General Motors has breached into a few important areas regarding the future of propulsion, but the fact is many are a long way out from becoming standard like gasoline is today. However, GM is advocating for a more achievable step with gasoline, that is, standardized high octane fuel.
On an upcoming episode of Autoline, previewed in the Autoline Daily video above, GM Vice President of Global Propulsion Systems, Dan Nicholson, says standardized high octane fuel is something the automaker has been seriously looking into. To minimize C02 outputs, high octane gas would allow compression ratios to rise and improve thermodynamic efficiency. Long story short, engines would emit fewer pollutants on high octane gas.
Nicholson admits it won’t happen overnight, but he says GM considers it a major possibility to have standard high octane engines within three to four years. Furthermore, he says GM continues to look at every aspect of a vehicle to see where emissions and efficiency can be increased, not just in one particular area.
Would you be up for standard high-octane gasoline engines? Or should the industry pursue another option? It’s an intriguing concept, so leave your thoughts below after watching the video above.
Comments
If they spent as much effort looking at electric vehicles as the answer to achieve lower CO2 emissions, as they did looking to standardize high octane gasoline, they wouldn’t have to wait 3-4yrs. Start researching into electric power trains, and design language for the correlating electric platforms, so they don’t look like spaceships like the 1st-Generation Chevrolet Volt.
Look at reality. Gm is doing a lot with electric vehicles. Better than most
They’re doing better than most, but I wouldn’t say that they are putting a lot of effort into salable products that the market is asking for.
The EREV Voltec powertrain has been in production for 7 years now, yet it’s never been packaged into something that consumers are demanding: crossovers. There’s no reason the new Equinox, Terrain, and/or Envision don’t have this option. The Bolt is a city car, at 164″ it’s smaller than a Trax in every dimension, exterior and interior. Take a look at the cargo space personally with the rear seat up, and you will quickly see why the Bolt is not a crossover that any family could consider their main vehicle for transportation.
GM has the engineering all done. I honestly think the bean counters are holding back a full lineup of electrified choices from GM, as they are certainly not as profitable as a comparably priced ICE. I’m not saying they are evil & greedy for doing so, as every other automaker except Tesla is taking the same, very slow, “not until we absolutely have to” approach to electrification.
Actually they have spent billions on EV but you can not speed up breakthroughs.
GM is much farther along than most but with the lack of public acceptance and still high prices they have to continue to work with what they have and what people will buy and afford.
It may be many more billions before we get better batteries and cheaper prices.
Let’s face it the Wright Bros, never broke the sound barrier but it was not for the lack of trying.
2 gen Chevrolet volt EREV Plug in, Chevrolet Bolt BEV plug in and more to come, were have you been Zach c ?
Another way to pass on costs to the consumer. Your gas bill will go up quite a bit for the life of the car just to satisfy the greenie weenies.
So if gm were to have electrification on all it’s crossover’s and suv’s/pickup truck’s how many would they sale, what kind of sales would they have here in these us? Would people buy them high number’s here in these us? The highest for electrification will be in china not these us in the future.
It depends on how they’d price them. If they priced them with the same profit margins as they use for the ICE models, they’d sell very, very few. (There’s at least $10,000 of cost in the Bolt’s powertrain.)
If they priced the two models the same, they’d go out of business. Just look at how much cash Tesla keeps needing to keep going. They like to say that each vehicle they sell is profitable, but they aren’t including many costs that other automakers include based on generally accepted accounting principles.
A couple of years ago on an Autoline program, a GM engineer said that an engine designed to run exclusively on E-85 would get better fuel economy, more performance and reduce emissions. Would that not be a reasonable path to pursue in the effort to meet upcoming fuel and emission standards?