Koenigsegg’s Brilliant Camless Engine Explained
Koenigsegg is on to something as revolutionary as fuel injection with their camless engine. A big drawback to current engine configurations comes directly from those very eccentric lobes that open and close the valves on the cylinder head. Fuel injection solved the issue of fuel mixture by adjusting the fuel ratio perfectly depending on engine conditions, but nothing has yet been done with how air enters and exits the combustion chamber.
As you can see in the video below, Koenigsegg’s “Freevalve” replaces cam lobes with pneumatic actuators that will replace the camshafts. This frees up engine horsepower by not having the additional drag of the valve-train, but can also boost efficiency with cylinder deactivation when full power isn’t needed.
With how simple this seems, it almost makes you wonder why it wasn’t created before. Well, the answer is simple: a traditional camshaft engine is rock-solid reliable, and also quite inexpensive to produce. Those are two things that the Freevalve engine has to overcome. Until then, we can expect those Swedes to experiment with this technology more and more. I wonder how long it will be before we see it on one of their production cars?
Chime in with your thoughts on the forum. >>
Via [MotorAuthority]
