its great that engineers rethink very old technology to improve it so that we can use a little less of our polluting fossil fuels. We need different choices not the same old stuff. Engineers need to be directed to use their ideas on different energy sources and motive engines, such as electric motors and batteries or hydrogen fuel cells etc. Auomotive industry in general, and the petrochem industry, need to make a radical right turn.

An E motor is 98% efficient, doesn't waste energy when not needed and has a 2x as fat, flat from 0 to 12k rpm torque curve. Vs the pitiful polluting gasoline one! Which to chose?

Jerryd
Show me the specs an electric motor that has full torque from 0-12000 RPM. They may be out there but I doubt they are the size of anything remotely capable of powering a car - even a tiny Hydunai.
I'll stick with my V8's Thank you very much

@Jerryd, and how long would it take me to pull a boat on a trailer from Paris to Barcelona with that e motor? Its a very modest trip, 1000km, 9 and half hours in this hyundai.

Captain Danger, your wonderful V8 is slower than most of the EVs on the market (EVs have more torque, like it or not), makes 3-4 times more pollution, even if the EVs run from mostly coal fired power, needs infinitely more engine maintenance (electric motors need none), and costs you thousands a year more to run. Think about it...

Shades of the record breaking Mallard steam engine. Technological advancement right before the technology becomes redundant.

apprenticeearthwiz, ICE technology has a long way to go before it becomes redundant. It can't be made redundant until something better comes along. Hydrogen is promising but it looks like it could be another 50 years or so before batteries are good enough for electric cars (with battery storage) to become useful. My wife and I just drove 1200km home in 13 hours (including rest stops) from Port Macquarie to Melbourne in Australia and did it on one tank of diesel in our BMW. There are simply no electric cars that can do that.

Some interesting comments and some woefully uneducated ones. Why spent so much time, money and effort on producing something that has no life expectancy, I like the Mallard reference.
Forget Internal Combustion and forget Hydrogen, for cars and other small vehicles, Electric propulsion is here, and it is growing faster than anything like it in the past, get with it or get left behind.

Simon Clarke, how much lithium is there left in the world for all the batteries we would need for a completely electric future, in everything from houses to cars to I-phones? Until we find a material/technique for a transportable form of electricity storage as good, all round, as lithium, it would not be wise to scrap research into more efficient less polluting IC engines.

Right you are, Loz. The question I have is how they got both right wheel hubs to become engines. Pretty neat tech, no matter.