Why do luxury car companies build engines that require premium gas?
In: Engineering
The design of the engine relies on higher compression ratios in the cylinders to deliver horsepower, and that requires higher-octane gasoline. ‘Premium’ gasoline has a higher percentage of octane in the fuel, with a smaller amount of the fuel being heptane than ‘ regular’ unleaded gasoline.
Earlier designs relied on large-displacement engines, with larger-volume cylinders, which typically used a larger volume of fuel to generate horsepower. Never engines have been designed differently, to use a smaller-displacement engine and get the same horsepower. That requires more power to be delivered from the fuel, which requires higher-octane gasoline.
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