above).

The French court fined Swedish carmaker Volvo a sum of 200,000 Euros because allegedly the faulty brakes of a Volvo 850 TDI caused an accident which claimed two lives and injured one.

The accident happened nearly a decade ago in June 1999 in Wasselone, northeast France. It involved a schoolteacher who was 49 years old at the time. The schoolteacher knocked into three children on a pavement with her Volvo 850 TDI.

The schoolteacher was fined 300 Euros, send to jail for six months and got her driving license suspended for a year. She claimed that her Volvo 850 TDI’s brakes felt rigid and she could not stop in time.

Volvo is appealing against the court decision and rejects the theory that the accident was caused by a mechanical defect on the Volvo 850 TDI. It’s quite interesting to observe how the law system works in truly developed countries.

Source