A fundamental difference between gasoline and diesel engines is that a gasoline engine uses spark ignition while a diesel engine uses compression ignition. Before we delve deeper, let's understand how ...

Most pickup trucks sold today have internal combustion engines. Passenger vehicles are powered by two main types of engines: compression, aka diesel, and spark ignition, aka gasoline. Besides the type ...

As long as the internal combustion engine has existed, engineers have been trying to find better ways of igniting the highly combustable mixture of air and gasoline that powers cars. Everything from ...

Spark plugs can only ignite the fuel at one end of the chamber. A laser ignites the fuel in the middle of the chamber instead, burning more of the fuel and improving combustion efficiency by 27 per ...

The pollutant emissions and high-energy consumption of combustion engines using conventional spark plugs have long been serious environmental problems. Now, it has been demonstrated that lasers can ...

In most cases, the number of spark plugs in a gasoline engine is typically represented by the number of its cylinders. For instance, it's perfectly normal for a V8 engine to have eight spark plugs, a ...

IRVINE, Calif.—Despite rumors to the contrary, the internal combustion engine is far from dead. Recently we’ve seen several technological advances that will significantly boost the efficiency of ...

Any certified gearhead knows that diesel engines do not use spark plugs. But why not? If power in an engine is created by combustion or explosion of flammable liquids, won't a spark plug in a diesel ...

Combustion requires three elements - fuel, air and an ignition source. Air is a no-brainer, being available pretty much wherever drivers are. For most of the history of the automobile we've mainly ...

What many consider the Holy Grail of combustion technology is one step closer to prime time. In the race to field energy-efficient vehicles, don’t count out internal combustion technology just yet. GM ...