The Elio Engine

[goofyone]

I think it would be pretty safe to believe that the number one guiding principal in the design and build of an Elio engine centers around gas mileage .... they have also made a point of saying the power train will be built to deliver 100 mph ... those to aren't mutually exclusive but are highly dependent on the transmission gearing .... high mileage accompanied by high speed aren't in harmony with high pulling power .... in this case I'm referring the pulling power necessary to maintain road speed going up mountain grades .... does anyone have any info on how they plan to balance the need for high mileage/speed with the the need for power necessary to get up a hill without having to pull over into the slow lane

Jim

Good question Jim!

The engine will be using a dual lift or shifting hydraulic bucket on the intake. There are three lobes per intake which allows for two cam profiles each with different intake valve lift and timing. This allows for high and low lift based on engine RPM and load demands. So basically more power when you need it and more efficiency when you don't.

This has been discussed in the Engine Valvetrain thread: http://www.elioowners.com/threads/elio-engine-valvetrain.2305/

 

[goldwing06]

i wrote this in reply to an individual who was asking about engine speed for the elio. by the time i finished, the thread was no longer in existence so i will just throw it in here for now. the cruise speed and power could be maintained in a couple of ways. since is has the double lobe came, that could come into play when extra torque is needed to pull a hill with out downshifting. or, it would seem likely that the transmission would have an overdrive gear to achieve the highway mileage and yet be able to shift down to what ever rpm is required to keep the vehicle speed constant. cruise control, fuel injection and electric shift transmissions are an amazing combination on new vehicles, when working in concert with each other, through the smec or brain or what ever u want to call the engine controller module. what u like in displacement, u make up for in rpm. after seeing my trucks loaf along below 2k rpm at 70 and the bike turning almost 3k rpm with twice the cc and the same weight as the elio, i would expect the elio to run between 2500 and 3000 rpm, due to the streamlining, because a mc is almost 100% drag. compared to a full bodied vehicle. some may remember jim bede, an aeronautical engineer, who designed a 2 seat enclosed mc that used a 355cc honda engine that got 90mpg and ran over 100mph. he used retractable outrigger wheels to hold it up when stopped. fiberglass body and aluminum cans for crush material for protection. btw, that mc in stock form didn't even get 40mpg or do over 90mph. just goes to show what a little streamlining can do.

 

[MajorXx]

Yow! Tough crowd. If Elio didn't create a new engine what is the consensus of the best substitute: existing big bike motor, 3 cylinder or 4 cylinder, keeping in mind weight/mileage/power.

One obvious answer that comes to mind would be the 1 liter Geo Metro 3 cylinder.

 

[goofyone]

I think it would be pretty safe to believe that the number one guiding principal in the design and build of an Elio engine centers around gas mileage .... they have also made a point of saying the power train will be built to deliver 100 mph ... those to aren't mutually exclusive but are highly dependent on the transmission gearing .... high mileage accompanied by high speed aren't in harmony with high pulling power .... in this case I'm referring the pulling power necessary to maintain road speed going up mountain grades .... does anyone have any info on how they plan to balance the need for high mileage/speed with the the need for power necessary to get up a hill without having to pull over into the slow lane

Jim


Moderator Comment: Merged into existing engine discussion thread

Good question Jim!

The engine will be using a dual lift or shifting hydraulic bucket on the intake. There are three lobes per intake which allows for two cam profiles each with different intake valve lift and timing. This allows for high and low lift based on engine RPM and load demands. So basically more power when you need it and more efficiency when you don't.

This has been discussed in the Engine Valvetrain thread: http://www.elioowners.com/threads/elio-engine-valvetrain.2305/

i wrote this in reply to an individual who was asking about engine speed for the elio. by the time i finished, the thread was no longer in existence so i will just throw it in here for now. the cruise speed and power could be maintained in a couple of ways. since is has the double lobe came, that could come into play when extra torque is needed to pull a hill with out downshifting. or, it would seem likely that the transmission would have an overdrive gear to achieve the highway mileage and yet be able to shift down to what ever rpm is required to keep the vehicle speed constant. cruise control, fuel injection and electric shift transmissions are an amazing combination on new vehicles, when working in concert with each other, through the smec or brain or what ever u want to call the engine controller module. what u like in displacement, u make up for in rpm. after seeing my trucks loaf along below 2k rpm at 70 and the bike turning almost 3k rpm with twice the cc and the same weight as the elio, i would expect the elio to run between 2500 and 3000 rpm, due to the streamlining, because a mc is almost 100% drag. compared to a full bodied vehicle. some may remember jim bede, an aeronautical engineer, who designed a 2 seat enclosed mc that used a 355cc honda engine that got 90mpg and ran over 100mph. he used retractable outrigger wheels to hold it up when stopped. fiberglass body and aluminum cans for crush material for protection. btw, that mc in stock form didn't even get 40mpg or do over 90mph. just goes to show what a little streamlining can do.

