22nd
OpenIdea: Hybrid Engines
One of the drawbacks of hybrid cars is that there’s the extra weight of having both an internal combustion engine AND an electric motor. Why not try to combine the two devices so that they share more parts and save weight? I imagine there could be an engine where half (quarter?) of the cylinders are replaced by an “electric” cylinder — so when the car doesn’t need to be run on combustion, an electrically-powered cylinder runs the car. So the other cylinders stop igniting, and the “electric” cylinder(s) are driven by a small motor… If it’s possible to make an electrically-driven cylinder small and powerful enough to fit inside an engine, then maybe older cars could be retro-fitted with a hybrid engine — keeping the old transmission and all the other existing parts.
