peter_kranz

I'm doing a presentation on a car technology that was highly touted when it first came out but failed commercially, so I chose the rotary engine. Does anyone here know why it didnt do as well as it should have when it first came out? or if not that than what is the future of this thing, will it ever make it big? Any ideas or references to a website or journal would be a huge help.

SPEED_NYC

iTrader: (3)

i did a simmilar report for an engineering class 2 years ago. i dont think you should really make the point that the rotary engine failed commercially, especially now that the rx8 is being released.

i focused my report on the hydrogyn burning rotary engine that mazda developed and put into a few miatas, but never released. those rotary miatas were zero emissions vehicles and had waaay more hp than the electric cars they were built to compete against. unfortunately, the highly touted, hydrogen burning rotary engine failed.

you can get tons of info of the hydrogen rotary, as well as anything else rotary related from NSU, to mercedes benz, to chevy, to mazda the entire rotary engine history is on this page, its a great resourse.

www.monito.com

bureau_c

Indeed, I would say that rumors of the RE's death are greatly exaggerated, to paraphrase...Mark Twain I think.

Anyway, has Mazda abandoned the hydrogen rotary? It would seem premature...it could hot have failed in a commercial sense because it was never released in a commercial sense. The technology certainly looked promising, but of course there are still issues with how you store the hydrogen fuel you're carrying in a safe manner. The other thing is I believe due to the oil injection needed by the rotary, some offical board was refusing to call it a ZEV. Pretty picayune, but what can you do...technically I suppose they were correct.

As for the comparison with electric cars, I don't think you can exactly call those a commercial success yet either. How many do you see on the road? Not many. How many of them could be made even remotely affordably without very heavy government incentives? A big fat zero.

jds