You must have been responding to Jim before his question was merged into this thread. You did a great job both answering the question and putting your answer in the correct thread so it ended up right after Jim's anyway.

 

[JP]

One obvious answer that comes to mind would be the 1 liter Geo Metro 3 cylinder.

thats the engine that is in the P4 now

 

[wheaters]

The Geo Metro has the Suzuki G10 engine, and a very good little engine it is! I have been converting one to rear wheel drive, to go in my Liege (presently powered by its original Reliant 850 engine) and have since also bought a G10 powered Suzuki Swift to teach my daughter to drive in! That is,when we can get it back from her elder brother who has it on loan until his BMW 120D engine is fixed, at great expense!

 

[Charlie G]

Do you know of any other company in this country, or for that matter, the world, that shares any information with potential customers? No. They wait until the product is done and they "unveil". That is part of what makes the Elio so very special. We are getting to watch as it and the company grow and change. Is it so difficult to celebrate the fact that we are involved at all instead of worrying about what we don't know? We will learn all these things in good time. But not necessarily in your preferred time line. By your, I mean all of us. It is a privilege to be included, not a right. We need to remember that. And as always, that is my very biased and totally not at all humble opinion. Z

I think it's more common for companies to intentionally 'leak' information about potential upcoming changes to gauge public reaction.
Reputable news sources either don't pick it up or treat it as a rumor, while avid consumers will discuss ad nauseum. The advantage is that this gives plausible deniability. You can build hype and gauge consumer interest without making a formal statement that leaves you exposed.

Think about it, if I leak a photo of the new iPhone prototype (for example) several months before production amps up, I can then watch and see what details customers like and dislike - watch the speculation, see what they expect and what is important. Then further tweak final designs to fit.
If I were, for instance, Elio toying with the idea of increasing the cost to an even 7k (completely hypothetical), I would leak that somewhere as coming from an unconfirmed source and judge what the lashback would be before making a decision or formal announcement.

Edit: I wouldn't be surprised at all if this happened with something like the gauge cluster.

 

[#491]

With hindsight being 20/20, I think EM could have better spent time/money searching for an already in-production engine in volume for a good price. Just about any 2-cylinder motorcycle, 4-stroke engine would have (more than adequate) power and most of the fuel economy. The Elio has better aerodynamics than my Triumph Sprint ST, after all.


This engine development program is dragging the time line out years.

Why not look at what Europe has? They are running Smart Cars over there with a diesel enging getting 70+ MPG's. I know it won't be "North American" but at 70 MPG I'm willing to comprimise that.

 

[goofyone]

One obvious answer that comes to mind would be the 1 liter Geo Metro 3 cylinder.

This is a very good engine and is what powers the P4. Elio's original plan was to essentially take that block and outfit it with a more modern head design. However the issue is that it has not been in production for some time so all new tooling would have to be created just to produce it.

As they would need new tooling anyhow it made more sense to use the Suzuki/Geo 3-cylinder simply as the starting point to which they applied all the engineering know how which has accumulated since that engine was designed. This means that this new IAV/Elio engine design is much more efficient thant what they could have had simply by using the old block design with a new head.

 

[goofyone]

Why not look at what Europe has? They are running Smart Cars over there with a diesel enging getting 70+ MPG's. I know it won't be "North American" but at 70 MPG I'm willing to comprimise that.

The simple answer for no diesel at this point is that they cost more to produce. We have an entire thread for the diesel discussion alone.

While there are definitely a lot of big up front costs to designing and building their own engines finding an engine provider that can meet Elio's needs is not as easy as some people want to believe it is.

The vast majority of engine manufacturers will not have the extra unused capacity to produce 60,000 extra engines a year let alone 250,000. Out of the few left who may have the capacity most will not have engines available that fit EM's power, weight, and cost requirements including the added cost in shipping the engines to Shreveport for delivery and profit margin for the engine builder.

Even if EM can find an engine builder who meets all of the requirements there is still the matter of a contract and money down. Any engine builder willing to set this much capacity aside is going to want guarantees in the form of minimum engine purchases numbers, maximum purchase numbers, and a large amount of money down up front which EM could instead use to help build out the engine assembly area inside their own plant.