Featured Toyota plans for ICE engines

Toyota sure does love the fossil fool industry!

 

Wait, is the hybrid king just now designing engines specific to hybrids? Thought they would have worked on that before now.

An engine purpose built to be a range extender should do a better job all around, but the only thing truly new on their list of development is the hydrogen fuel.

 

Supposedly Toyota, Mazda and Subaru are developing internal combustion engines that will help aid carbon neutrality. There's a few mentions of liquid hydrogen and other carbon neutral fuels. I'm not saying I agree, especially with engines like the Mazda rotary that needs to burn oil in order to function, but that's what's being said.

 

This makes sense to have this type research going on.

Toyota is an extremely smart company and their strategy shows this.

Customers want Hybrids so that is their current focus but...

Toyota also manufactures
Plug in Hybrids -3
Electric BEV's - 3 (the most current selection will be built right here in the USA with batteries supplied by their USA Battery Plant)
A Hydrogen fuel car - 1
Hydrogen Fuel Cell Modules for large cell transportation
Electric and Gas Forklifts
Robots
Programmable Ladder Control PC's
Electric car Batteries
State of the Art Modular Homes
etc....

A very well diversified company.
It shouldn't surprise anyone that Toyota is on the cutting edge of so many fields

Moon Rover anyone? (self powered by its own solar collection system!)

"Toyota’s regenerative fuel cell technology lies at the heart of the Lunar Cruiser’s power source. This innovative system utilizes solar energy and water to produce hydrogen and oxygen through electrolysis during daylight hours. The fuel cells then use this stored energy to supply electricity during the lunar night, which lasts about 14 Earth days."

Lunar Cruiser, Toyota’s contribution to space exploration (toyota-europe.com)

 

The engine down sizing and shifting more to the electric side was something I assumed they were already doing. As for carbon neutral fuels, you don't need to do anything special if talking a drop in diesel or gasoline replacement. Methanol is easier to make, and not much has been done in consumer engines. Even less with ammonia. Figure they've done some work with ethanol for Brazil. Hydrogen issues aside, Toyota should not have waiting on doing an engine if they were serious about it as a fuel. Instead, they relied on incentives to sell a few FCEVs while waiting on a miracle to make the entire hydrogen for cars system affordable.

The properties of the Wankel and hydrogen compliment each other. The engine simply runs better on the gas. There is just of the hydrogen downsides. With other fuels, the engine's power to weight ratio can mean taking up less space on a PHEV. Its noise and vibration will be less jarring than a piston engine when going from EV to hybrid operation.

 

In the USA, those in power feel fossil fools are completely unethical. Japan needs a more flexible approach, they are more all-of-the-above, and they have very limited energy resources, so they very much need to sip fuel whether it is elec or gaso, and diversify. I wonder if Japan are slapping big tariffs on China EV's too.? In the USA we are EV-centric due to the idea of mandated cold-turkey withdrawal from all fossil fuel use. Not sure EU has the same anti-hybrid mentality and mandates that we do currently, if not Toyota has a market even if they are forced to sell EV's here.

In Virginia we banned gaso/HEV hybrid car sales a couple years ago already ( to take effect whenever Ca. does it)

 

Internal Combustion Engine Engines?

Sorry, couldn't resist.

 

Toyota is the best hybrid maker in the business...glad they are going to partner with other companies to improve their ICE's.

I was looking at a Mazda CX-90 PHEV....beautiful car but then got into the weeds....can only go 25 miles on a battery charge and doesn't look like it uses the hybrid system like Toyota, you only get 21-27 mpg when not driving on that battery.....WHAT??? (And it'll run you around $60K....ouch)

 

Might have details not mentioned yet.
Toyota, Subaru and Mazda announce new biofuel engines despite global push for EVs - Autoblog

Pushing hydrogen doesn't jive with limited resources. It could work back when the plan was using excess electricity from nuclear plants, but the stance has changed. Bioethanol was mentioned in the above, but nothing was said about how Toyota and the others planned to support getting these alternative fuels to market. Porsche has an e-gasoline plant already running.

This is more about preserving jobs in the domestic ICE sector than Japan's need for diverse energy sources.

These new engines are for hybrids with a heavier electric side, and PHEVs. Places with ICE 'bans', and some countries in Europe have them, with allow new PHEV sales.

Japan has their ways of discouraging sales of imports. Despite those, EV imports sell three times as many as ICE imports. That had Toyota spooked.

 

Gosh - here we thought Toyota might know what they are doing:

Fortune's World's Most Admired Companies list for 2023

The 10 Most Valuable Car Companies in the World | Investing | U.S. News (usnews.com)

Toyota posts record operating profit, highest ever for listed Japanese company | NHK WORLD-JAPAN News

If only they had listened to Prius Chat posters they may have been able to make something of themselves!

