“These crazy bastards dropped a V10 into the Z4. Nice.” That’s what head Automoblog dude Christopher said to me in an email moments ago. Yeah, nice AND crazy all at the same time. Our kind of people these folks from Manhart. I (and I’m assuming Chris) love people that do things like this; V12s into Miatas, mid-engine Mini Cooper conversions, that sort of thing.

Of course, putting an aircraft engine in a 50s vintage car is one thing, doing an engine swap in a modern car, with all the electronics and whatnot, is a bigger deal.

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We have had the same conventional internal-combustion engine for over 100 years, and it hasn’t changed much in the last 50 years. Up until this point, the increases we’ve managed to achieve in fuel economy within a conventional gasoline or diesel engine have come from one of two sources:

1. Computer-controlled fuel-injection, which allows a computer inside the vehicle to adjust the amount of fuel delivered to the engine, and;
2. Engine cylinder deactivation technology, which disables certain cylinders from firing inside an engine during highway cruising.

But these changes have only poorly masked the symptoms of fuel consumption by providing small fuel economy gains instead of solving the overall problem. If we want to truly increase fuel economy, we must abandon the conventional engine altogether and create a new platform. Hybrid and electric vehicles are an example of this, where excellent fuel economy may be achieved by using nothing but electricity to power a vehicle, or by combining fuel and electricity to dramatically reduce fuel consumption.

However, the Hefley Engine is an entirely new animal that consumes nothing but petrol-products like a conventional engine, yet it is capable of achieving better-than-hybrid fuel economy. This is due to its variable displacement technology that actually adjusts the internal size of the engine to match the ever-changing needs of the driver. An engine with a large internal size consumes more air and fuel, producing more power. An engine with a smaller internal size consumes less air and fuel, producing less power but greater fuel economy. When power is needed, the Hefley Engine increases its internal size – increasing power output. As the driver lets off the throttle and heads toward a more constant speed, the internal size of the Hefley Engine shrinks – increasing fuel economy. These changes happen so quickly, they are virtually unnoticeable to the driver. Hefley introduced this technology a few years ago with its first engine, the Hefley X1 – but now it has released an improved version called the Hefley X2. Continue Reading…