a possible new engine
 

i don't think this has been brought up yet...

the Wave Disc Generator doesn't need valves, pistons, fluids, transmissions, and some other things, which will make a car about a thousand pounds lighter, meaning you won't need so much energy to make it go forward. it is supposedly 3.5 times more efficient than the internal combustion engine.

New engine shakes up auto industry - Technology & science - Innovation - msnbc.com

so...they apparently have the technology. think it will ever actually happen?

This is pretty exciting stuff. Knowing that cars are only about 15% efficient, you tend to wonder why more work hasn't been done to improve that...

i'm gonna tell my bro at mazda about this, see what he thinks

All talk. No details. No demo.

Name a currently produced car, not a truck, that has an engine and transmission that weigh 1000 pounds combined.

unless you're making a sprint car out of this thing, you'd need a transmission to get to speeds above 20 mph or so. otherwise you'd need to spin a shaft so fast that it would be pushing the limits of conventional metal bonds unless you get something with a stupidly high modulus of rigidity without sacrificing too much to yield strength, but then you'd probably be paying a lot of money for something like that.

I read that it wouldn't need a cooling system which might make it a lot easier to maintain in terms of not needing oil changes, radiator flushes, replacement tanks, tubes, gauges, etc... but as for making it that much lighter, I'm not so sure.

There's also the patent rights to consider. If Texaco or someone offer [large sum of money] to buy the rights to the design so they can sell more gas, it might not make it on the market purely because powerful people would stand to lose sums of money if it got out. Not to mention reducing jobs for the people who make oil tanks, radiators, and other non wave disc generator parts. their jobs would become obsolete, and unhappiness would be more prevalent than syphilis in early 1500s Frenchmen. could it happen? yeah, but it'd be in the interest of alot of people to make sure it doesn't get out.