Assuming everything else is equal (vehicle size, weight, driving style, tires), how do you make ICE engines be more fuel efficient? I noticed my dad’s 1996 Nissan Pathfinder V6 consumes 13L/100km (mixed driving) while a newer V6 is 9L/100km. Car manufacturers claim their engines are “more fuel efficient”, how do they accomplish that?
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The process of extracting energy out of gasoline is more or less perfected. Meaning we know how to stoichiometrically extract as much energy out of a certain volume of gasoline.
Basically modern gas engines is as efficient as it will ever be.
However the process of transferring that extracted energy to the wheels is inefficient and that is where we can improve. There are a lot of moving parts to get that energy to the wheels causing a lot of losses. What we can do is reduce the amount of moving components.
The other thing causing new cars to be less efficient in fuel consumption is weight. Cars have gotten bigger and heavier compared to their older counterparts. More mass to move means more fuel is needed.
Going back to what I said about how engines are as efficient as they’ll ever be. It only applies to extracting energy. We can reduce an engine’s fuel consumption by reducing the amount of fuel it needs to burn. Technology like cylinder deactivation reduces the fuel consumption.
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