Toyota unveiled two new small engines that the company says will be far more fuel efficient that the previous ones, thanks to the incorporation of tricks and technologies from hybrid engines. The new engines promise to achieve an improved fuel efficiency of at least 10 percent over current vehicles and are slated to power a number of vehicles within this year in the company’s portfolio. The new engines will spawn as many as 14 variations by 2015 for different market and vehicle needs.
The first engine is a 1.3-litre unit that features the Atkinson cycle, a technology that has been reserved for hybrid engines until recently. Toyota stated that the use of the Atkinson cycle provides an increased expansion ratio and reduces waste heat through a high compression ratio of 13.5, resulting in superior thermal efficiency. The new engine also features an intake port shaped to generate a strong air-fuel flow that tumbles in a vertical swirl, a cooled exhaust gas recirculation system, and Variable Valve Timing-intelligent Electric (VVT-iE) technology. The inclusion of this and other innovations should allow the engine to provide around 15 percent better fuel economy than the current models.
The second engine is a 1.0-litre unit that has been jointly developed in collaboration with Daihatsu. The engine does not get the Atkinson cycle, but receives a similar tumble-flow generating intake port, a cooled EGR system and a lower compression ratio of 11.5. The 1.0-litre engine though claims to be more fuel efficient with various other fuel consumption technologies and can provide about 30 percent more fuel efficiency than the current models. Toyota says that both the engines can achieve higher fuel efficiency without having to sacrifice on power.
Toyota has always been a pioneer in providing fuel efficient and greener engines in the automotive world. The company has sold over 6 million hybrid vehicles worldwide, ever since the introduction of the Prius Hybrid in 1997. Toyota now plans to introduce the Atkinson cycle technology on the upcoming 2015 Lexus RC-F sports car for lower consumption of energy out of the fuel. Other manufacturers like Mazda and Honda too have developed similar engines that will power their vehicles soon.
