Archive for Technology

Peter Bee, a Smart car enthusiast wanted somemore power out of his little Smart ForTwo. The original Mitsubishi engine in the Smart ForTwo made about 60hp, and through some tweaking he managed to get this up to 100hp. But it wasn’t enough for him.

He approached Z Cars, a kit car company specialising in putting motorcycle engines into cars. Z Cars had put Yamaha R1 engines into Mini Coopers. They seemed like the right people for the job. He also approached Phil Seton of Seton Racing, who provided a personally tweaked Suzuki GSXR1000 engine (stuff like Yoshimura exhausts, etc) which made a maximum of 180hp, screaming all the way up to 13,500rpm. The engine was mounted at the rear of the car. The result was called the Smartuki, a mash of the names Smart and Suzuki of course.

The Smartuki goes from 0-100km/h in 4.2 seconds, does the 400 meter dash in 12.4 seconds and tops out at 213km/h. There are two videos of this monster after the jump. The pocket rocket sounds like an F1 car on the track… enjoy!

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Volkswagen’s Direct Shift Gearbox (DSG) is the world’s first dual-clutch automated manual gearbox in a production car. This provides the driver the ease-of-drive of a car equipped with an automatic transmission, but the efficiency and flexibility of a manual transmission.

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Telematics Research Group has done a study on the use of technology gizmos in cars. BMW and Mercedes Benz tops the list, and Hyundai comes in last. Audi seems to be lagging behind it’s other two German counterparts. These are brands in the USA, for 2006 and 2007 models. Click the image for a bigger version.

I think it’s pretty normal, luxury car markers tend to include more of these kind of computer assists and gadgets into their cars compared to car makers that focus on economy like Hyundai. In fact I would be suprised if Hyundai appeared any higher on the list.

Flexi-fuel vehicles, short for “flexible-fuel” or “dual-fuel” vehicles are cars that can run on two sources of fuel. Common flexi-fuel vehicles run on gasoline and ethanol. Our Malaysian taxis are also flexi-fuel vehicles, as they can run on petrol and natural gas.

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Questions from beginner car enthusiasts on where to get blow off valves for normally aspirated cars are not uncommon as they don’t know what blow off valves are for, and how they work. It is not possible for you to install a blow off valve onto a normally aspirated car, they are for forced inducted engines. No matter how much you like the sound. Hehe.

Click here to read the rest of What are blow off valves and can I put them on my normally aspirated car?

Nissan is developing a safety feature for it’s cars to help avoid colliding with the vehicle in front in the case of a possible sudden brake situation.

In Nissan’s accelerator pedal safety system, a combination of radar sensors connected to a computer system monitors the car’s speed and the distance to the vehicle in front. If the vehicle in front suddenly slows down (like a jam brake situation) or there is any other possibility of a rear-end collision as calculated by the computer system, the gas pedal will automatically rise against the driver’s foot as a signal to step on the brake.

Once the driver lifts his foot off the accelerator pedal, the system does not wait for him to start braking, it automatically kicks in. Of course, the driver’s foot would go ahead and press the brakes anyway.

This makes me think, doesn’t this system require the use of brake-by-wire? Brake-by-wire’s benefits versus safety hazard is still being debated in the industry, though most modern brake-by-wire systems like Mercedes Benz’s Sensotronic Braking Control comes with a manual safety net.

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As we all know, the combustion engine does not really convert the potential energy in fuel to kinetic energy to move the car efficiently. We lose alot of that power - roughly 76% - in the form of heat. BMW has tried to salvage some of this lost energy with their TurboSteamer system which harnesses heat from the exhaust flow and uses steam to power an expansion unit connected to the crankshaft.

Someone in the engine business has another idea. Bruce Crower, the owner of Crower Cams and Equipment Company builds camshafts, crankshafts and connecting rods, including titanium rods for Formula 1 customers. He lets his company run itself while doing intensive R&D work in his 13-acre backyard in Jamul.

And his idea is a 6-stroke engine. He calls it the Crower cycle engine.

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This is for those who appreciate the technology that goes into a powertrain. How does the new 1.8 liter SOHC i-VTEC engine in the new 2006 Honda Civic achieve good fuel mileage (Honda claims 1.5 liter fuel economy during cruising) while producing a respectable 140 horsepower and 174 Nm of torque? Let’s have a look at some of the technologies that went into this new engine - the R18A1.

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A group of students from the West Philadelphia High School’s Academy for Automotive and Mechanical Engineering have come up with a prototype hybrid car that runs on soybean fuel. And it’s a sports car, which delivers more horsepower than entry-level Porsches, but yet gets mileage similiar to the Toyota Prius. How on earth?

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Nice video on BMW’s prototype Auto Park system. The narration is in German though, so I don’t really have any idea what they are going on about. But it’s pretty cool watching the 5-series station wagon being parked automatically. Video is after the jump. Also, check out Volvo’s Self Park System developed in collaboration with a Swedish university.

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