From the December 2016 issue
An internal-combustion engine is still a metal box of pistons that slap up and down (or side to side). But improvements through the years have transformed cars from the retrospectively simple devices of the Tin Lizzie era into complicated, computer-regulated tech labs. Infiniti is soon to deploy the latest major internal-combustion innovation, the variable-compression-ratio engine we covered last month. And the breakthroughs continue, as there are still plenty of improvements to be made to today’s automobiles before we begin beaming ourselves across the universe with our Roddenberry guns. Here are three inventions currently in the works, as deduced from reviews of recent patent grants by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office:
Porky’s II
Company: Bio-Adhesive Alliance
USPTO Name: Preparation and uses of bio-adhesives
What It’ll Do: Pig manure is rich in oils similar to the low-grade petroleum used to make asphalt. Subbing these oils for petroleum distillates yields a hardy road surface that is also renewable. Not only that, but poovement—that’s ours, don’t try to trademark it—would help areas that rely heavily on hog farming deal with problematic volumes of waste.
Reality Check: Scientists at North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University are conducting durability testing, the early stages of which have been promising. Don’t worry; the smell goes away in processing.
Status: International patent filed September 20, 2013
The Keytar
Company: Ford
USPTO Name: Increasing the number of cylinders in an internal-combustion engine in a virtual fashion
What It’ll Do: Artificially generating the sound of extra power strokes in between the real cylinder firings of a downsized engine will make it sound as if it has more cylinders than it does. Ford has found that many drivers in cars with downsized engines and manual transmissions rev those engines higher when shifting by ear, partially negating their fuel savings. The idea here is to trick them into shifting earlier by superimposing the sound of extra cylinders via an electronic noisemaker.
Reality Check: Ford already uses speaker-based engine-sound enhancement in some EcoBoost engines; this is a pretty straightforward extension. It was developed by a German engineer, presumably for European drivers who are much more likely to have manual transmissions than are American motorists. But it’d be a simple thing to add no matter where a model is sold.
Status: Filed January 15, 2014; patented May 3, 2016
Company: Shanghai Koito Automotive Lamp
USPTO Name: Automobile lamp device and method for transmitting signals through light thereof
What It’ll Do: Cars would be outfitted with light-emitting devices in their taillights and receiving modules in their headlights, allowing vehicles to communicate with those immediately behind them. The light signals function as a kind of modern Morse code. As a bonus, the inventor claims light transmission provides a more accurate understanding of surrounding traffic than existing camera- and radar-based active-safety systems.
Reality Check: V2V communications will pile a tremendous amount of additional functionality into existing computing systems, and this narrowly focused method would enable a car to communicate only with the vehicles within sight. We expect the collision-warning role of this invention to be bundled into other systems, though this could function as a fail-safe redundancy layer.
Status: International patent filed December 18, 2013
Don’t Flip Your Lid
When Ford brought out the capless fuel filler in the 2005 Ford GT, it seemed like an inconsequential gimmick. But the capless filler is the next great we-have-to-have-it-because-they-have-it feature, now offered by 14 different brands. Anecdotal evidence suggests most people spend the time saved by not removing a cap staring at their phones without actually opening any apps.
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