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Comment by tda | Hacker News Reader

Are you aware you are essentially describing the original Toyota Prius? the engine is optimised for constant low rpm/low torque/high efficiency, whilest relying on the battery/electric motor for torque and temporary extra power

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yes I am well aware of Prius series configuration but it is still a regular engine shrunk down and fine tuned. What I am asking for is something very ground up redesigned for maximizing one thing only efficiency of energy conversion. couple of examples of this are Aquarius engines or [1]. basically you cut out all the unnecessary stuff and all the maintenance/repair plus cost with it. Current engines are complex because they are operating over a large range or rpms and optimizing for other factors like torque etc. the you have losses in mechanical power transfer at each stage. Cut that all out and make something thats super easy to manufacture & replace and you have added another 50 years to ICE.

1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u4b0_6byuFU

And how will the tens of billions in R&D cost, reconfiguring the supply chain, service network investments, etc., be amortized?

Last I checked toyota's market cap was 220B+, they have been burning cash on Hydrogen fuel cell BS for a decade plus. that costs money too. BTW if a startup like Aquarious & some research center in UK can do it then so can they. all the rest of expenses come later when technology is promising & starts deploying. But thats when market also rewards you for innovation & not just maintaining you P/E ratios & EBITDA margins. That is essentially what tesla did. The sad thing is that hybrids now have existed for 2 decades+ but they chose not to scale up any hybrid production beyond compliance cars. Basically they are Kodak-ing their way out of existence if Stanford professor Tony Seba is to be believed.

What? Did you perhaps read a different comment?

if you ignore the last 2 lines of my comment (or read them as a separate paragraph) you will get a direct answer to your questions.

..Or you can chose to respond with another one line remark without explaining your thoughts.

> Last I checked toyota's market cap was 220B+, they have been burning cash on Hydrogen fuel cell BS for a decade plus. that costs money too. BTW if a startup like Aquarious & some research center in UK can do it then so can they. all the rest of expenses come later when technology is promising & starts deploying. But thats when market also rewards you for innovation & not just maintaining you P/E ratios & EBITDA margins. That is essentially what tesla did.

So this was your intended comment?

If so, I don't see how it's relevant. The money Toyota 'burnt' on hydrogen stuff has already been spent, it can't be recovered.

And the rollout your imagining would require at least 10x the money to do so worldwide.

Relying on a stock market boost to fund such a huge investment is silly because Toyota doesn't pay the vast majority of their suppliers or their staff in shares or options, but in cash.

>The money Toyota 'burnt' on hydrogen stuff has already been spent

Well was the decision to go all in on a entirely new tech (hydrogen fuel cells) was conscious choice by Toyota or not? So you agree that they have capacity to spend investment dollars, right? Now could they spend maybe an order of magnitude less money on improving ICE, Most definitely yes. Its definitely less costly trying to reinvent and entire new scientific field (fuel cells) than repurposing ice engine as demonstrated by companies I highlighted (& many more).

>And the rollout your imagining would require at least 10x the money to do so worldwide.

would this rollout be any less expensive for hydrogen cars, I'd argue orders of magnitude more expensive because no hydrogen infra exists. yet you chose to conveniently ignore it. Also, you are making a strawman here by indicating that I am saying need to fund it with stock-market (go back and read my comment). they dont Need that money to start the rollout, they get rewarded by market when they do it because its a fundamentally better product.

My gut feeling is most of these japanese companies are opposed to electrification because of some other ulterior reason, likely because solar may not be viable in that region & their govts might not be so excited about it. In any case they are about to get their ass handed to them by tesla & chinese EVs because EVs are essentially democratizing the automobile development platform due to its simplicity.

> Well was the decision to go all in on a entirely new tech (hydrogen fuel cells) was conscious choice by Toyota or not? So you agree that they have capacity to spend investment dollars, right? Now could they spend maybe an order of magnitude less money on improving ICE, Most definitely yes. Its definitely less costly trying to reinvent and entire new scientific field (fuel cells) than repurposing ice engine as demonstrated by companies I highlighted (& many more).

Toyota spent that money years ago. How is that at all relevant to how much they can spend in 2023?

Financial markets are much tighter, so I doubt they could even spend 20% as much without huge shareholder pushback.

Guys like you are totally deluded. BEVs are the real dead end and waste of resources. It is just replacing one unsustainable idea with another. And it can't even meet the driving needs of everyone anyways.

All car companies will inevitably have to pivot to hydrogen (or efuels or whatever). It is a matter of when and not if. If anything, Toyota is decades ahead of the competition.

I think you're greatly overestimating just how efficient a conventional ICE can be if designed and tuned for single-rpm, maximum-efficiency operation.

Basically, the Chevy Volt is exactly the car you're describing. It wasn't that great: it had a separate engine that only ran a generator, and would only come on when the battery was depleted. The problem is having a full EV powertrain, plus an ICE driving a generator, adds a lot of hardware, complexity, and cost to the vehicle, and the result was a car that people liked, but just wasn't cost-effective compared to the Prius, or to a BEV.

The Prius can get away with a much smaller battery because it's just a parallel hybrid and doesn't need to drive 50 miles on a charge like the Volt. Batteries are expensive and take up a lot of space. And a BEV can get away with not wasting space and weight on an ICE engine (plus fuel tank), and instead just have a big battery. The Volt basically had the worst of both worlds. Reportedly, the car worked well, but with all that stuff packed inside, it just cost too much, plus it didn't have a lot of cargo space.

I sorta want to get a Rivian and stick a little generator in the bed. Kidding… mostly ;)

here are some links for implementations that have optimized to close to 45% efficiency. plus a very simple lightweight design.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free-piston_engine

https://www.aquariusengines.com/

https://engineerine.com/omega-1-piston-less-near-zero-emissi... (optimize for power but can be tuned for efficiency)

its nowhere near what a turbine can get (60% about max with heat recovery) but high enough to design around need for large batteries.

edit: formatting

Just FYI, the latest Prius Prime is functionally identical to the Chevy Volt. It just costs a lot less (starts at $33k). GM simply failed to design it properly.

The Prius utilizes the Atkinson cycle rather than the conventional Otto cycle, which is more common in traditional gasoline engines. The Atkinson cycle is designed for higher efficiency, sacrificing some power output for improved fuel economy.

The Atkinson cycle has a longer expansion stroke compared to the compression stroke, resulting in a more efficient conversion of heat to mechanical work. However, this cycle tends to have a narrower range of operation, with less torque and power available at lower RPMs compared to an Otto cycle engine.

Perhaps a more efficient cycle is possible by reducing the RPM/torque range even further, but I am under the impression that a lot has been left on the table efficiency wise.

Actually it just keeps the engine at/close to minimal brake-specific fuel consumption:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brake-specific_fuel_consumpt...

Which covers a range of RPMs.

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