Air conditioning and touchscreens didn’t alter how cars drove but did revolutionize the driving experience.
Can we please make touchscreens for neccessary functionality illegal, like using phones while driving?
Yeah, buttons can be found without looking.
They also provide tactile feedback allowing you to be sure they have been pressed without even looking.
Also make them illegal in aircraft! And spacecraft! Seriously stupid.
So much this, it makes no sense for using a portable phone to be illegal while driving but yet my car stereo can be a full on entertainment system and require me to have zero feedback to change the channel or answer a call.
Can we have more mechanical posts like this?
No, you need 555 posts about the shit that a billionaire said about stuff he knows nothing about
And then someone saying something about Linux
Be the change you want to see!!
Now thar Hyundai has patented it, it will never become popular enough to impact the market and be standardized in more vehicles or change anything, similar to the Wankel engine.
similar to the Wankel engine
Was the Wankel engine really a step forward though? I'm a gearhead who does all his own car maintenance, up to and including engine swaps in the past and retro-modding bigger turbos and aftermarket fuel injection systems into my cars (Datsuns in the latter case). That being said, I only know the very basics about rotary engines. I've always admired the Mazda RX's from afar.
Mazda, who by no means makes a bad gasoline engine, could never get a rotary motor to last well or to have anywhere near decent fuel economy. Also, the rotary design was tried for a while in at least refrigeration compressor applications, where it blew up there a lot more than the other types of compressors as well.
Yea. They have worse efficiency. To get better efficiency from them you would need to run them hotter (afaik), and if you do that they would last even shorter.
It's great if you want a smaller but still strong engine, but it's not efficient and those seals are a big problem.
The problem with the rotaries is a result of the technology of the time and funding.
They are inefficient because they lose compressed fuel and air as the seals pass over the holes for the spark plugs, which can be largely solved with laser ignition. They are less reliable because of the design of the apex seals, which can be solved by using a roller instead of a blade. Both of those major issues with the rotary could not be solved with the technology of the 60s-00s and the tiny budget available. There are other issues that hold back the design, but those come down to metallurgy and manufacturing processes. Mazda did a great job trying to make the rotary work and it almost killed them.
The other issue that gives then an unreliable reputation is because you can't treat them like a piston engine and people treat them like a piston engine. Hard to fault the knife for breaking when it was used as a pry bar.
The argument is, though I’m not qualified to assess it, that Wankel engines are simpler, smaller, more power dense and, if allowed time to develop, would be an improvement on the traditional ICE. It’s very difficult to assess where we would have ended up and a little by the by, given we need to move away from burning fossil fuel.
That said, do check out LiquidPiston’s evolution of the Wankel engine. It does sort of look like they’ve solved a number of issues a traditional Wankel engine has.
But capitalism creates innovation!!!
Some people argue that intellectual property law is not free market capitalism, and is instead a regulation that benefits big business. I'm one of those people
"Probably failed cuz they called it the wanker engine lmao. Now set aside another few milli for the copyright lawyers"
Did none of you watch the video? The article is crap, but the video explains it well.
Go back and watch the video, ya old codgers!
What a badly written article, wrongly explaining both the diff and the CV joint. That's not what they do or how they work.
Yeah, skimmed and saw one of his other articles praising the cybertruck and realized this likely wasn't a source worth absorbing.
One thing I took from the article is they're trying to sale the idea of having MORE space in a car due to smaller transmission system. In 1 presentation, they show the idea of putting a FUCKING DOUBLE BED IN THE CAR!
I DON'T want MORE space in the SAME sized cars.
I want the SAME space but in SMALLER sized cars.
The space we have now is FINE, and the car sizes are TOO BIG.
STOP MAKING BIGGER CARS!
If we could get standardized and interoperable electric car parts, that'd be great.
Seems really cool. I will definitely not buy the first model vehicle to use this, though.
Surprisingly easy to understand video for a complex concept.
The explaination of how differentials work was painfully wrong. An I lost confidence in this author's ability to explain the topic.
The one thing they don't really talk about is how it turns. The animations show vertical movement almost exclusively. At one point in the video there is a far shot showing a car turning and it looks like they actually swivel the entire motor to keep it perpendicular to the wheel which if true is going to pretty heavily limit it's turning angle and radius.
If you're gonna go through all this trouble, why not put motors directly into the wheels? Then you can bypass the drivetrain all together and directly power the wheels.
If you put the motor in the wheel you increase the unsuspended mass. Bad for handling and ride quality
For the lazy people out there: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nd6C0y8xc20
Not a new idea, military trucks used reduction gear drives in the wheels before WWII. Edit: Portal Gears.
One downside to doing this is adding unsprung weight, which is not a good idea.
And it will still need a CV at the wheel to accommodate suspension travel.
You're right on unsprung weight, this is going to add quite a bit, especially if you fill the thing with oil.
Not sure how you still need a CV though, as this performs that function. Watch the video, there's a good animation. Basically this is a reduction gear and CV joint in one unit.
I don't understand how they are going to keep dust and dirt out of it. The point where the drive input goes in has so much movement.
It will have a boot or case on it and will be filled with grease. Just like a cv joint or ball joint.
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
