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
something is going to break, when tuners get their hands on this…
sure we can add lots of boost it’s only running 8:1 it will be fine, aaaand bom
Just when you understood how vvel worked…
This is variable compression, not variable displacement
Lol, Otto cycle engines are better, just use a smaller displacement.
Also Compression= efficiency why would i use to lower compression setting?
By the looks of the mechanism they could have done better and used the Atkinson cycle, which optimises all the fuel burned, at the expense of power.
My Infiniti is best Infiniti because VC-T
So for countries that calculate taxes based on displacement, how would one report one’s car’s displacement had it came equipped with such an engine?
Also, if this were to replace a 3.5L V6, then how big will this new engine be and how many cylinders will it have and what engine-configuration would it be? Inline-4? Inline-3? Inline-2?
Blown engines incoming.
Usually not a good sign when a non german car manufacturer mass produces a new technology.
This is the future, though.
Cool