As fuel prices climb higher seemingly by the minute and the American carbon footprint continues to balloon, it’s becoming increasingly important for engineers to find a new way to propel our cars. And we’ve covered their progress across practically every potential solution—batteries, hydrogen, ethanol, even air power. But what if we told you that perhaps the most promising fix for our fossil-fuel dependency involves none of those, but rather pistons, valves and (gasp!) gasoline? Believe it or not, it’s true.
Dismissed as a laboratory curiosity in the 1970s, homogeneous charge-compression ignition (HCCI) has now emerged as a more feasible alternative to alternative fuels—and it’s almost ready to roll out en masse. When used in conjunction with other advanced engine technologies, this combustion process can help deliver a whopping 25- to 30 -percent better fuel economy than today’s spark- or compression-ignited internal combustion engines (ICE). HCCI does all this with near-zero emissions, just like a hybrid—and it won’t have any impact on your driving habits or come at a premium price.
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