... oh but diesel engines have reached their peak efficiency and can't be improved upon now(sarcasm)...

BMW goes with Bosch, right? So perhaps this injector will see action in the new 2.9L V6 diesel from GM (due in 2009)?

It is surprising to see how engines that have been running at almost the same low efficiency for 100+ years, suddenly get a multitude of minor upgrades and significant increase in efficiency and much lower GHG.

Where all those valuable upgrades gathering dust on a shelf somewhere?

Does anybody know why most of those improvements were not done 50 years ago?

50 years ago you didn't have microcontrollers that could handle the requirements...because the equivalent of the 32 bit processors used in modern vehicles exceeded the processing power of all computers in the entire world by a couple orders of magnitude 50 years ago.

Materials, manufacturing, and computers (processors) have improved quite a bit in the last 50 years (and an improvement in one area has fed the improvements in other areas).

You would not have been able to do this even 20 years ago with a custom silicon ASIC in every car (never mind that it would have been 100 times the cost of the processors they use now). 10 years ago it would have been possible but the software was not up to par [software is the slowest evolving portion in an embedded design].

From the Cray supercomputer website:

"The first Cray-1™ system was installed at Los Alamos National Laboratory in 1976 for $8.8 million. It boasted a world-record speed of 160 million floating-point operations per second (160 megaflops) and an 8 megabyte (1 million word) main memory."

The Texas Instruments TI-NSpire handheld calculator:

8MB DRAM memory, ARM9 licensed core (which may run 300 MIPS and in some silicon out there ARM9 cores are topping 4 Gigaflops).

In only 32 years we now have calculators which exceed the processing power of supercomputers at a price point that is 44,000 times less expensive ($200 average street price).

And that's only on the computation side of it. (I just read a technical paper published in May 2008 MTZ concerning VW's new common-rail TDI, and the amount of software modeling used in the ECU is unbelievable.)

Common-rail solenoid-actuated injectors only started showing up in production in the 1990's, and piezo injectors only a few years ago - nevermind piezo injectors with (effectively) built in servo-positioning control, and glow plugs with built in real-time cylinder-pressure measurement (VW commonrail TDI will have this).

Stuff like this was not even dreamed of 20 years ago. It certainly has not been "sitting on a shelf" for 50 years.

It is less than 5 years ago that it was thought to be impossible to meet the upcoming emission standards with a production diesel engine that a normal person could afford. There is still certainly going to be a price tag, but it's not impossible.

OEMs are SO cost sensitive that a technology has to be commodity priced unless it is mandated by government or somehow lowers the total vehicle cost (including warranty, lawsuit defense, etc... ) to the OEM.

is it just me or does that stock photo look like a missile..

Brian P:

Generally agree, but substantial reduction (3-5 times) of most troublesome diesel pollutant – diesel carbon soot, was technically and economically possible on commercial diesels for about 20 years. Relatively simple means like common rail high-pressure mechanical injection and limiting of fuel/air ratio could do the trick. Such reduction of heavy truck diesel soot was late for at least 10 years. Hence the presence of legacy heavy diesel smokers on our roads.

Next generation of heavy emitters regarding particle-numbers. Let's avoid filtration by all means!

Can't avoid particles with diesels.....yet. The new exhaust systems are wonderful at vaporizing that soot though.

The piezos and the processing speeds today make it possible for the injectors to fire mulitple times during the combustion process and again on the exhaust stroke. A much cleaner and efficient burn process.

One other point about the latest models of injectors is the opening rate. In older injectors, once the pintle lifted from it's seat, it would take nearly 2 milliseconds for the injector to begin to ramp up towards it's maximum lift. However, with the piezo type the injector has a more linear type of behavior. The amount the injector opens from 0 to 1 ms is nearly identical to the proportion of lift from 1-2 ms. Likewise, the processing speeds of the control units make for quicker adaptations to intake oxygen levels.

In all of these areas, all of the technology we are using today has not just grown, it has multiplied in its abilities.