Comment by baybal2
5 years ago
The problem with ICE industry is that nearly nothing improves much in absolute terms.
If you take a look at list of ICE records, nearly all of them were made decades, and decades ago.
Biggest piston engines - early 20th century
Most powerful piston engines - fourties
Most efficient piston engine - Jumo 204 held the record until nineties
Most power to weight - eighties
Uncounted billions put into engine RnD were mostly about scraping last few percents off everything above, and environmental compliance.
Like those distorted maps of the united states weighted by population[1], your post should be read with "environmental compliance" as the center of mass. Yet you shrug it off like a footnote. Nobody, except perhaps ship designers, cares who has the biggest piston engines.
[1] http://www-personal.umich.edu/~mejn/election/2016/
> Jumo 204 held the record until nineties
And what has happened since then? Google is showing me several engines with breakthrough efficiency in the last 10 years.
When I was a kid in the 90s, SUVs commonly got 12 MPG. The new models are 25 sometimes 30 MPG. Emissions have gotten considerably better in the last 30 years.
I’m looking and can’t find any info to back up the claim that this 1920s engine was more efficient than engines designed in the 80s and 90s. I am curious about it, not just is it true, but specifically what kind of efficiency you mean and what design features made it efficient. Do you have any sources or reading? Wikipedia talks about how the arrangement of the valves increased the efficiency, but only says this made it approach four stroke efficiency (at the time), not that it exceeded other designs. The 204 was a two stroke, and it seems to be common knowledge that even today, four strokes are more efficient. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Junkers_Jumo_204