Where next for the IC engine?

If you believe the hype, the internal combustion (IC) engine — in the face of ever-stiffening competition from electric and hydrogen-fuelled vehicles — is taking its last sputtering few breaths.

While its role in a range of hybrid powertrains may afford it a stay of execution, give it 20 years, some say, and the engineering innovation that has affected the world more profoundly than any other will be little more than a museum piece.

That’s one view. However, there are many in the automotive industry who believe that a technology now way past its centenary is still far from mature.

There is certainly room for improvement. According to Prof Neville Jackson, director of technology at powertrain specialist Ricardo, the most efficient fossil-fuelled vehicles on the roads today typically only use around 25 per cent of the energy in the tank.

Overall, automotive engineers believe it should be possible to better use this energy by making the kind of incremental tweaks that have characterised the last few decades of engine development. This is the view of Lotus managing director Paul Newsome (see our interview on page 26), who said: ‘I don’t believe there are big step changes, but the incremental biting-off of small percentages. I think there’s still a reasonable amount to go before you say “throw that away and let’s go with a series hybrid”.’