{"id":273853,"date":"2016-10-19T05:50:20","date_gmt":"2016-10-19T05:50:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/smaller-engines\/"},"modified":"2016-10-19T05:50:20","modified_gmt":"2016-10-19T05:50:20","slug":"smaller-engines","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/smaller-engines\/","title":{"rendered":"Smaller Engines"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

Downsizing is no longer the answer, apparently.<\/p>\n

Of engines, that is.<\/p>\n

You may have noticed.<\/p>\n

Even big vehicles come \u2013 increasingly \u2013 with startlingly small engines. Two-point-oh liter fours, for example, have become the go-to engine in mid-sized cars like the BMW 4, the Cadillac ATS and Mercedes C. These cars used to come standard with sixes in the 3-liter-ish range.<\/p>\n

Several new cars (Ford Fiesta, Mini Cooper) come with three cylinder engines of less<\/em> than 2 liters\u2019 displacement.<\/p>\n

All have turbos to increase displacement (on demand) in order to maintain the power\/performance levels car buyers want while also delivering the higher mileage and lower emissions the government demands.<\/p>\n

Whoops, scratch the latter.<\/p>\n

It turns out that small, turbocharged engines are producing more politically incorrect emissions in real-world driving than expected \u2013 and allowed. Because they are pressurized<\/em> (a turbocharger is an exhaust-driven device that compresses the incoming air, resulting in a more energy-dense air-fuel charge and thus, more power when the mix is\u00a0burned) they tend to run hotter \u2013 and hotter-running engines tend to emit higher percentages of compounds called oxides of nitrogen (NOx).<\/p>\n

They pass the government tests \u2013 were designed (and tuned) to pass the government tests. But when actually out on the road, driven the way people actually drive them, their NOx output apparently exceeds the allowable threshold.<\/p>\n

Higher-than-permitted NOx emissions out on the road (as opposed to hooked up to a test rig) are also what got VW in trouble.<\/p>\n

N<\/span>ow it appears everyone<\/a><\/em> is in trouble.<\/p>\n

Times two.<\/p>\n

Because the only technically (and economically) feasible way to reduce NOx to within what the regulators are demanding in real-word driving is to nix turbos and the high pressure\/heat they create\u2026 and bring back the displacement that the turbos were intended to replace. But the problem then become carbon dioxide \u201cemissions\u201d (in air quotes for a reason, bear with) which necessarily go up the larger an engine is because a larger engine necessarily burns more gas, all else being equal \u2013 and that results in more gasses exiting the tailpipe.<\/p>\n

But carbon dioxide is not an \u201cemission\u201d in the way that NOx or carbon monoxide and unburned fuel remnants (volatile organic compounds) are emissions. They are all byproducts of internal combustion \u2013 but carbon dioxide, unlike the others, is an inert gas.<\/p>\n

Not reactive, like NOx emissions are.<\/p>\n

It doesn\u2019t create or even contribute to smog. It doesn\u2019t aggravate respiratory problems.<\/p>\n

C02 is, in a word,\u00a0harmless<\/em> \u2026 unless you buy into<\/a> the religious doctrine of unnatural (and man-made) \u201cclimate change.\u201d Then it is considered an emission subject to regulation, the same as the others. Not here in the United States (yet) but in Europe, which all but assures it will be here as well.<\/p>\n

Hillary is champing at the bit \u2013 and the election is just three weeks away.<\/p>\n

And even if by some miracle she is bound and gagged and rendered inert,\u00a0we will still feel the effects \u2013 because car companies are global and have to design cars for more than just the U.S. market, which is no longer the world\u2019s largest market for cars.<\/p>\n

Thus, what occurs in Europe concerns us very much, like it or not.<\/p>\n

Hillary or not.<\/p>\n

Read the Whole Article<\/strong><\/span><\/a><\/p>\n

The Best of Eric Peters<\/a><\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n

Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Downsizing is no longer the answer, apparently. Of engines, that is. You may have noticed. Even big vehicles come \u2013 increasingly \u2013 with startlingly small engines. Two-point-oh liter fours, for example, have become the go-to engine in mid-sized cars like the BMW 4, the Cadillac ATS and Mercedes C. These cars used to come standard […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[519],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-273853","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-newswire"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/273853","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=273853"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/273853\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=273853"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=273853"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=273853"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}