Infiniti Has Built A Variable Displacement Engine And It's Spectacularly Clever
The idea of a variable displacement engine is something that’s been around for years. Through cylinder shutdown technology, engines like Bentley’s W12 and Aston Martin’s new 5.2-litre V12 can turn off a whole cylinder bank under certain situations, temporarily giving a smaller, more efficient engine. However, the sort of variable displacement tech Infiniti has come up is way, way more clever.
What the company’s new ‘VC-T’ engine can do is change the stroke of the pistons automatically depending on the driving situation, in the process varying the displacement and compression ratio. The con rods are made of two parts, with an actuator connected to the lower ‘multi-link’ part. An electric motor moves the actuator, raising and lowering the piston height where required.
Using this jolly clever tech, the VC-T can have a compression ratio anywhere from 8:1 for the best performance, to 14:1 for the highest efficiency.
Power-wise we can expect around 270bhp, all while giving what Infiniti claims is diesel-rivalling efficiency. Oh, and apparently it’ll be as smooth as a V6. Those are some lofty claims, so we’re fascinated to see how this thing works in reality.
Expect the engine to replace the company’s 3.5-litre V6, making an appearance in multiple Infiniti vehicles. It’ll make its public debut at the Paris motor show.
Growing up on a diet of World Rally Championship highlights and lengthy Gran Turismo 2 sessions, a life in cars was as good as inevitable for Matt.
Comments
Good more moving parts that could break and are probably very expensive. It is cool though.
Wonder what the repair bill will be on this sucker when it inevitably breaks.
Oh cool, more things to break in the engine.
Smooth as a v6…..so roughly as smooth as when the millenium falcon got pulled into the tractor beam of the death star
As awesome as this tech is. Technologies like this mean these cars probably won’t live on to be classics.
Can you imagine how freeking complex that must be! And how much it’s cost when it goes wrong!
I’m a mechanical engineer and this is better than porn for me.
Have fun infiniti warranty crew. Lol
I read “multi link connecting rods” and started laughing.
Good luck with that Infiniti… I’m sure people will swallow an engine rebuild every so many thousand miles and no engines will ever grenade themselves because of deferred maintenance.
Hope Engineering Explained will do a video on this, because information in this article is hopelessly scarce.
So… this is basically a more advanced version of the atkinson cycle engine?