I've been intrigued by the idea of using undersized ICE engines with just enough supercapacitor for regenerative braking and 0-60 boost, stop/start, and little else. It seems like the lowest cost addition to increase powertrain efficiency. I wonder what the described system does to the cost of a Ford Focus?

That doesn't seem like what this is, though. This sounds like it uses braking energy to power an electric supercharger. It avoids turbo lag, by scavenging and storing braking energy instead of exhaust energy. Meh. Dunno if that impresses me as much.

The once 'big three' have to be be beat over the head with regulations, bankrupted, or threatened by a viable alternative before perhaps deploying significant innovation.

20 something mpg was good enough for a hundred years, sort of like the golf ninth hole still plays the same.

We'd still be using land line Morse code if electronics were auto innovative.

Will be curious to see actual data on mpg, etc.

I am having a little hard time imagining a "an extremely cost-effective, ultra-efficient gasoline engine in a C-segment passenger car..." yet having an electric supercharger, a BAS electric motor, and an electric turbo-compounder, and sophisticated power electronics to manage all these electrical items...wow! All potentially high-price and complicated items.

Recall from history, the Wright Cyclone R-3350 aircraft radial engine, with an engine-driven supercharger and a Power Recovery Turbo-compounder. This particular set up was notorious for having high failure rates due to overheat melting of the sodium-cooled exhaust valve and piston damage from the "Parts Recovery Turbine" down stream from the exhaust port. Adding the turbo-compounder significantly raises the engine temperatures, for obvious reasons. This potential for overheating, in a 1-liter puny engine with very little thermal mass and blown with a supercharger serving a C-segment passenger car?

By contrast, the 4-cylinder Atkinson-cycle engine runs significantly cooler due to the over-expanded exhaust. The over-expansion of the power stroke raises efficiency as much as the turbo-compounder, without any extra costly, high-maintenance hardware.

For low-cost, full electric hybrid conversion of a 4-speed automatic Ford Focus, try this:
New intake cam shaft to simulate Atkinson cycle. Remove the torque converter and install a 20-30 kW motor in its place.
Replace the existing starter and alternator with a 5-10 kW BAS, and position the wet clutch between the motor and the engine. Remove the spare tire and put in its place some Lithium battery of about ~1kWh capacity. (New cars has tire pressure warning system to allow the owner to re-inflate a nail-puntured tire in time to take to the shop before running completely flat!)
Replace the ECU with a new ECU module designed for the hybrid conversion. This should be an OEM-engineered effort to be done at the dealer only, and not at a mom-and-pop garage!

Voila, a low-cost and highly efficient full electric hybrid without sacrifice in performance nor trunk space, using minimum electrical components and cost. The fuel efficiency will pay for the cost conversion in some odd years. The saving in imported petrol and in CO2 emission will be priceless!

I dramatized it a bit when mentioned the radial engine with turbo-compounding. Certainly, technology has improved since then. However, micro turbines and centrifugal compressors are not nearly as efficient as piston expander or piston compressor, so I doubt if you can harness more exhaust power from a turbo-compounder than in an Atkinson cycle over expanding piston.

Still, a turbocharged engine always runs hotter, and many kids who own a small supercharged vehicles would often floor it around town and may drive it at 80-90 mph down the highways, and that 1-liter engine may not last long, I'm afraid.

Advertising endless 80% empty trucks and SUVs shows a deplorable lack of business sense.

Atkinson engines have poor specific hp/lb.

The issue of small engines supplemented by limited energy storage such as supercaps is that you quickly run out of ommp going up an hill.

Its going to be very hard to improve on a plug-in Prius with lithium-ion batteries.

Engineer-Poet wrote:

I really like plug-ins but I have to admit that we just don't have the capacity in the supply chains to build what it will take.
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I like fairy dust and unicorns, too, but that doesn't mean they are anything but pure fantasy.

Until batteries last well over 100k miles, have charge densities greater than or equal to lithium ion AND cost less than $100 per KWH, I doubt they will ever pay for themselves in any drivetrain. The key is the cost per service mile and we know PHEVs just don't cut it. Regular hybrids pay for themselves long before PHEVs.

I suppose that could change if gasoline were 10 dollars or more a gallon. But I think you can make gasoline from plants for less than that even if oil is completely gone.

Ralph

"Advertising endless 80% empty trucks and SUVs shows a deplorable lack of business sense."

What? They sold many trucks and SUVs, so if the adds increased those sales, even by only a few percent, they showed good business sense.

Buying a truck or SUV, even when gas was cheap may or may not not have shown good business sense, depending on your use for it.

Buying an EV when batteries are expensive and gas is $350/gal likely does not show good business sense, unless you put many more city miles per year on it than average.

But batteries are NOT cheap.

It was not the drivers who demanded the mfg's to make those monstrous SUV's. It was the other way around, marketing from the automakers.
When I grew up, there was only sedans, station wagons, and pickup trucks, and life went on just fine. The larger station wagons like the Chevy Impala or Caprice, or Ford Crown Victoria can seat 8-9 persons in 3 large benches, and were perfect for large families. Then, Lee Iacocca invented the minivans to speed up demands for new vehicles, and it became a hit, replacing the station wagons. Soon, every soccer moms had got to have a minivan. Then, once the market for minivans was saturated, Detroit decided they must invent new products in order to sell more new vehicles, and through their ingenius marketing, everyone was convinced that they must drive a honking big SUV as a status symbol of machismo. The affluent soccer moms felt subconsciously threatened by these monster tanks, that their minivans can no longer afford enough protection for their precious little kids when broadsided by these monstrosities, so, they, too, must drive a honking big SUV's...and you know the rest of the story.

For HEV's, there were hardly any marketing effort at all! Mfg's just wanted to sell a few to show off their Green Washing...There was no huge profit margin in HEV's as in SUV's. They don't really care if they'll sell any HEV at all, since the profit margin for HEV's were just about the same as for non-HEV. Jusk ask Bob Lutz when he developed the Volt! He surely didn't expect GM to make any dime off of it!

But now, there will soon be released the Prius v having a larger size and 68% larger cargo space yet very competitively-priced, to be followed by the Prius + that can seat 7...Also to be released is a PHEV Prius competitively priced for early adopters...We will see that HEV and PHEV's will snap up market shares like never before.