eli5 how does the car not starve of fuel when incline?
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Are you asking how fuel can still travel through the lines when the the car is tilted at an angle?
Fuel is pumped. Gravity keeps the fuel on and around the bottom of the tank. This is then pumped to the front of the vehicle by a pump.
Typically the inlet of the fuel pump is located in the center of the tank all the way at the bottom. So even if your car is at an incline the inlet to the fuel pump is full of fuel and the pump will be able to pump the fuel into the engine. With this setup it is still possible to have fuel delivery issues on steep inclines when the tank is almost empty though. However this is not seen as a big enough issue for most people.
There are ways of fixing this though if you suffer from this. For example if the inlet to the fuel pump is flexible and weighted down into the fuel then it will be able to follow the fuel to whatever side it sloshes to. You can also get a tank which tapers down to the bottom so your inlet is always full of fuel. You can also get expansion tanks in the fuel line which holds some fuel and are able to feed your engine until the fuel pump gets more fuel again.
The fuel tank has a pump in it and the inlet to the pump is on the bottom of the pump, at the bottom of the tank. If the fuel level gets low enough and the car goes onto an incline such that there is no fuel around the inlet of the pump then it does, in fact, get starved of fuel and go dead. But it has to be very low on fuel and a steep incline for that to happen.
The bottom of the tank is funnel shaped.
There is then a “sump”just below.
It’s a part of the tank that has the job to always retain some fuel. Enough to run the small time that the acceleration is displacing the rest of the fuel. Once acceleration is over, the funnel boots refills the sump.
We are speaking of few centimeters, just enough todo the job.
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