While the car giants are trying to find innovative ways to improve efficiency from the conventional Otto cycle engine, Toyota's engineers have showed their ingeniousness with finding the holy grail in automobile industry by improving efficiency by a whooping 37 percent improvement over current vehicles.
Instead tweaking the same old Otto cycle engine, Toyota have re-engineered the Atkinson cycle engine and were successful churning out a mind boggling 78mpg.
Toyota has announced the development of these hyper fuel efficient engine in the avatar of three cylinder 1 litre and four cylinder 1.3 litre, the smallest one will be boasted into Toyota Aygo delivering 70mpg (US).
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| Toyota's VVT-IE engine |
Atkinson cycle engine are famous for their incapability in low and mid range torque but Toyota has claimed to have addressed these issues. In order to improve the thermal efficiency, the Atkinson cycle engine have been lavished with numerous innovations including a re-shaped intake port, increased compression ratio (11.5 : 1), idling-stop, Variable Valve Timing Intelligent Electric (VVT-IE), and a cooled exhaust gas circulation system.
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| Cooled Exhaust Gas Recirculation System (Highlighted in the image) |
The end result is a maximum thermal efficiency of 37 percent and a fuel efficiency improvement of "approximately 30 percent over current vehicles" – that's the difference between 60 mpg (US) and 78 mpg (US) and it's an astonishing improvement.
Toyota Aygo owners prize the car for its performance at the petrol pump, not the traffic light Grand Prix, and the Aygo is largely purchased for use in tight, congested, urban roads. The appeal of the Aygo and the other compact Toyota vehicles which will use the unit will be greatly increased.
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| Toyota Aygo 2014 (source: Autoevolution.com) |
The Japanese manufacturer plans to introduce 14 variations of the 1.0-liter three-cylinder and its 1.3-liter four-cylinder bigger brother by 2015.
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