Chinese carmaker Qoros has joined Koenigsegg in demonstrating a camless engine. Rather than using a traditional camshaft to control an engine's valves, the QamFree motor uses electro-hydraulic-pneumatic actuators to provide precise control over each valve for more power and a 12 to 17 percent improvement in fuel economy.
In most engines the camshaft's rotating lobes push rockers that open the valves and allow valve springs to shut them. Unfortunately, this process involves a stage where the valves are partially open or shut, which means the system isn't always operating at ideal efficiency.
Rather than continuing to use this technology, which Koenigsegg likens to "playing a piano with a both hands tied to the opposite ends of a broomstick," the QamFree engine allows far greater control over the engine's intake and exhaust valves thanks to electro-hydraulic-pneumatic actuators.
The engine has been developed in conjunction with FreeValve AB, one of Koenigsegg's sister companies. According to FreeValve, the technology reduces fuel consumption by 12 to 17 percent when compared to a modern, direct injection engine with variable cams.
Qoros also says the QamFree engine allows the company to eke more power from a more compact package, which should mean punchy performance from engines that meet the ever-tightening Euro and Beijing emissions standards.
Unfortunately, there's no mention of a release or production date for the engine, although Qoros does loosely suggest we might see it in future models. Currently, the engine remains a concept.
Freevalve's video about the technology is below.
Sources: Qoros, Koenigsegg, Freevalve
Naoki Watanabe- While electric motors can be much more efficient than internal combustion engines, as a complete system, when battery efficiency is considered, they are not. Batteries are, at present the limiting factor on electric cars. Show me an electric family sedan that carries four comfortably with a little luggage that you can take from a 1/4 energy storage state to a complete energy storage state in five minutes that can then travel non-stop for 350 miles, and in five minutes reach it's full energy storage potential again. I can, and have done this several times in my Volvo S60, a gasoline sedan with comparable range to Camrys and the like. Current electric cars are limited to about 250 miles, and even that range is reduced by cold weather and accessory use. Try to recharge those batteries in five minutes when still hot from high discharge and they would almost certainly be damaged.
Electric cars may be the future. They still operate at a disadvantage in the present.
Sounds like less is more to me.
Maybe the wind engine guys might wake up and realize that more blades pull more power. Too much lemming crap going on in this field that refuses to discuss and post efficiencies. Huge missing integrity for that covert omission.