- On the last few new car shows
we got our hands on some pretty cool new cars.
This time,
I got to drive a car so new
that it's not even technically made yet.
That's right my babies,
daddy drove a prototype.
- Aah. Fu--
- On the outside, its just a flat black Mazda three.
On the inside, lives one of the most advanced
combustion engines ever.
I want you guys to do me a little favor really quick,
forget everything you know about combustion engines.
This one goes:
Suck.
Squirt.
Vortex.
Compress.
Tons of weird stuff;
Squirt again.
Lean out.
Press. Bang
I wanna point out that I didn't say spark.
Today we're talking about Mazdas,
Skyactiv-
X.
The future of the eternal combustion engine.
Zoom zoom muchachos.
(techno music)
First things first,
this is by far the most expensive car
I have every driven,
or probably will ever drive.
- Aah
- It is a ten million dollar car,
which they told me after I drove it around Newport
for about three hours.
I could have wrecked this whole thing.
It's literally worth more than Donut.
I could have put fifteen people out of work.
That's like at least seven kids
who aren't getting Christmas this year.
- Haha
- Cause Mazda let Uncle James drive a ten million dollar car
and he bottomed it out on a speed bump.
(car wheels spinning)
The amazing thing about the prototype
isn't how fast it goes.
It isn't an amazing rumbling from the exhaust,
the craziest thing about this ten million dollar car
is that it feels normal.
Must be nice. Feeling normal.
It felt a lot like the current Mazda three,
which is exactly what the engineers set out to do.
They wanted to make an engine
that was super efficient in any revering.
You get great mileage,
even when you're ringing it out.
That means you don't have to drive like your grandma
to get the EPA claimed MPG.
You can drive like my grandma.
Zoom. Zoom.
Mazda is sorta an outlier
in the environmentally friendly
high MPG, low MPG low emissions game.
While most companies are focusing on
hybrid and electric technologies,
Mazda has decided to make the most efficient
internal combustion engine possible.
I mean, what do you expect?
These are the same guys who said
hey, we should power a car with a magic triangle.
(cartoon music)
Okay, so how doe this ding-dong thing work?
Disclaimer, I'm about to use a lot of words I don't
know
the definition of.
At times it might seem a little
technical
or that I might be
speaking outside of my realm of understanding.
- A laser.
- But pay attention, because I promise
it's very, very interesting.
Now you might now that diesel engines are more efficient
because it takes less fuel to make the boom.
The compression is so high that it actually
ignites the fuel without a spark plug.
The thing is,
their emissions suck.
They shoot a ton of crap out in the air
that causes cancer and kills all the trees and stuff.
The freaking glaciers all melting
and suddenly I got a beach front property.
Boom. Boom.
Raise the rent. Raise the rent.
Mazda set their sights on diesel like efficiency
from a much cleaner burning gasoline engine
with a thing called
High compression combustion ignition,
or HCCI.
Basically a gas engine with no spark.
Fudge.
Until now, this was impossible because gasoline
is less stable at these higher compressions.
We couldn't control when the boom was gonna happen.
Boom go too soon
your engine goes kabloom.
(engine combusting)
It's called ping.
Pre-ignition.
Bad news for baby.
The engines the baby.
- Haha
- HCCI has a limited range of application.
Its only dependable when the pistons
are moving really quickly.
Because the load requirements are much lower.
For things like idling or accelerating from a stop,
it doesn't work.
Kabloom.
Nigh night baby.
Mazda realized they could correct this
using a thing called variable spark ignition.
Think vtech but with spark plugs.
Sometimes there's a spark,
sometimes there isn't.
Sometimes there's a spark,
but it doesn't ignite all the fuel.
It just sets off a tiny explosion
that pushed the pressure in the west of the cyllinder
past the spontaneous ignition threshold.
Then, all of the rest of the gas ignites
because of compression, not because of the spark.
Well, because of the spark,
but not directly because of the spark.
More in like a butterfly effect sort of way.
- Aaah.
- When you're driving,
you might accelerate with spark ignition,
normal car boom.
Then spark control compression ignition
and then cruise at the super lean sparkless HCCI.
So many big words,
man I don't know these words.
So this is basically the gist.
I think that most of it is correct.
There is like ten million other things they did
to make all this work.
Some of it they wouldn't share with us,
some of it I forgot,
and the rest of it I didn't understand.
We were listening to the engineers talk
for about three hours.
I felt like I had to raise my hand
to go to the bathroom.
Turns out I didn't.
Jesse was super embarrassed and I was like:
hey, if you can't handle me at my worst,
you don't deserve me at my best.
And Jesse's all: Dude, what are you doing?
We're not boyfriend and boyfriend
and you're yelling in the middle of this press thing.
Anyway,
all of the tech that went into this weird engine
is truly mind boggling.
The most impressive thing is that it feels normal.
It's not the fastest thing on the road,
not even close.
But the fact that it's so forward thinking
and based on the idea of having an efficient car
that's super fun to drive,
that's absolutely exciting.
Yo, thanks for watching the new car show
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the more cool stuff we get to do.
You wanna learn more about combustion?
Watch this episode of Science Garage,
where me and Bart blow up some stuff and
Bart talks smart things.
You wanna know why I do this?
It's to feed my son Nolan.
Check out this episode of his show, Wheelhouse.
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