 

I suspect this so-called carbon neutrality things is like the flex fuel ready cars from decades ago

Mike

 

Yep...I'm old enough to remember climate alarmists saying we were COOLING and would bring in an ice age and then that the polar ice caps will melt and cause 1/2 of Florida to be under water or that a giant ozone hole would fry us all or that we only have 10 or 12 years to "save the planet"

Yet ZERO of those predictions have come true. The planet doesn't need "saving" but, boy, people really need to learn what the real scientific method is. Climate alarmism is much more of a religion than anything to do with science.

 

Other than being a little rough and maybe costly, the Yaris 1.5L hybrid engine seems to be almost ideal for hybrids and phevs. I have no idea what they are doing from this announcement. Cheaper, smaller, more efficient they can't do all three.

 

Toyota, Subaru, Mazda Commit To Carbon Neutral Engines (gmauthority.com)
"1.Toyota, Subaru, and Mazda have announced plans to develop new carbon neutral engine technology.
2.The new initiative between the three Japanese automakers includes the integration of advanced internal combustion engines (ICEs) with electric drive units and hybrid components, while ensuring compatibility with various carbon-neutral fuels like e-fuel, biofuels, and liquid hydrogen, marking a significant step towards reducing carbon emissions while maintaining performance and an engaging driving experience.
3.The new engines will also be highly compact, which in turn could improve vehicle aerodynamics in pursuit of stringent emissions regulations.
4.Each automaker will lean on its individual strengths
a)Mazda, for example, is focusing on rotary engine technology for hybrid setups
b)Subaru is developing an electrified version of its boxer engine.
c )Toyota has provided a preview of a new prototype turbocharged 2.0L engine, which may find applications in a variety of segments
5.The initiative will align with new emissions regulations, including the upcoming Euro 7 standards set to take effect in the next few years.

Meanwhile, GM has announced that it will reintroduce PHEV models to the North American market, rather than leapfrog hybrids entirely to transition straight to EVs as was planned originally."

 

The hole in the ozone layer has been shrinking only because the world did take action to reduce and eliminate the use of CFCs causing the damage.

The world is a complex system, and global warming can cause some places to get colder. The UK is at the same latitude as Alaska. It only has a warm climate because of Atlantic currents carrying warm water up from the equator. Those currents can be disrupted by the influx cold, fresh water coming off glaciers that are melting. The currents are slowing down. Their slow down and stopping will also cause a back sloshing that will raise the sea level along the Eastern US, in addition to the addition of melting glaciers.

Their current hybrid engines were developed for ICE cars, and then Atkinsonized for hybrids. The size reduction sounds like they want a turbo 1L that can drop the turbo for a PHEV.

My impression from these reports was that they would develop engines specific for hybrids and/or alternative fuels. Stating the hybrids will be more electrified will could mean more series operation. A series hybrid, plug or not, doesn't need an engine that can operate in a wide range. Designing for a narrow range operation should reduce the costs in getting efficiency and low emissions.

They could drop the port/direct inject to reduce costs. Might not need it with a narrower operating range to control particle emissions. Then this is to meet Euro 7. Perhaps the port/direct isn't enough to avoid needing an exhaust filter.

Then there is the report Toyota showed off a 2L turbo, so now I'm not sure what to think.

Are they going to do anything to help get those fuels into use? Or is this just a riff on US flexfuel and E85?

The e-fuels are already a direct replacement for gasoline and diesel; that's their appeal. I believe it is the same for HVO. The alcohols will benefit in performance and efficiency in engines designed for their octanes. Hydrogen is the tough one.

Infrastructure aside, NOx is a concern. A three way catalytic converter needs hydrocarbons and CO in the exhaust stream to neutralize NOx with. A hydrogen burning engine needs another solution, since it will just be NOx and water in the exhaust. I'm guessing a SCR system from a diesel will be needed.

 

Imagine that you are Toyota, and you need to sell cars to nations that have little or no dependable electricity. Some nations, such as South Africa, are fairly sophisticated but have a power grid that (for a variety of reasons) is very unreliable. A gas powered car / truck is likely to be a better and safer way to get your kids to school or the produce to market.

While Toyota COULD just tell the rest of the world to continue using the cars and engines that they have used for the last 30 years. It could just insist that every country has to install new technology, such as superchargers and solar farms every 30 miles or so. I suspect that it is much more beneficial to society to provide more efficient and cleaner versions of car and truck engines that can use the existing infrastructure of small or under developed nations.

An now I'll go back to reading the article that this thread was based on.

 

Toyota is going to charge more for the new engines. Which will likely leave them unattainable in those countries. The Prius people bought as an option to the Corolla and Camry here was a luxury model in the likes of Brazil. Finish reading the article, and you'll see these are more about meeting stricter emission regulations in Europe.

 

Then maybe they should expand their business to include grid batteries and solar cells. It is not like no other car company is doing that.

Mike

 

OK, maybe you can explain why the CO2 levels in the graph below are a good thing and all the possible 2nd and 3rd order effects that we may not even understand are good for our grand children?

Mike