Direct-Injection Likely For All Engines Says Hyundai Motor America's Top Engineer

[Administrator]

All future Hyundai products are likely to get direct injection technology, boosting both fuel economy and performance and allowing for smaller and lighter displacement engines to take the place of larger units.

The news comes from Hyundai Motor America's top engineer John Juriga, who made the comments during a technical presentation at Hyundai's North American Engineering facility in Michigan.

Juriga said the technology is likely to roll out across the product lineup over time, to V6 and even V8 engines. He likened it to the change from carburetors to fuel-injection and said that while new alternative-fuel engines will be coming, over the next 5 to 10 years the internal combustion engine will remain dominant and so there will be a focus on improving it.

When asked if future Hyundais will get a combination of direct injection and turbochargers, Juriga didn't confirm anything but did say that the two technologies were, "made for each other."

Hyundai has just announced its first direct-injection engine, a 200-hp 2.4-liter four-cylinder that gets 35-mpg highway and will debut on the new 2011 Sonata (above).

More: Report: Direct-Injection Likely For All Engines Says Hyundai Motor America's Top Engineer on AutoGuide.com

[donald_k]

That would be cool..... GDi almost behaves like a diesel and probably could almost meet its efficiency with enough R&D by the engineers. It is what we got for now and something that can use existing manufacturing. Will be even more interesting if GDi could be retrofitted on older engines like how TBI/MPFI was to carbs.

Ultimately though it is a shame though fuel cells have not come out. They are just to darn expensive for one, and most car companies are fixated on ones specifically for hydrogen.. I wish just some manufacturer would just engineer a fuel cell platform that could run on gasoline/diesel for now since that is what most stations pump (later conversion would be a matter of switching or modifying the fuel cell to suit). Retrofitting an existing hybrid car could be done... barring the fact that currently fuel cells are fairly pricey compared to an IC engine. I should go put the 4 years of engineering I took to use... oh right the money (and if working on corporate dime they tend to restrict and block thanks to marketing beanbags)!

It is nice electric cars are coming out (Tesla motors) but they still depend on large battery banks and long charging, up here in Canada in most areas this would impede inter city travel. I am curious to see how fuel cells would handle in the cold... already I know GDi won't have a problems over MPFI on this fact as it can always fallback to pig rich MPFI mode to fire the engine over.