In today's Bloomberg.com, Fiat announced its plan to share its technology. It also called our hemi a "dinosaur." It does not look good. Here are some key excerpts from the article (note the next to the last paragraph):
“We needed to do something radical with the gasoline engine,” Rinolfi said in an interview at Fiat’s research center in the northern city of Turin, the company’s headquarters.
Chief Executive Officer Sergio Marchionne, seeking to turn around Chrysler after two previous owners failed, has engineers flying between Detroit and Italy every other week on the project as Fiat prepares to offer models that meet stricter consumption and emissions levels required by U.S. President Barack Obama.
Rinolfi’s MultiAir engine uses an electronic hydraulic- valve lift system that allows the engine to automatically adjust the amount of airflow into the combustion chambers, without the use of a traditional throttle valve. In addition to saving fuel, it also reduces carbon emissions by at least 10 percent, he said. The valve control system updates the internal combustion engine, where burning fuel in chambers filled with air creates pressure that applies force to moveable parts.
In the traditional engine, the valves that pump air into the chambers open fully, regardless of how fast the car is moving. Even if the car is coasting and needs less power to keep momentum, air and fuel get in and energy is wasted.
“For years, engines have lost energy in this pumping process,” said Rinolfi, vice president of Fiat Powertrain Research & Development, who joined Fiat in 1971 after getting a physics degree at the University of Turin.
His team spent $100 million in a decade creating the engine at the center in Turin, home of the 2006 Winter Olympics. Analyst Close says Rinolfi’s system is “breakthrough technology” because it regulates each cylinder individually and decides the timing automatically, making the setup more efficient and the engine more responsive. Marco Santino, a consultant with A.T. Kearney in Rome, says MultiAir can be mounted on different engines without having to redesign them.
Fiat hasn’t said how many miles per gallon cars with the new engine will achieve. The company’s two-door 500, which is smaller than BMW’s Mini, gets more than 40 miles per gallon in city driving without the MultiAir engine in most of its gasoline and diesel versions, according to Fiat’s Web site. Chrysler’s most fuel-efficient car is the Dodge Caliber with manual transmission, which gets 24 to 30 miles per gallon.
Chrysler makes two engines that are the most likely to be retrofitted with the MultiAir technology, Rinolfi said. They are the so-called World Engine, produced under the Global Engine Manufacturing Alliance (GEMA) with Hyundai and Mitsubishi, and the V6 “Pentastar” which is being developed for vehicles such as the Grand Cherokee and the Dodge Charger. The GEMA-made engines are 4-cylinder ones used for the Caliber, Compass, Patriot, Avenger and Sebring models.
“A number of things are being considered,” said Chrysler spokesman Rick Deneau, who couldn’t comment on whether the World engine or the Phoenix are candidates for MultiAir technology.
Rinolfi doesn’t expect Fiat technology will be applied to Chrysler’s biggest engines, including 6-liter ones, which he said are destined to disappear “the way the dinosaurs did.”
“It might be difficult psychologically for your average North American customer to downsize to a 4-cylinder engine, even if it has the same performance as a bigger one,” said Marco Santino, an automotive consultant with A.T. Kearney in Rome.
IF HEMIS ARE DINOSAURS, I AM GLAD THAT WE OWN A T-REX!
Last edited by Cuda340; 06-24-2009 at 11:18 AM.